Claire Williamson reviews Fire & Ice by Hazel Phillips for NZ Listener:
‘Earth, air, fire, water, aether. These may sound like spellcasting elements, but here they are the thematic sections in Hazel Phillips' Fire & Ice, a captivating social history of Tongariro National Park and its two main peaks, Ruapehu and Ngāruhoe.
The latter is now internationally famous as the setting of Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings. But the juggernaut franchise plays fundamentally no role in Fire & lce, as Phillips goes beyond surface-level engagement to seek out stories of wonder, misadventure, heroism and tragedy that illustrate the peaks' significance to the region and the people who loved them.
"I wanted to create for myself a more nuanced shift in mountaineering, to go beyond the question of 'should I stand on a summit' and to overhaul the whole way we think about our relationships to our mountains and our wild spaces," she writes.
Fire & Ice is not Phillips' first tramping-related book. Her 2022 memoir, Solo: Backcountry Adventuring in Aotearoa New Zealand, was shortlisted in the NZ Mountain Film & Book Festival's book awards. The journalist and self professed "Ruapehu addict" puts her money where her mouth is, lacing up her boots and hiking into the park repeatedly over the course of several years, chasing down rumours and confirming historical hearsay, adding her own insights and imagery to her extensive archival research.’
Read the rest of the review here.
