SKETCHBOOK OF SOLITUDE; Listening Art; A Novel (Prologue; Part One/Tahi)

              

SKETCHBOOK OF SOLITUDE

                                      L  i  s  t  e  n  i  n  g   A  r  t   . . .   . . .

                           . . .   . . .    A Novel   . . .   . . . 

                                                                                *

One man’s journey

into the wealth

that can be found in solitude:

listening in time alone

 

                                     *

‘The one who follows the crowd

will usually get no further than the crowd.

The one that walks alone,

is likely to find himself

in places no one has ever been.’ 

 

   Albert Einstein 

                                            ___________________________________

PROLOGUE

  

THE CAR DOOR was not locked. Raef never locked anything. Not even his thinking.

    I turned towards the front passenger seat. It was there. His thinking. Copious quantities of it. Wrapped up in brown paper. Tied with white cotton string. Waiting for me to do something with it.

   I sat in the driver’s seat of his white Toyota Land Cruiser parked near the beach in Spirits Bay. My right hand lay loosely on the lower rim of the wheel. My mind numb. I stared ahead. Blank.    

   The tide was out; and before me was a broad, curving stretch of white sand nestling in the arms of steep bush-clad hills. There was no wind. The edge of the Pacific Ocean swelled and surged lugubriously and in the distance went shimmering to the horizon to greet the low morning sun. 

   A bird skimmed past. Simultaneously, another dipped directly in front of the car. Flew up again; and was gone. A fleeting image of a girl slipped before my eyes. Sleek blonde hair going out in long, silver-gold ribbons . . . blowing in a wind where there was no wind. Light enters. Stabs me. I was getting as crazy as Raef. He’d told me how she’d helped him. He hid nothing. It was a wonder he hadn’t been locked up in some mental institution. I might, too; for he’d told me, only the day before yesterday that she’d help me, also.

   This car, or ‘truck,’ which was what he called it, seemed to be mine now. Apparently, he had no need of it wherever it was he had gone. Said I was doing him a favour in taking it. The transfer of ownership papers lay on top of the brown paper parcel. The keys, too; and a few letters to post for him, later today.

   I ached in my gut; grieved at his strange departure, not really understanding it. I’d known him the whole ten years. Been there for him, whenever I could. When he struggled with what he called ‘the back to front’ way of things here, I tried to help. Yet, he had more need of me now than he’d ever had; and I was awed that he he’d chosen me to do this thing: Take this light-filled bundle of his handwritten thinking, his sketchbook of solitude, and, somehow, turn it into a book.

   Why, handwritten?

   What else could you do in a place where there was no electricity, whatsoever?

   But what would people make of it?

   I knew it would be, long, involved, circular in its development; his progress not measured in stages of any linear dimension, but ever spiraling towards his centre, getting nearer and nearer and yet already there from the beginning.

   Perhaps, he’d seem vague once in a while; caught away; he was, at times. That was his nature, not tying things down too much, or always grounding them in what we thought was the world, and all that there was.

   Would they read him slow enough to find his hid wealth?

   His message was found in the intuitive process. His burden that we ought to depend more upon intuition and instinct, spirit and spontaneous light, than upon reason and common sense and our mind’s habitual belief that it knew better than gut. So, I knew I wouldn’t be able to cut anything out. If it was odd, that was him. It’s like he said: ‘It wasn’t so much those things we wanted to know that helped us the most and revealed what we were after, as those we didn’t, and turned from: the real treasure was where we hadn’t looked for it before.’ This is Raef’s book.

     

Michael Riordan 

Kerikeri 

Northland 

New Zealand

10. January, 2020

                                                                 PART ONE

                                    

                                     TAHI  

                                                                   One

                                                                                                                   

Tahi (1) Falcon’s Ledge; Northern Central Otago; New Zealand; 10. January, 2019

It took five smooth steppingstones to cross the stream; seven to climb up the steep wooded bank on the other side: twelve stepping stones to paradise on a mountainside; and a twelve month stretch ahead of me of solitude. Joyfully, I climb to a higher place above the hut to listen and think: to grasp those things I have come here to discover and to write the first page. The sketchbook lies open beside me on top of its leather satchel. A pen and pencil left where and when I began it.

   It is now my third day in these mountains. After a, thorough reconnoitre of my new territory I decided to explore further and to draw and write of what I found, which would open up another world. The very air here speaks of dimensions unclouded. Clarity, near infinite. I gaze around me at the high narrow place where I am sitting, then away from it. It is one of the highest of the small rocky ledges on this mountainside; majestically covered with a copper-gold mantle of tussock and brown grass. It was a hue to inspire. Even a means towards the opening. Below me the slopes are immense and stretch for miles. Height and distance mesmerizes. Unleashes a certain strength. Colour works to loosen the last vestiges of my timidity. I imbibe the freedom that these mountains by their sheer power transmute to pure gold; wealth inestimable upon every side.

   This ledge where I sit is in full sun. It is almost burning. A cloudless day in summer in these mountains is scorching. I realize that I will have to seek shade soon.

   Shade. . . . But that is not what I am looking for. I lift my eyes, as near to the sun as I dare. As I push back to lean against the warm cliff my right hand touches a pebble. I pick it up. A white stone. Perfectly, oval. It is only slightly warm in my shadow. I realize that all that I obstruct, I cover up and lose. A thing hidden from the bright light and there are only shadows.

   Enjoying the pebble’s smoothness, I gaze out at the mountain range in the distance; the endless blue-grey peaks move away to the north, and the white stone moves between my two hands, as I between two forms of light.

   Warmth . . . that was what I was looking for. The heat from above captured below; and below that again that the learner might not miss it. It enters. The heat that melts the old until it runs away into dust and releases the new. Light as well as warmth fuses with all it touches. It was all here. It had entered within everything the light that was life, and the wisdom awaiting the listening and seeing, those inhabitants of a nearerland, deaf and blind to the wool.  

   A swift shadow passes over the sun. I blink. The falcon descends. Completely exposed to her sight, amongst the low tussock of my rock ledge, I sit without moving; my hands now free of the stone. I hardly dare breathe. She has returned to her nest above, and sits, watching. Surprisingly, Karearea trusts me and is not afraid. But I know that if I make the slightest movement she will scream at me. She is constantly coming and going in the feeding of her young. When she leaves, so will I; each to our own hunting.

   The sun retreats behind Ben Kenmore, the high mountain peak above me. It is still warm, though it is not hot here anymore. She stirs. She leaves her nest. In the emptying out of what I know, I leave mine. It is hard; until I understand.

   I watch Karearea lift from her earth-home catching a warm current of rising air. She, like me, has two homes, two realms in which to dwell. Karearea wheels over me in one awe-inspiring circuit. She screeches a warning: ‘Touch not my young!’ I cringe for my own. I do not like any ‘stealing of my children’ even when I do it to myself. To the offspring of my own clung-onto knowledge I am as an over-protective parent. But if I never leave the solid ground of that which I can understand, for the uncertainty of what I can’t, I will never know what is there. There and all around awaiting my attention to bring me . . . joy . . . new joy . . . ‘children born of air’ and through the thief. I saw Karearea’s final circuit before she flew out of sight. I saw the pressure of the cyclic air and knew. The power that lifts the falcon’s wing, that rushes in to raise my willing heart, sites its piercing touch, to enter, steal, and raid my precious hoard: old knowledge; which only clouds my eyes and forever blocks my ears. Was I, so bound in wool, lost in the fleece; had I forgotten, so soon, that new knowledge will be the opposite of the old and worn? That which is next always seemingly against the present which opposes it? It is always that way. A shadow is as unlike the thing it shadows as a living person is from an image of him. The real thing was dangerous. 

   I looked over the edge of the small precipice on which I was sitting; and, suddenly, remembered again what I had seen on my hike up here, three days ago: The twelve stepping stones and stairs that had been, before me, that were needed, to cross the stream, and climb up the steep bank on its other side, right at the beginning of the track. Stairs. Small precipices. The rungs of a ladder. Lights upon lights. One higher and more incomprehensible than the one before. This ledge was hid from the ones below me. They were shadowed by it. Each new ledge, each new level of light was dark by comparison with the one above it from which it receives its light but only as a shadow, a picture of what it didn’t have. I live in the shadow light of what is beyond me until I rise above like Karearea.

   Quiet and listening, I shift my gaze. It is the separate features of the landscape around me that I am staring at, until I notice them. . . . These rocky ledges were topped by bare, grey peaks and crags. Below them, the gold suede covered alps that went unending to the horizon. Tiny cascading burns, seen from here were as white silken threads; dwindling torrents now, belittled by summer’s present drought. Beyond and cupped in the safe hands of a distant mountain were tarns like lapis lazuli filled with sky’s glory. Further and below, far away down on the valley floor, and just out of sight was the Lithy River, a telling-picture of the whole, finely braided ribbons of river: all separate, yet one. The natural landscape: different forms in nature’s diversity; yet, together, forming a perfect seamless whole. The Other landscape. Similar. I would have pieces of it. But strung together I would see and know the whole.

   I saw and knew that from the beginning my written account of my year’s sojourn here upon the mountains of solitude would have to be in cameos of freedom. From thought to understanding in stepping stones of winged-pieces of light and life, if it was going to depict the reality of what my time in this place would do to me. If my sketchbook is to be a true picture of my stay in paradise it will have to be a capturing of those moments of insight that change me, free me; for surely there will be, more; else, why have I chosen to come here?

   I know also from experience that if I try to write everything that happens to me, I shall tie myself up inside in so many, bales of shorn wool, the dull fluff of dead coverings; gathering the non-essentials of time and place that shroud and overwhelm the essential: those faint, lucid moments, so elusive and rare, which only are the means of change. So, a book of seemingly unconnected sketches and yet connecting and flowing: my life one continuous thread. Like the river. Where it runs it pulls together the places it passes through. Irresistibly. Gathers them like iron filings to a magnet or beads to a string. I see in lines of light which link as pillars inside myself that support the whole. The iridescent substance in such sketched places holding up a ceiling which has no limit: the pearlescent ladder from here to there unending. I sing inside myself. I am free. Fit to journey inside my nacreous temple to write as I am led, however disjointed my string of pearled-grit might appear to be. 

   I hear the song of a bird. The rising call of the lark. The prey of the falcon. A bird soon consumed, or escaped. Had it entered? Was it within me? For a while, I try to write; the sketchbook, open on my knee. But not those things that I thought I would write did I scribble down then but those that come as short phrases only; snatches of ideas that you didn’t even know were in you, until you were still and listened; sadly called poetry. As usual, I ripped it out, crumpled up the page, and stuffed my rubbish into the satchel. I didn’t want, ‘poetry.’ I left the sketchbook open on top of the leather bag; my scrunched up, many-sided-unwritings destined for burial in it.   

   Moving away from the falcon’s end of my narrow shelf, I shuffle around a small bluff to where the ledge is wider and less rocky. The merino-shorn tussock here is shorter, denser; softer for sitting. The view before me now is different. I simply rest and gaze, and dream and revel in the light. These mountains they companion me; they gather round and feed me their stories. They have seen it all already the every part of knowledge to be found of those who have sought it not. It was growing colder; clouds, predominant and the sun slipping through them sinking lower behind a spur of the mountain. Without any further issuing of any inward thing it seemed the time to go, and I began to scramble down from my, unsafe, rocky height, homeward.

   Why did I love it where it was unsafe? Why did I always push against the status quo? Leave behind me the world of comfortable living for solitude and the unknown?

   I didn’t even expect the answering but it was immediate. The things that tipped you out were of more value than those that didn’t, that left you untouched, unchanged. Things that empty make way for things that fill. . . . A small bird flies up; perhaps it is inside . . . that same song again . . . one song lifting . . . one yet to be recognized by earth as anything that exploded with joy. I laughed. Choked; or coughed. Slid down another bit of loose scree; steep here; and breathless but still laughing, come to a skidding halt as my foot hits a clump of tough tussock and over it I roll, landing in a heap. Gathering myself together, dusting myself off, I rose, slowly, stiffly, and for a long moment stood and took it all in. Overflowing with an effervescent gratitude surging inexorably on the incoming tide, I breathed, took stock and tasted the joy. How wonderful to feel, to know, that this new realm, this new territory of mine was . . . home; and that my reliance was now firmly set upon the ineffable security of the intangible.

   About half way down the mountainside I received an almost imperceptible jolt. A faint thought about going back for something, but it is simultaneously matched by a stronger impression that I should go on. A large dark cloud mass was forming in the west. There would be a storm tonight. I felt it had been predicted.

   As I uneventfully continued my descent my mind became taken up with an insistence to view the things that had gone before. The synchronistic events and steps that had led me here to this place . . . this beautiful extraordinary place . . . a nearerland of another kind of beauty waiting to be explored.

 

                                                                          *

 

                                          

                                  RUA

                                                                   Two

  

Rua (2) The Waves of Slope Point; The Catlins, Southland; 30. March, 2018

I stand on the edge I have come to. There is a strong breeze pressing vigorously against me. I love it! The salt laden air here is bracing; lending a powerful piquancy to an entrance of sense, at last; and the beginning of a change; and a fresh and delightful discovery. I feel it coming. I watch how the waves crash below the cliff. The incoming waves, tumbling over a huge submerged rock hitting the cliff face and rebounding; forced back out to save the next one, to save its headlong rush to destruction and in the superb crash of their meeting. Likewise, I had met my life’s on-coming wave of indecision, which would swamp me, with the out-going one that had already survived the crash. Where they met, the diffusing of my mind’s confusion; cancelled out by the knowledge of what would happen if I did not listen. The meeting of two opposing forces. Life was like that. I stood in awe and watched. Too near the edge. But my decision was made and without any hesitation, as I watched the enactment of my life’s question beneath the cliff face. I now knew just what to do. The consequences of if, I didn’t, already figured out in the instant of seeing the scene below.

   I saw, too, in the majestic display of the meeting of waters, the pliability of nerves to withstand the shock. The shock of an instantaneous decision out of indecision. There was even beauty in it: this maelstrom going on below the cliff was truth. The crash of two opposing waves meeting, cancelling each other out, was the end of one way of living and the beginning of the new.

   But, close in, mermaids wept. Their long hair swaying below in entrancing curves: the invitation of sea kelp to dream of farther things and of other patterns of life. I could weep for my stupidity in my earlier aversion to change. But as I watched the long, strands of sea kelp in the surging ocean, cruelly attached at the base of the cliff, further along, I saw I was companioned in my grief. The fellowship of mermaids. Their long hair, flowing in side-by-side lines, gathered together: their sympathy in heartrending curves of beauty shaking their heads in sorrow for the loss of their freedom. Perhaps, there were mermen down there, too; fools like me, who bent with the force of the surge and the life force of beauty in never resisting it. How could it have taken me so long to realize. . . .

   In the end it was the sea wind in my face which did it. The sharp, pungent updraft from the cliff’s edge, and my eyes weeping for themselves from the force of it . . . the stinging of a fresh challenge, issuing from the pressures of hardship, and the life-giving energy of a decision made once you face it and bear the cost of the inevitable crash.

   So, . . . in hindsight . . . it is to, here, I think, upon this long sloping cliff, Slope Point, New Zealand’s southernmost extremity that I could trace the beginning of that sudden, but long awaited change which brought me to the end of one way of life and to the beginning of another; altogether other. My work as journalist with a non-descript parochial paper, and an, all-too-predictable glossy magazine was coming to its needed end before I shrivelled up and died from boredom. I am a poet; not a digger of stuff from past dramas; or an interior decorator of false values. The unreachable was my realm; and from there I would draw strength to leave the past few years of confusion behind. Life, it was all by believing the impossible; and my purpose here was to make it reachable.

   The emergent decision . . . a gift from the sea . . . I would return home to Northland.  Give myself time to prepare. . . .

   Of my new direction it began immediately. Once you’ve seen then there was no more indecision; unless you hung around afraid losing sight of it. You lost what you had gained and became muddled wherever you ignored what you already knew.

   Of the radiance in the remembered glory of the face to face waters, I wrote all that I could when I got back to the truck. Taking out an already overfilled notebook I sat on the grass near the fence and scribbled it all down. The car park was nearly empty. It was late. The westering sun, casting stray beams of light through the clouds, lit the surrounding farm paddocks to glowing emerald; and the sky beyond the sea to deepening sapphire. Beneath the sun, away out towards the west was the beginning of the Foveaux Strait; the stretch of water between this southernmost point of the South Island and Stewart Island. Dolphins leaped. Or, was it my imagination? Sea birds approached. A black back gull flew directly overhead. It took one circuit around where I was sitting and then went inland. The wind dropped. The peace here was palpable, lending a quiet certitude to anything that came of it. It was a sign I knew: I had made the right decision.    

 

Toru (3)  The Stone Store Heritage Park, Kerikeri; Northland; 2. May, 2018

The Invercargill assignment was quickly wound up: my bizarre series of interviews with a local GP, leaving his practice to take up pig farming. They were sweeter to deal with than his patients, he said. Nice chap.

  The Dunedin paper took my resignation well. Too well. As bored with me, as I with them, perhaps; or, was I too weird? I wonder. The Queenstown glossy seemed loath to let me go. I must have excelled at hiding my internal weirdness. I have material for three or four more feature articles; but I told them to forget that I exist, for awhile; though, as to my real self, they never knew I did. It’s completely crazy, leaving. They pay well; and it was not something to throw away lightly, but . . . but, what? That is what I would like to know. I have not a clue. And, yet, I have now set out upon a journey of living on them . . . clues . . . sixth sense.

   It is warmer up here in the ‘Nation’s Cradle;’ much warmer; and today is veil-less and no breeze to speak of. There is still a significant sprinkling of tourists about; although they are thinning out now. Like the wandering hens here, decorating the park, I presume they have gone off to settle into their chosen places; mine have yet to be chosen, for me. Its 5:30 pm. Colourful varieties of ‘dumped off,’ unwanted roosters have started marking out their territory. Ducks and geese are making for the river. The visitors, I notice, are learning not to feed them their uneaten sandwiches: a father hastily retrieves a child’s offering: a mother smiles.

  I am biding time.

  Sitting on the warm grass at the edge of the Kerikeri River, the Stone Store beyond, I wait. I felt to come down here after my work in town. I am learning to pay attention to instinct. It is just over one month now, since its beginning, this journey in instinct. I must allow myself more time. 

  I decided it was up.

  Idly, I got to my feet and went wandering across the park; aiming for the river track to Rainbow Falls. While gazing up into a huge, old sandalwood tree I managed to trip on a long buttress root; and stumbled, quite literally, upon Michael Riordan. I fell at his feet.

   ‘Hey! Watch out!’

   I scrambled up, embarrassed; and after his, breathless pause, Mike cried out, ‘Springfield! What on earth are you doing here?’

  ‘Not sure. Tripping over things, I guess. Making a fool of myself, as usual.’

  ‘Don’t be so truthful! It never got you, anywhere. I mean it doesn’t pay, does it...?’ another pause. ‘Hey, what are you doing up here, anyway? I thought you were happily ensconced in Dunedin, Raef? Or, have they thrown you out now for telling the untellable tale? I always said you were crazy.’ He stared at me, while gathering his wits together; and it was his turn to be embarrassed. ‘Hey, Raef, I’m sorry. But you gave me a fright, man. Not used to being landed on. And especially by . . . you! But, come to think of it, it’s you, who usually do . . . like dropping out of heaven.’ He moved back to his former position, sitting on his jacket leaning back against the tree. ‘But, hey, it’s good to see you; you nutcase. Come and sit down. Tell me all about it. What are you doing here? There must be something up with you. You always find the right place, don’t you; where there’s the next stack of dynamite.’ Mike laughed delightedly at his own joke and made room for me. I sat down.

   ‘Doing here . . . ?’ I answered. ‘I was wondering about that, myself. I have no idea. Just came on a hunch.’

   ‘Ah! See! That’s the journalist coming out in you, Raef. You can’t escape it, you know, no matter how hard you try. Though, I’ll say this for you, you’re a sheep in wolf’s clothing. Innocence’s the word for it. The sacrificial lamb cloaked in crass standoffishness! Where have you been these last three years? . . . Hey, I’m sorry, just still knocked for six at the sight of you.’ He stared at me and was suddenly silent. Neither of us said anything for a few moments. Then we talked; really talked.

   Mike was, perhaps, the only person who had ever looked beyond the surface of me; understood what was there beneath my life. We had been at Otago together; he had majored in English, too; graduated at the same time as me. One crazy night, our whole Dunedin flat---five of us in a big Edwardian house, near the city centre---was celebrating something or other, I forget what; and, drunk, or so he thought me, I told him things about my origins, and how I came here; which he had witnessed, but not seen; simply accepting what he could not understand.

   The ‘sheep,’ he knew; over time. Perhaps, he even knew, why I wrote in riddles, commonly called poetry, when realigned. And how I was, also, his ‘Springer spaniel,’ (Springfield,) as he euphemistically called the outer ‘wolf’ in me: the ‘thief,’ sent to retrieve but who put up barriers hindering, himself. But I was never a ‘wolf’ in the negative sense of the word; that was why he became silent just now, he knew that, too; and was embarrassed.

   Mike knew that I was just longing to communicate what was true. A ‘Springer spaniel’ longing to retrieve the truth, fought against, out of fear; and longing to rescue, teach; help, save; in short, renew the world. Crazy, yes; totally; he knew I must be, but he did all that he could to protect me during those three years at Otago University. Over the past few years we had lost contact with one another; his knowledge of me would have been a bit of a strain on him, perhaps; hard to swallow, at times. But he was as true as a rock. He could believe the unbelievable. I had had no idea that he was up here; yet, here he was, where I was today; and where I knew that I would bump into, someone . . . that hunch.  

  

Wha (4) Matauri Bay; Northland; 3. May, 2018  

At the place of the sea the dawning came.  Once more, I was pulled towards the ocean.

  This time to Matauri Bay Beach: a 1,900 km drive north from Slope Point; Southland. It seemed now, as if I had had to come all this distance for knowledge of the next step in this mad journey into the unknown. At this place: to wait for that which would lift me through the murk that had obscured the thinness between worlds that I once knew. To wait and listen for light and life to dawn again within; and, even as bread rises, for sustenance, from something in my conversation with Mike, yesterday, to take hold and sustain my heart, bring me through to clearly perceive my path again.

   The steep descent down to Matauri Bay, negotiating several hairpin bends on the wildly plunging road is truly magnificent. From its height you could believe you were in an airplane the long distance views are so stunning. The panorama, far below, of tiny green paddocks and ‘Lego-sized’ dwellings . . . miles of blue sea and sky and islands . . . a long curving bay of white sand . . . a round hill at the end.

   After a short walk along the shore I went to sit down, higher up on the beach in the warm autumn sunshine. I picked up a handful of the coarse sand, crushed shells which, when you looked closer were filled with all the colours of the rainbow. I let it trickle through my fingers, watched the sands of time infuse with purpose, crushed for its beauty, ground to powder for its fit into the scheme of things, and by the agitation of the sea. Whatever the sea made was perfect; but the shaping was done by its benign terror its terrible force. The refracted light from a double web of lifted thought filled my vision; with wings two are needed. Joy in the perfection of shattered colour the rising sun shining through my surfacing thinking, and myriad broken shells of lost hopes all around me. The sea had thrown them up to confound the land; all that it could do to draw attention to their plight. After the sea of life had broken everything it picked it up and found a new use for it. I was here because of it and searching for my new use.

   I wondered what would happen next.

   There was an off-shore wind blowing; and with little protection behind my back I let loose the shell sand and pulled my jacket round me tighter. I had allowed my own thoughts to cease for awhile, for others to rise in tandem paths, and as I gazed from the beach to the sparkling sea I found myself recalling my conversation with Mike.

   He had spoken, briefly, of some kind of hut in the mountains of Central Otago. It had changed him, he said; made him more like me. As he said that, he had laughed; something about my being addictive and that I was not completely crazy; that maybe I had something, after all. He mentioned that his stay there was one of the reasons for his lack of contact; although, he didn’t elaborate on why, and why he hadn’t answered my emails, then; or later. 

   ‘A hut...?’ I should have listened to him more closely. But why would it mean anything to me now? Unbelievably, I had remembered perfectly the website address he had given me. ‘You’d love it, Raef. You should go there.’ I recalled the stab of subconscious attention, when he had said that, and felt it again. I got up and walked down to the sparkling, light-filled water. Wandering along the sea’s edge I made my way towards the curious, prominent hill in the distance. ‘A hill.’ But I saw a mountain. ‘Edge.’ And I saw a precipice and a falcon soaring. The sun, comfortingly warm on my face I lifted my near-closed eyes to the Matauri Bay hill. On its summit the poignant, memorial sculpture to the Rainbow Warrior: a Green Peace ship, destroyed while only trying to bring peace. Destruction in the cause of peace . . . the shadow of the wolf.

   A seventh wave swept in and soaked me. I did not move just let it swirl out round my knees. At the same time, a splint of light, a connecting vision: the joining of two things and a bridge to the other side. In the call of the sea its pattern of life: revealing the way of life in its ebb and flow. We were afraid of the ebb, but its end was the return of life. We had been deceived in our unlit thought-life in thinking loss was no good. We were back-to-front. The silent thief was love. But such ways were misunderstood. We stood with our backs to the light.

 

Rima (5) Kerikeri; Bay of Islands, Northland; 16. September, 2018

Endless delays. I am still here. The dream place is unavailable. They are not accepting bookings until December, or January. Anyway, I have work commitments here that I am not at liberty to shirk. This waiting time seems: loss . . . but good. Next year’s escape it will not all be selfish; I have a book to write, my own story to tell and not for my own ends.   

   The Hospice op-shop has a ‘Sale’ on. It is bustling. People everywhere. I have time to kill; no, to let, live; and see where that will take me. I do not know why I came in here. It just seemed the thing to do. I am drawn to second-hand books. Perhaps, there is a shelf of them? There is. I find many in an area near the back of the shop.

  I have no idea what I am looking for. Yet, I had nearly given up the search when I found it. Again, ‘the-thing-which-arrests,’ was ‘underneath,’ as it usually is. It was beneath a stack of old yellow bordered National Geographic magazines. If I hadn’t attempted to take one out that the writing on the spine attracted me to, I wouldn’t have noticed what was holding up the whole pile: a large brown leather book. It looked more than interesting. I pulled it carefully out, and lifted it up to the light to examine it. In the thick leather cover there was engraved a fascinating design. I felt as though I was handling treasure. The design was actually very simple: two birds emerging one after the other from darkness, or from the sea. The book was bound on the short edge: A4 landscape orientated; and handmade. It was exquisite. A journal? Mercifully, blank. Except for the first page. After the traditional marbled end papers and on luscious-quality cream coloured paper there was written -- and in a remarkably distinctive, uncial-style handwriting, intriguingly urgent, an inscription:

 

‘Sharon Rainbird Stratton-Wyld. 2nd. May, 1980.

This sketchbook is my 18th birthday gift to myself! (If that is allowed!!)

In -- New Zealand! The Land of Dreams to be Realized & Hopes to Eventuate!

I will come back! I will return! Yes!! -- I will!!!

 

‘ --- I am thinking of a poem I wrote, earlier in the year, January, sometime; it is in my book of poems: ‘The Loser Takes All.’  Wrote it after -- after I’d been so ill and when my life seemed to be turning upside down and -- I don’t know why but I remember it now, so I’m going to write it down here at the airport, Auckland, 13th July, 1980. I am waiting for my flight to Thailand! Hurray! At last! -- But, I would rather stay in New Zealand -- this see-through, clear-through, shining New Seeland!  

   Haven’t written or drawn in this sketchbook till now -- but I will. I will! Too many beautiful blank pages looking at me -- blank because they are inscribed in the future -- where words and pictures which work life are invisible -- indelible -- there already even before they are written --- ‘

 

   I turned the page and glanced at the poem written on its other side. This was neither the time, nor place, to read and take it in; but by what I saw, so briefly, I was profoundly moved. A seventeen-year-old wrote this. The thing grabbed me. More, it shook me to the core and I couldn’t understand why. I quickly closed the book. Swiped my arm across the cover to dust its edge with my sleeve then went determinedly to the counter to purchase it; I didn’t need to be here any longer.

   It was ridiculously cheap.

   ‘It’s because it’s used.’ The woman smiled at me; patiently.

   I could not accept the change she was offering me.

  

‘The Plough and Feather’ restaurant was humming. I took my cold beer and snack down the grassy bank to sit near the edge of the water of the Stone Store basin. It was low tide and the Kerikeri River was tumbling over the rocks where the old bridge used to be. Cascading, white water was there as it fell to meet the lower level of the basin. Years ago they had restored this whole area as a National Heritage Park; and the intrusive, utilitarian bridge, and its road, this side, had had to go.

   I stared at the boating pontoon in front of me and the moored dinghies at the bottom of the wooden steps to the wharf; and at the few boats on pile moorings beyond. Then I shifted my gaze to where the basin ended at the bend in the river. She had sailed: my mother; on her father’s yacht there. The sunshine beams warm, and thankfully it enters. The clouds have moved on. Lines in high altitudes take hold underneath and along the surface waters, a familiar sensation taking me deeper. In memories not possible to be my own I remember a particular yacht’s mast that had once been visible there. The boat had been behind the bank of the river, which was low enough to have seen the mast above it from where I was sitting. But that was long ago and for a thing of mist I shake my head and let it go. Something else was insistently tugging at my mind. The arresting thing. The ‘used’ sketchbook. It lay unopened on my lap.

   It was the girl’s name. An unusual surname; double-barrelled. English, most likely. Feels familiar; I wonder. In a flash, it is sharp-lit as a star in black. It was the same. Mike had given me the hut website’s private email address; and I had written to a Mrs Jane Stratton-Wyld; several times now. How many visitors to New Zealand would have such a surname? That she had been a visitor, I knew; despite any possible relationship; a Kiwi wouldn’t write like that; wouldn’t think of writing their country’s name and in such glowing terms. I reopen the brown book on my lap.

   Mike had not only given me the woman’s email contact, but had gone ahead and insisted on being my referee and had written a letter of recommendation. It seemed that this was needed in the selection process as the hut was in high demand and by artists and writers from all over the world. I stared at the girl’s inscription and at her beautiful handwriting and her haunting poem. Leads, like picked out threads from woven cloth, eclectic strands of some hidden mystery draped before me were being drawn out, one by one, by my expectant mind. I was hooked. Mike would laugh if he could see me now. The wolf; the Springer spaniel: Springfield on the prowl. And why not; there was something here. How could this girl’s sketchbook---obviously treasured, for it was so precious to her that she hadn’t begun it yet---have been in a Kerikeri, hospice op-shop? The date of her rewritten poem was the day she left this new country that she had fallen in love with; yet the book had not gone with her. She had forgotten it? Left it behind; something so precious to her? Somehow, she must have lost it at the airport; else, why had it not gone with her on the plane? But Kerikeri...? This town is over two hundred and forty kilometres north of Auckland: how and why did it get to come, here? Why was it in a shop? The trail seemed to end there; and how old it was; over thirty-eight years ago. She would be fifty-six, by now . . . wherever she was. . . . I trembled. I saw in the nearness of now, a fleeting vision of her, so young . . . young. My hand was on the cover of her book; the sketchbook that she had made herself; my fingers feeling the lightly gouged lines she had carved in her engraved design on the leather cover of her book: two birds . . . both heading for what wasn’t known: that distant ‘star,’ dark, black: misunderstood; yet, beyond price.  

   I looked up, and to my left. I found I was mindlessly gazing at the tumbling white water pouring from the river into the basin. A family of mallard ducks swam past and I watched the arrow-like wake of their passage towards the farther bank. Child noise and the low buzz of happy adults eating and drinking in the restaurant behind me; I let my mind rest in the numbing comfort of such sound.

   It was obvious, that her book had not been found by the type of person who would turn it in: hand it in, to the ‘Lost Property’ desk at the airport. My mind could not let go its current obsession; in some strange way I had caught a glimpse . . . a link. I realized that if it had been handed in, then the girl would somehow have had it posted back to her. Passenger lists, and so on. Someone, not quite honest enough to turn it in, but honest enough, not to rip out the first page had taken it home with them; and that, being so, had been honest enough to not write in it: someone else’s, precious new sketchbook: tapu, sacred, forbidden: the young owner’s presence, so powerfully present in her wonderful writing. Perhaps, guilt, or some unknown, deeply buried respect had prevented the finder from using it for themselves? And over time, as happens, old books get swallowed up with dusty piles of others and end up in an op-shop?

   I could not know for how long it had been there; but certainly not, for the whole thirty-eight years that it was since she had lost her book. She would never forget it. I knew that much. ’I will come back! I will return!’ she had emphatically and joyfully written; ‘Haven’t written in this sketchbook, till now -- but I will. I will!’ Time and encroaching old age would never eradicate, or erase her loss. I felt it. Felt it as a certain thing. An unquestionable fact. And more than that, I knew that I was now inextricably involved in the rectifying of her loss. That poem; on the other side of the page; no unmeaningful coincidence had brought her poem to me; it was as alike to my own efforts as a hand in a glove. I knew that I was now weaving a story down a line of imagination; ignited by something never very far from my endlessly combustible, analyzing mind. I could have scented the intriguing trail and tracked it further and further; and with accuracy; they are never far, those things which set my mind on fire, but here I stopped . . . blocked, deaf, for some reason . . . only the enigmatic essence of her book, as a gentle candle’s flame, shining behind the veil between drew me on . . . there was more that I had not yet perceived. 

 

Ono (6) Te Rerenga Wairua (Cape Reinga) Far North; 2. October, 2018

It had been very early, before dawn, that morning in Kerikeri, two weeks ago when I suddenly woke up knowing why that empty sketchbook had been insistently tapping at my mind. Then sleep had overtaken me once more and in the morning I was busy with many other things and I forgot. I tried hard to remember what it was that had so riveted me, just before I fell asleep the second time. But I am fully occupied with new work; and such ponderings will have to wait. I am grateful for the work it is so needed to help with next year’s expenses. Being free for the weekend I feel to resume my travels north and unto its uttermost part; in every journey is an inexplicable call inviting you to travel farther.

   It is low water. The tide near its full ebb. I drive for many miles north along the hard packed sand of Ninety Mile Beach. Sand dunes, loosely tied down with Marram grass and tall fragrant pine forests are to my right; and a rough Tasman Sea on the left. The waves are huge. The salt spray, a visible veil of mist rolling in above the breakers. I have a powerful four-wheel drive. I try not to think of rust. Or, about getting stuck.

   Taking my time, I then explored the other beautiful beaches on the Aupouri Peninsula, in the very north was Twilight Beach; and between the two capes, Te Werahi Beach; then round the point, the walk to Sandy Bay and Spirit’s Bay. Entirely rapt with growing, inner freedom, and fresh, new, emptied spaces within, fit for further discovery, I walk for miles, drinking in the beauty of the exposed ocean beaches set against the undulating, scrub-covered hills. This is unique and exciting place. The farther north I come, the more I sense the lifting beauty here. A wild, buoyant openness which leads to the realms I love, where I belong; I can almost taste it.

   The weather begins to deteriorate. The wind picks up and darkening clouds threaten rain. As far north as I can go, I stand before the Cape Reinga lighthouse, squinting into the salt wind. My eyes sting and water from its pressure. A blurred shape forms before my eyes. A door. A door in the night. Suddenly, it was dark. Yet, this was the day. A barren, dry path was before the door; leading to it. A lush, green, watered path was through it, and beyond it leading towards green islands of gold in the sea. A glimpse, no more. Suddenly, I am bracing myself against the wind. I find I am standing on the edge of the cliff; the white lighthouse behind me. After a moment, I turned around and went back to the impressive landmark that, momentarily, had been superimposed by a picture of a door, which I had walked through. A door in a wilderness, a way into another sea and a nearer land. I went around the lighthouse to where I stood, now, on the other side of it, where I had looked through it when it was a door. But I saw only the white lighthouse in front of me now; and only the rough waves of a grey and turbulent sea.

   Aware of a rushing sound in my ears, faint, but familiar, I look up; there is a streak of white. A rare shaft of sunlight pierces the dark cloud mass above shining on outspread wings. A white bird flies overhead. In a striking, purposeful circuit above my head, she swoops low, then, lifts on a strong updraft from the cliff below the lighthouse. An, other light, in other places grips beneath and goes skimming across the unconscious waters; again that sensation peculiarly mine taking me further; even a physical jolt the elucidating shift in my being: I know there is an asking: touched by something, or someone, requiring something. The white bird circles low. I even duck my head. Unnecessary, of course, her perception of height and distance is perfect. I am struck by the knowledge that this bird is not just a wild sea bird. And how do I know it is ‘she?’ And that she has picked me out? I am to pay attention, listen. I know better than to belittle such thinking. These electric moments of unequivocal certainty have never proven false: intuition by the light that shines in darkness: knowledge by the life which comes out of death; seen, within knowing nothing.

   Te Rerenga Wairua: Cape Reinga: Latitude 34.25 degrees South; Longitude 172.40 degrees East: the opening point of the bright light where it enters the world. The vision of life in this place painted in wind and rock and waves, perceived through the other beauty of its elevation, set high above the meeting of two bodies of water: the Tasman Sea and the South Pacific Ocean. The light that shines where there is no light; predicted to beam from this very point. And not from the natural lighthouse on this spur of land jutting into the sea, but from one unseen jutting into the unknown, shining a greater light by far, and from a point which knows no geographical fixture but that of a broken being. A being dead to its own position that it might live to one upon every point of the compass, whose central core was love; and the spinning of its magnetic needle, loosed, in the end, of every pull until it was pointing ‘north,’ home, the maintaining of its direction potentially the greatest challenge and the greatest joy of every heart’s own journey.

   You may live within a persistent sphere of sound, imperceptible to the natural senses, an unfathomable realm, which was a concession of light to be heard and as a perfection of communication when all the elements of life were working together as one, for the one true aim of life: love. But, like all perfection it would have to be viewed alongside imperfection, or it has no meaning; like as, light that shone not in darkness wasn’t seen. Inevitably, you were kept within its engaging circuit, only through your awe and amazement that, continually faulty, as you were, you could perceive it.

   The white bird was gone. Like in the flash of a lighthouse, the purpose of the beam is to last, only for a moment, up to that first instant when you have taken note of the waypoint and set your course, accordingly, then it is no more. You know, of course, its comfort: you have always its intermittent flash, while it is dark: while you do not know where you are, apart from it. I would see the white bird again; and until I no longer had need of the call and the asking.

   Outwardly, it has become a foul day; stormy, raining, and no other visitors here, at the moment; except, one intrepid soul, like me, walking with his head bent against the wind, which threatens to throw you off the cliff; a German tourist by the looks of him. He hurries by and is gone. Whiringa-a-nuku, October, is noted here for its strong equinoxal winds; I walk along the narrow ridge back to my SUV with some care. I take only the briefest glance at the gulls, above, and all around these cliffs, wheeling and screaming their heart-rending, haunting cries. I cannot get the thought of her out of my mind. This girl, this now middle aged woman, but I cannot believe she is old, she must be connected to Jane, somehow; and beyond the surname issue, beyond that, some other connection regardless of the possibility of her being related, or not; for that this young girl wishes me to hear and do something, and something connected with her sketchbook, I feel, and know; and again with that wonderful certainty which touches when you do not claim that you know.

 

Whitu (7) Te Nukuwai; Whangaroa Harbour, Northland; 12. November; 2018

The persistent, upward whistle of a small bird, singing the same note five times on an ascending scale: the shining cuckoo. Then the chatter of sparrows and a strengthening breeze. It is all enough, to lift up the edge for a moment, and to see underneath; a coincidence which takes me on the next stretch of my journey. A window was open in my Toyota Land Cruiser, and a sheet of newsprint on the front seat lifts in the wind, revealing for an instant a hurriedly scribbled note beneath; put away to be conveniently lost and forgotten. Five words there stand out among the many. It was not really a note, but the beginnings of a new piece of writing, a poem, which, unsure of, I had rejected. I pull it out, work on it until I feel it is right and complete, then stuff it away in a folder with other such mindlessly scribbled papers. It would be another of my poems; incomprehensible, generally, which I usually hide, away: being as they are from out of the inmost part of me rather than from my mind. Not all the leaves that open are left undisturbed. The words which had stood out to me were: ‘first the womb that carries . . .’ and I suddenly knew, what I must do, where I must go.

   It is late afternoon and warm as a midsummer’s day; the wind still blowing from the north. The sun is very bright. It is low behind me; and slightly to my right. As I walk along the winding road to the boat ramp and the fishing wharf, I notice how amazingly long and dark my shadow is, projecting in a pleasing diagonal, towards the left across the road in front of me. While walking I had been vaguely pondering how I could explain my position; and how that there is no thoroughfare through the invisible wall created by our limited, natural thinking, where that blinds and blocks us to all that can be seen and heard and enjoyed from all around us and all the time. I am taken up with this thinking; so, it is a few moments before what I am looking at registers that I actually notice it. . . .

   Ahead of me, a few metres further along, is a long, dark, straight line, diagonally parallel to my shadow and right across the whole width of the road. It is the shadow of the lower part of an electricity power pole behind me. As I walk, the gap between the two long shadows closes quickly. Another few steps and I am over the line. I stop. I take it in; instantly. I walk some steps backwards; and my shadow once more crosses the line made by the pole. Backward and forwards. I take as many steps as are needed to be clearly on one side, or on the other side of the line. I note how quickly I could be on either side; and so effortlessly. I do this several times; and laugh. Fortunately, there are no people around to see me. No traffic, either: cars, trucks; or otherwise. Then I stepped, so that my shadow was exactly on the line. The shadow line was right in the middle of me. So it disappeared. There was no longer any wall where I was. I could still see it extending above my head and below my feet; because the power pole was longer than I was, and stretched, diagonally, the entire distance across the two lane road; and I didn’t. I stretched out my arms at right angles to my body. I saw the bridge. I saw where it was. The bridge across from one side to the other. I had my explanation. I was gloriously answered; thanks to the lowering sun.

   All my answers came from where I was; from the immediate, natural world all around me; which would give to anyone, who would listen the inside answers to their every question. But that they seemed foolish in our eyes was because they issued from another dimension, altogether other than the ordinary.

   I had come to Te Nukuwai on the shores of the Whangaroa harbour, the place that here, I call home; although this is only so, because it is where my mother lives. She is aware of me, sometimes; once it was with tears; now it is with joy. She knows her child lives wherever he is and has the usual purpose of all her children, whether they know it or not: to live life as they find it. It was all so simple, she said, that we almost always miss it, but we are ever, exactly perfectly placed. It was from the love within her born of her sufferings that she knew this. And I love her, too, from my own. Or, from what would have been mine. . . . Nothing matters but love. Love is the song which flows through every barrier; that rises and falls, through the heights and depths, to find you where you are: where it has taken you; and yet will. The pauses in the song, the painful losses you encounter, are perfect, though they may frighten you; but they are meant to be there, and are perfectly placed, else the melody would be incomprehensible. Yet, even so, love’s song needs not to be understood for it to enfold you in its glory far above any baffling complexity. The end of the song is the quiet which picks you up to take you through to the other side.

   Later, that same day, I suddenly thought of the manila folder of my handwritten poems. I found it under the front passenger seat of the Land Cruiser. I held it unopened in my hands and thought-read the poem of the winged horse. I stopped there; and wondered why. In a flash, the linking knowing: Pegasus Lake; and the name of a couple who lived there came to me, instantly. I knew I would need to stop and visit them on my way south to the hut . . . though, as yet, I had no idea why.

 

Waru (8) Pegasus Lake; Christchurch; South Island; 4. December, 2018

Not all winged-horses looked lovely. Perhaps, some would agree with me that Pegasus Bay looked better as it was, before it was interfered with and a town built here. You get a glimpse of what it once was like from the land around it; an area of beautiful South Island wetlands, where native and endemic wading birds of many species roam. Wild and shy, bitterns and grebes, spoonbills and black swans; coots, snipe, rails and crakes, and ducks of every kind; but at least they couldn’t do anything to spoil the exposed eastern shore: an amazingly, wild and rugged beach stretching for miles up and down the Canterbury coast. It is strewn with quantities of grey driftwood of fantastic shapes and sizes, which must inspire creativity; for there are elaborate constructions, sculptures, and bivouac attempts scattered all along it. I love it. I love the way it provides for anyone in the town, the wings it promises: an hour or two of out of the box thinking time; needed space, free from what is, to me, the sterile environment of modern suburban architecture. For Pegasus is an ‘instant’ manmade town as perfect as Lego-land; and, as such, it is beautiful; and practical; and desirable for modern people.    

   Robert and Ann Morehouse have made me so welcome here. They are acquaintances, friends really, from six years ago, during my time at Otago; and met, through my old professor there, a great friend of theirs. The Morehouses’ are retired now and enjoying it. I warm to their love; their loving inner beings and shining eyes; they have touched many students’ lives. Their house is magnificent a lot of black glass, overlooking the artificial lake; (which is not far from the artificial wharf, with its artificial bollards; speaking of ships that could never know a single moment here, the lake, too tiny. But it is all beautiful.) They have a large spare room and are happy for me to leave my belongings here. Such as they are; which is not much; everything I own has been in my Land Cruiser for the past seven months; ever since I quit my job with the paper in Dunedin, in May. Even so, my luggage needs to be kept to the barest minimum: what I can carry on my back. For when I arrive I shall still have a three hour tramp, from the farm station’s supply depot, up to the hut; and what I can carry is all I shall have for twelve months.

   One of my walks took me across an attractive stone bridge at the end of the lake. It was unusual. You could become a little, disorientated here, and lose your bearings; because on one side of this bridge is a dead lake, not much could live in its dark water, while immediately on the other side is a narrow stream bordered by the tall, living grass of a wrecked but beautiful wetland. One side so different to the other. I saw my own situation. On one side a world I try to help but feel I don’t belong to; and on the other a world I cannot help but did; and all in leaving what others entered and entering what others left. It was the enigma of my back-to-front life, which no one knew or saw that must be so until my journey’s end, but it was the story which I would unravel in my sketchbook; and line by line.   

   The day that I left Pegasus, Robert called me into his study, or den, for something or other. I forget now, what; because something else eclipsed all other details. As soon as I entered, and it was down a couple of steps from their beautiful lounge room, I found myself staring at a small painting on the wall; a very simple picture. It was one amongst a group of others, all quite different from it; but this one stood out, rivetingly noticeable; familiar. All at once, the important thing that I thought I had lost, from a dream, one night back in Kerikeri, in September, becomes crystal clear. The knowledge I had woken up with, and then forgotten in falling asleep, the second time, I now know what it had been. Or, I am a little nearer to it. I knew it had something to do with the design on the cover of the blank sketchbook: its deeper meaning. I am stunned. Although it is not exactly the same picture, it must be one of series, created from a single idea; because it is so, alike; unmistakably the work of the same artist.

   Oblivious of Robert, who was searching in his desk, for something or other, I bent nearer to the picture to see if there was a signature. In the lower right hand corner there was something tiny; but before I could focus clearly, Robert spoke, and he led me out of the room. I don’t remember anything after that; except that I was longing, like anything that it was her initials. They couldn’t be; of course. The sketchbook was a well constructed handmade book; and she must have bought it, because of what she writes about it being a birthday gift to herself; something she had bought for herself, for she had written in it: ‘My 18th birthday gift to myself! (If that is allowed!!)’

   Clouds form where I know for myself. Blind and deaf, I am where I cling to my own thoughts; fill my mind, myself, and I miss out: no space. I determined that she could not have made it, or carved her own design; and that she was not, the picture’s artist; nor, the sketchbook’s craftsman. I saw the river, the basin, and the restaurant behind me with the buzz of comforting noise. I felt the engraved lines with my fingers . . . her lines. But it was not possible; such a coincidence couldn’t be.

   I said nothing. I kept it to myself until dinner. Till in a pause during the conversation over the lovely meal, I asked them, casually, about the picture. I was surprised at their response; enthusiastically they recounted a story, which obviously enthralled them. Many, many years ago, when they were courting in Dunedin, during their teaching days at the university, they had visited a popular old book shop in the city; that has since, closed down. But this bookshop, Ann said, had had a workshop out the back, where people could learn the art of book binding and make their own handmade books. Well, in there, she said, they noticed a series of small pictures on the wall that were for sale. They were fascinated by them and promptly bought one. But that, later, Robert said, they both wished that they had purchased the whole series of six paintings; but they had only bought this one, sadly. They grinned, both of them, and I could imagine the rest of the story: ‘the slender purse of poor, underpaid teachers.’ We laughed and joked; and I gathered that much of their work had been voluntary. Then in the next pause, before the conversation veered in another direction I asked them, again, quite casually, who the artist was; never imagining the answer they gave me; for I was away down, along a lower line, but Ann piped up and said it was painted by a girl, called, Sharon Stratton-Wyld. They had asked the bookshop owner that question, too, she said; because they had been able to see, only small, illegible initials for signatures, along with the date, 1979; and he had told them the artist’s name. The man had said, also, that she was an English student; and a very gifted young lady. They had never forgotten the artist’s name; said Ann, very quietly.

   Of course, I should have known it. It was all her own work. It was she who had engraved it, her main idea: the picture that I had a copy of on the cover of her sketchbook. Suddenly, I saw how it was. She had made it herself; her eighteenth birthday gift to herself, because it was too precious to her, to sell. I blinked in déjà vu. A glimpse of a girl in white and the wings of a rising bird, soaring in a beam of light and a rushing in my ears like the meeting of two seas, poles apart. Oh, how I wanted that painting on the study wall. But it was clearly a joy to Robert and Ann; who now looked so far away that I didn’t like to trouble them with my longing. I withdrew and kept my own joy to myself. I didn’t want to pressure them, subconsciously, into feeling that they needed to give it to me; for they were such kind people; so incredibly generous. No. I must let it go. I knew, to let go of my wants, that they might be fulfilled in achieving a truer end, one that I could not now, see; or hear.

   But I was amazed, by this turn of events. It was taking me far beyond the actual coincidence of the poem that had led to Pegasus, and a very pleasant visit with these dear people and their strange gift for my journey and somewhere to leave my belongings, it was holding for me a missing link in the story of the blank sketchbook and a talented English girl. One who must have lived in Dunedin for two years; 1979; and, 1980, which was the date written in the book. I already knew that Sharon must have been a visitor to New Zealand; so the ‘English student,’ as she was described by the bookshop owner was because she was English; not because she was a student of it; I knew that, too.

   Only, now, in hindsight, do I marvel that I did not mention to them that I had her sketchbook.

 

Iwa (9) Rakaia Gorge; Windwhistle Road; Scenic Route 72; 30. December; 2018

Pegasus behind me, the first stage of my journey to the dream place begins; and with a whistle-stop stay, freedom camping overnight on the edge of the Rakaia River. I am as close as I can get without actually being in the river; which in this dry weather and at this time of the year is safe. With a bottle of gathered river water for drink, and Ann’s packed lunch, saved and eaten for dinner, I felt replete and left my vehicle for a tramp along the edge of the river gorge. The time was perfect for a hike with my camera; being the artist’s time of day when the golden light of a lowering sun lights the world through its yellow lens but my work cameras were not with me and I walk unimpeded.

   It is not a particularly dramatic gorge, compared with some rock-walled clefts I have walked through, but it has a beauty uniquely its own for those who partake of it uniquely, and I saw in the river’s compression, to a narrowness it hadn’t known before, a new dimension ahead of me, a constriction of place which would pressure and mould me into ever renewing forms of perception and being.

   Along with a changing of the guard the old day was slowly ending; and for its needed time of darkness before the next could arrive. With a developing colourful sunset, through the sun’s red lens, its end would soon be magnificent and a fitting beginning to the dark which brought the dawn. Gold and topaz; becoming rose-garnet and flaming ruby and carnelian. All I could do was watch and hope that I could retain something of the squandered beauty lavished on a largely unseeing world blind to the ending.

   The historic Rakaia Gorge Bridge, which had been high above me, is behind me now; and the swiftly flowing, green-jade river passing to my left, as its living waters leave the gorge bound for the sea and liberty.

   I come to a recent campfire, situated on a flat, stony, island between two threads of the river. I watch a hawk circle high in its evening hunt for prey. I reach this thoughtful backwater of the river and the radiance in it is life. For at the point of the ending the burning sunset peaks and the twin threads turn to blood, freely given a life-giving beauty by the dying sun and in its reflection a world turned the right way round. The ring of fire blackened stones is for an instant, relit. The circle of the hawk, found perfect in its unseen completeness is in the instant ready for its plunge with the hawk. The circled world is burnished in three parts in so fleeting a glory revealed through its fall . . . a hawk . . . a fire . . . a river. I see its light for a moment heightened. A harmony in the things I see.

   My rend, my break, complete, the door opens and ‘the else’ of the hawk: in the speed of its downward flight for life. Second sight of the rushing thing and I see how it could come upon you, suddenly, and when you least expected it. Things happening, too fast. Levels concertinaing, up or down, too quickly. But if the hawk could lift and drop, rise and fall, with a swiftness that was breathtaking and with this astonishing speed, fall upon its prey sighted from so great a distance above, then so could the ins and outs of life burst upon the scene and capture you in the instant. Life’s speed, I marvelled at it; and at its content, too. For the things that were worth writing home about heaped one upon another with little space in between for ordinariness, to calm, centre, and secure your senses along the simpler lines of life’s commonplace events, life in the first degree, at its normal speed and with its usual everyday strings of thought that normal people are normally used to. But I saw that in an uninterrupted flow of the else of life, when your apprehension of its relating to you was a long established reality, (and that, not because you were anything or had anything very different, but that your rend and its subsequent open door was never closed,) even then it did not always behave in the ways you were used to, which could be quite unsettling. Because it was always taking you further, to expose you to greater things, things beyond what you felt you could cope with and so they didn’t always make you feel too comfortable; to put it mildly.

   And the else of the ring of fire. A crown of love, the encircling thoughts that sting; whose appearance is with joy that the diamond-hardest points which wounded pride pierced the brow, the temples of the mind, the nacreous temple, the shell of the oyster within that it secrete its lustrous life to coat the painful thing with the beauty of acceptance: that it might soon go against the flow and undress it again, to find what made it hurt, the necessary thing inside, and expose it to heal it to make of it a gem. And with a shining positiveness, rarely seen or heard of, except by those near ones of the past, now shut away in ancient books, who missed one vital thing in the unravelling of the sting. These knew no common meeting place or living correspondence with the telling-things, all about them, within the ordinariness of the world, all around them, by life in the second degree; which was the very place of the sighting of what was needing to be seen. And so, I mused as I looked down at the campfire. I knew now that pride was hindering my understanding of why I was about to do such a crazy thing as to live alone in a tiny hut on a mountain for a whole year. I knew in the very moment of seeing the fire relit by the sun that I had made for myself my own crown of thorns.     

   And the else of the river. Its forgotten threads that were turned to blood? The river backwater is now, silver. In the grey and purple twilight, the sum of all the rays of light left after sunset I watch the shining river as it journeys downstream. It is split in many parts. Thin threads, hardly more than trickles of running water weave through grey stony beds. Wider ribbons in between making islands, and on the far side, below the steep wooded riverbank beyond, was the braided river at its deepest. From its source, a watershed in the Southern Alps it runs to the sea, the South Pacific Ocean and passing through the changing seasons, which has a dramatic effect upon its arriving there in vastly varying quantities. The melting snows of spring, turning the whole width of the river’s bed to a charging body of water; then losing way, through summer shrinking back to its dissected appearance of many intersecting wavy lines of life. Life found love in its downward run in choosing the lowest place. The lower the place, the greater the quantity of the water of seeing; which was why it chose it. The greater the depth, the stronger the magnification of sight through it. For the substance of it was the substance of love in its see-through dimension where you couldn’t live; for you couldn’t breath under water; so it was where you were when you died; and this was not any kind of physical death; no, you were very much alive.

   The ‘here’ where I was walking along the Rakaia River was about half way along its course to the sea. The ‘there’ where I now wasn’t, (and for the sake of ‘here’) was at its end, where it merged with the infinite body and all the water of the See; every point beyond itself where it saw. And the endless question, but put back-to-front: What is better about ‘here’ that is missing in ‘there?’ This seemingly inverse position was the whole point of my passion and my purpose to elucidate and within the mystery of a life that couldn’t be but was. From now on I would be journeying further along my river of dreams, my conduit of other life into the waters of See; in which there was no limit but that which the mind made.

   Glass. . . . But not a piece of pebble glass: by any attrition of the gravel around it. It was thick and sharp, clear and dark green, and curved. A remnant of the shell and shadow of crushed first life; left for the river to make a way with, for those foolish enough to see it. It shone beneath the water catching the last rays of the fading light. I looked up; I was caught, too. Cut, broken, and all the wine flowing out. Suddenly, all the love I had ever known and longed for was rushing through me, pouring in and enveloping me. I was caught for a single moment in the clasp of an indescribable love, warming and burning, knowing no barrier. The ring of stones blackened had its promise fulfilled. The hawk had his prey. The river found again her lost threads as she gathered them further on.

 

   I fell.

    It was dark as I walked back through the car park towards the freedom camping area where I’d left my truck . . . not far from the river’s edge.

   ‘Hey! You okay?’

   I got up quickly; and nodded; ‘Yeah; I’m fine. Thanks.’

   I looked down at my hands. There were little dents and tiny bits of black gravel stuck on the heels of my palms; and pinpoints of blood. I’d tripped over a stray rock I’d not seen and had stretched out my arms to save myself. I hoped I wasn’t going to make a habit of this . . . falling. I had a sudden flashback of bare, tree roots and Mike.

   I couldn’t see the man who’d spoken to me. His flashlight blinded me. He quickly lowered it and smiled; and, sensing my embarrassment, said no more; he just gave me a friendly nod and turned away.  

   I lay awake for hours in the back of my truck, staring up at the roof, processing all I’d seen and heard, earlier. I could hear the river’s gentle chuckling and the distant murmur of voices from a neighbouring campervan. A morepork called. Far away it was answered by another. I listened to the singing of crickets and all the comforting, tiny night sounds.

   I slept.  

 

Tekau (10) The Second Night;  Lake Ohau;  Waitaki District; 31. December, 2018   

 I suppose it always feels like the big adventure begins at your next stopping place along the way, and not at this one; but a new beginning is always a recurring one, a seamless happening being repeated over and over: at each new level of light there is a beginning again. I live beneath a dusted sky. It was the dust swept from the sky thrown into the vast expanse of the mind underneath that took you into places no one has ever been.

   Yesterday’s gift at the Rakaia River Gorge was yet another confirmation of a new start; a losing of old paradigms making way for new; and now the final part of my journey hut-wards, begun at last.

   I woke to a low, thin mist covering the mountains; but it was lifting. As I gaze across Lake Ohau, for the last time, the mountain before me on the other side appears: the steep, round, southern slope of Ben Ohau, which goes straight down into the lake. The map shows a road at its base, traversing the whole length of the lake, but you couldn’t see it. Just before I drive on a bit further, the mist had gone and I could see all the scenic mountains of the Ben Ohau Range.

   I turned down the little road to Lake Middleton, a small lake close to the south western shore of the much larger, Lake Ohau and parked among the tall trees; which completely surround this picturesque lake. The pines make a lovely shade to camp in; and to view the lake through. There is a summer campground here; but this area is mainly famous for its winter sports. Its ski fields and alpine village; which are just a few kilometres away, further north.

   I know I am dawdling; biding time till I feel more confident. But I cannot stay here much longer, I have promised Jane and Alec that I would be there today; so I must press on soon.

   This is usually the kind of time and situation, I have a coffee, to revive me, and to provide a good excuse for doing nothing about something I know I ought to do; until I feel better about it, and do it; or, so I think. But all the necessary equipment to make a hot drink I no longer have.

   I assess my situation. I feel I am whittled down to zero. All I now have in the world is what can fit in my pack; and even that is not bulging. My vehicle feels so empty; but at least that has meant, I could sleep in it these last two nights. My drone gear and cameras, etc., along with my camping equipment, I’d left at the Morehouses; along with my guitar case; too heavy to lug around tied onto my backpack. But I couldn’t leave my guitar behind. Ann had kindly sewed an old, plastic-coated tablecloth into a soft case for it.

   I had watched her a while. Her large, sunny, sewing room is filled with the all makings of gorgeous, multi-coloured patchwork quilts; a couple of them were hanging on the wall. She saw me staring, amazed at the beauty of them, and said, ‘I’ll make you one for your wedding day, Raef.’ I laughed and let her know that I wasn’t doing too well in that direction. Seren, my Welsh star, left me last April and went back to Wales; she said I was too self-sufficient; but at least she writes to me occasionally, so that’s something. But, that’s not quite true that she left me; I fear I had pushed her away and she’d had no choice but to leave; there were no options left acceptable to either of us, though I loved her, and she, me. Ann, usually so quick on the uptake with a witty reply, said nothing, for a few moments. Then she said, ‘No one is really self-sufficient. If they feel they are it is because they’ve a rock beneath they are standing on; something buoying them up and sustaining them. There is always an underlying reason for a sense of self-sufficiency. The individual might not know it;’ she said; ‘but I think you do, Raef. You began life with a full tank; while most of us begin with it empty.’ She had been standing in the warm morning sunshine, as she spoke, a beam of light shining on her short, grey-white hair, and trim willowy figure. Ann was a woman on a mission; nothing was too much for her. She had smiled that special smile of hers which made me feel good: I was understood. Then I had felt concerned that she had understood, too much; something about me which I must conceal continually.

   I turn over the gift Robert had given me on my last day with them. It must have been what he was searching in his desk for; because he had given it to me soon, after. It is a little, brass telescope; an antique, nautical spyglass that concertinas down from its three sections to pocket size. It had belonged to Robert’s grandfather and he had insisted that I have it. I couldn’t refuse him, though it is far too precious an heirloom to leave his family; but Ann had insisted, also. When he handed it to me, with Ann, smiling, he had spoken such a strange thing. But now as I stow the telescope away in its case and stuff it into my pack, I feel like a child. In my mind’s eye, I see an old fashioned illustration of a little boy: a table, a chair, a broom, and a bed sheet, rearranged as a pirate ship; the young captain striding the deck with his spyglass to his eye to see what he shall see. I feel embarrassed by the gift. My whole adventure now feels, quite ridiculous; and I wonder if I have made the right decision. . . . 

   The picture on the wall in Robert’s den . . . the emerging birds, one behind the other, on Sharon’s sketchbook . . . I feel a lifting, surge of energy, re-infuse confidence in me from out of nowhere as the fleeting memory passes through me like warm oil. A sense of being . . . led . . . it is there whenever I doubt my path. I reached over for my pack; unzipped the large front pocket; took out the sketchbook. This was the perfect opportunity to begin using it. The anointing faded. I couldn’t even open her book. Her poem . . . it wasn’t the right time . . . but the underneath sense of encouragement to continue upon my intended course of action, it deepened. Mystified, yet, strangely comforted, I carefully returned her sketchbook to my pack and moved on.

   I took a short walk through the pines to the edge of Lake Middleton; enjoying the shade and the dark, bronze, softness underfoot. My mind, now back in ground mode, becomes busy again elsewhere, planning my work for next year; with virtually, no equipment, with which to do it. But, I do have one, new, state of the art, collapsible, camping solar panel, for electric power; when the sun shines. And with an inverter, a charger, a long wire and a small laptop for writing, (and, soon, no cellphone,) that is it. ...It all fits into my pack along with the sketchbook, quite amazingly. I feel slightly confused, though. A brass telescope and a laptop? The two don’t seem compatible. I feel stretched in all directions and wonder who or what I am.

   There is no internet and no cellphone reception at Monk’s Hut; and while part of me joys over this, the other part wonders, how on earth will I ever cope, and for a whole year? I must be crazy. Those specks of light, those borrowed stars, swept as dust from the sky, they must have been flaming beneath, somewhere, to burn up the old and reveal the new, taking me into those fearfully, fearless places, where no sane person had ever been.

  

Tekau ma tahi (11) Stronach Peak High Country Sheep Station; 1 - 5. January, 2019

With various strategic delays, subconsciously putting up all sorts of excuses to put off the dreaded moment of arrival, it was 5:30 p.m. by the time I got to Stronach Peak Station. I was warmly greeted by a pack of barking dogs; all obviously wondering how I could have taken so long to get there they were so friendly. They were hard on the heels of Alec and Simon as they rode into the yard on a large, farm quad bike. In no more than a minute, they were beside me with broad smiles. Then there were handshakes all around. They quickly put me at my ease; they seemed pleased to see me and I felt guilty for my earlier cowardice.

   I soaked up the atmosphere. I found myself bathing in it. As I was warmly and humorously encouraged, to join them, while they went about the pleasant routine of their end of day chores. I was surprised. They even seemed to need my help; and I worked with them to kennel and feed the dogs. It dawned on me, later, and with gratitude, that this was their way of a very special kind of welcome. You were made immediately, one with them; not an outsider, or a stranger. Their warmth was remarkable and I was suddenly thrilled to be here.

   Both father and adult son were fittingly attired in fashionable, earthy, farm gear. They, so looked, an integral part of this delightful, station, homestead setting that I longed for my camera; and caught myself writing a feature article in my head. But soon, dirty gumboots, and the latest style ‘Swazi’ and ‘Stoney Creek’ jackets were pulled off; and thrown---with careless precision---onto huge nails in a wall inside the porch. They led me into the warm and spacious villa; showed me where to put my pack and then ushered me into the fabulous, farmhouse kitchen-living room to meet Jane; and Simon’s wife, Jess.

   Again, the welcome was wonderful and beyond all my expectations. I was hugged and cosseted and fussed over till I could not stop smiling. It seemed I had come at the perfect time, they said; as all the family were gathered for a special New Year’s Day dinner.

   The next few hours are now all, a honey-blur in my memory. New faces; both old and young: total strangers who acted like I was their oldest friend, their beloved son, or their warmly joked-with and thumped-on-the-back brother. It was incredible. Even the children laughed and kicked me in the shins. I have never experienced anything like it. But this family’s wonderful ease with me had its roots in thirty-four years of hospitality and enjoyable service to its retreat guests. I found, I was one of an, elite and privileged group of warmly respected guests of their prized, and world-renowned, Monk’s Hut. If this great beginning was a taste of what life at the hut would be like, then my pathetic anxieties and worries were perfectly groundless.

   These people did not think the desire for solitude, strange; which is strange, in itself; because there was certainly no solitary life ever lived at the homestead. People: extended family members, station workers, and overseas ‘woofers’ were everywhere. Companionship and togetherness was the central ethic here. I had yet to discover the family’s reason for Monk’s Hut. And their peculiar embrace of solitude to aid artists and writers from all over the world.

   I stayed with the family three days. It seemed this was the usual way of things for hut guests. It was their way of knowing enough about their guest for them to be satisfied with his or her suitability before the retreat started. So far, Alec said, only one of their guests had realized they had made a mistake and that they would like to leave straight away. It was also Jane’s way of assessing her guest’s needs, and likes and dislikes; for she would be supplying them with their weekly or fortnightly provisions. She explained how all this worked, and I was, amazed at her efficiency. She spent time with me, talking through what I had with me; and what I would find at the hut. We worked out what fresh foods I would need for the following week, which she would deliver to the supply post at Lithy Flat.

   It was all so thoughtfully planned; and, really, highly organized. Jane’s co-workers, Mack and Jemalynn, would tramp up to the hut with me carrying supplies and would set up the housekeeping side of things for me. They would teach me the tricks of the tramping track up to the hut; (their own interpretation of the Health and Safety Act’s regulations.) There were a few things for me to learn about staying safe on it and line of sight navigation as the track was pretty rugged and difficult in places. There was good reason why the hut had originally been called, Hidden Hut. Jane stressed that without this training I would very likely lose my way; but once learned it would soon become second nature. A good level of fitness, she said, was one of the prerequisites for guests; and she was pleased with my account of the tramps I had done recently.

   On my last morning with them Jane took me into her beautifully, messy farm office, to sign some papers etc. And amongst an accumulation of old account books, files, folders, and computers (ancient and modern) she found and cleared for me somewhere to sit. But in the process of her two minute tidy up, I had time for a quick gaze at the view through the window and around at the walls. It was then that I saw them. It was as though they were gazing at me. Sharon’s pictures. For a moment I was confused and had not a thought in my head. Then it all came rushing back at me and I remembered the painting in Robert’s den. I had no doubt that one of these was the same. Here were all of them; for, at my guess, this was the complete series. On the wall behind Jane’s bending figure were the six pictures described by Ann and Robert of which, they had one of the originals; these were all prints. Jane was saying something but I didn’t hear. Then I was sitting on the freshly, cleared chair and busy over paperwork with her.

   There was ‘elevenses’ after this in the big, kitchen-living room. Alec, being English it seemed they all used the British term for it; rather than the Kiwi, ‘smoko,’ or ‘morning tea.’ I could tell that these frequent ‘in between feasts’ were an important part of the social scene here; and kept everyone running on happy-and-connected mode.  

   After the ample and delicious mid-morning tea and scones---they even had the traditional brown teapot in the centre of a scrupulously white scrubbed kitchen table I went to my bedroom to pack. I would miss this place. Once more I went through my gear to rearrange it better. I was going to have to carry all this stuff for the three hour tramp up to the hut. I came to the sketchbook. Subconsciously, I think, I had left this till last. I held it in my hands, about to put it carefully back in, but I sat back on my bed, instead. I felt the imperceptible breathlessness of the division; the fractionary, infinitesimal moving of life from one place to another that wasn’t possible but was. The sound of a rushing, and the flash of white wings, and then . . . no ceiling . . . no bedroom . . . but a strong up-current of sharp, salt wind, and a bird; which in a language that had no words was signing in a circuit of beauty, an unmistakable message. Only for an instant was it necessary, then it was gone. There was the ceiling. I was in my room. I got up, clasped the sketchbook to my side and went in search of Jane.

 

Tekau ma rua (12) The Sketchbook; Stronach Peak Station; Day Five; 5. January

She held the large, leather-covered book in her hands; her face was white, ashen. ‘Where did you get this?’ her voice, normally so rich and warm was almost harsh; and I winced. She was unaware of me. Her whole focus was going in and through that book . . . in and through and looking beyond it into a wilderness of nothingness. I felt her pain. I heard her inside, silent voice; her inner cry, ‘Oh, God! Please, let her come back to us!’ Tears filled her eyes. I couldn’t look at her. I stared at the kitchen floor....the old terracotta tiles....how worn they were....but how lovely. Perhaps, thirty seconds; or, perhaps, a hundred years went by, till she spoke. ‘Raef?’ she said. I lifted my head. Jane looked up at me blankly for a moment. ‘You...!’ she exclaimed. Then she slowly collected herself and said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s just, such a shock. But, please, where did you find this? How come you’ve got it? I mean, how do, you happen to have it . . . and not . . . ?’

   ‘And not, Sharon,’ I answered her, silently, inside. Aloud, I hesitantly began to tell her of its being in the hospice op-shop in Kerikeri, but she quickly grabbed my arm and steered me out of the kitchen.

   ‘Come. Let’s go and sit in the sun lounge, and you can tell me all about it. It will be quiet in there at this time of day.’

   I was in an agony as to how much I should tell her; I was completely taken aback by her reaction to being handed the sketchbook. After I finished my short account of how and where I found it, I just told her how surprised I was, to see that one of the pictures on her office wall was exactly the same as the one on the cover of the book. I told her how much I loved it. Jane’s eyes threatened to fill with tears again; but then she relaxed and smiled at me; she began to explain her story.

   She said she remembered the sketchbook lying on the table here in the sun lounge all those thirty odd years ago. She looked at the nest of antique mahogany side tables that was between us. Jane explained that she had never felt to pick the book up, or look inside it; it was Sharon’s book, which Sharon had made herself, and loved. Jane looked down then at the sketchbook on her lap, absently stroking its finely engraved leather cover; her fingers tracing the simple lines of the design. ‘Sharon is Alec’s baby sister; over from England, from Worcester;’ she said, ‘My beloved, little sister-in-law; here in New Zealand for an exchange year at the University . . . she lived in Dunedin, that year, flatting . . . but spent all her holidays and long weekends with us. She loved it here. Did you see those prints on the wall in my office?’

   I smiled, by way of reply; and she continued.

   ‘Sharon did those pictures while she was there. And yes, you were right; those pictures did hold some deep meaning for her . . . and she wrote. . . . Sharon was heavily involved in creative writing and poetry; although, she was there to study Psychology, strangely enough. But, yes, the pictures. Something turned her attention to pecuniary matters and she became determined to pay her own way. Alec’s parents paid for everything, for her, of course; their only daughter; and they are well off. But Sharon could be fiercely independent at times and did not like to be a burden to anyone; so she let her paintings go and sold them. And for just about nothing, really. But she was very loving, too. She had prints made of them, in different sizes, her first series of paintings; designs of . . . of birds, of a sort. She had a set of them framed for us as a Christmas present, that year. They’ve been there ever since on the wall where you saw them. She never did make any money from her artwork, or writing; I think she almost hated money. . . .’

   Jane turned away from me for a moment and gazed out at, what was to me a spectacular view of the mountains on the border of the Waitaki District and northern Central Otago, but from long habit of looking, she saw without seeing and after a time of communal silence she turned back to me and continued her story. ‘Dear, passionate, beautiful, Sharon . . . an English rose, so full of loving ideas and crazy selfless dreams . . . my little sister-in-law fell sick. We never found out what happened but she had some sort of a breakdown and came home to us, after a brief stay in hospital in Dunedin and we nursed her back to health. She even became truly happy again. Sharon filled our lives with laughter and delight. She was caught up with impossible dreams for rebuilding the old tumbledown hut. . . . Monk’s Hut, where you’re off to, today . . . we nearly closed it down, after . . . I still wonder if it isn’t dangerous: solitude. We didn’t take any bookings last year . . .’ she was silent for a moment; another worry seemed to have taken over.

   Then Jane turned back to me from her unseeing gaze at the mountains and resumed Sharon’s story. ‘Monk’s Hut, it is all because of her . . . but, of course, you don’t know that yet . . .’ she paused and looked at me deeply; then, satisfied, she slowly smiled to herself and turned away again. ‘I remember her eighteenth birthday in May. A truly joyous affair. And her gifts! Thoroughly spoilt, of course! . . . . A release for her, perhaps, not to carry on with her degree. University didn’t suit her, at all, you know. You cannot pin down free spirits. Or, attach a Rainbird to worn paper. Tie stones to a child dreamer of dreams new and far reaching. A seer of impossible possibilities, she said she was, not a regurgitater of other people’s antiquated opinions. She was so young; brilliant; sped ahead too fast . . . left us all in the dust, really. . . . ’

   Jane appeared to become muddled and drifted off again, looking at the sunlight, and the exquisite view that she didn’t see through the wall of windows that ran the whole length of the room. The sun, near its zenith poured in to the long, narrow room; dust motes spun in chaotic beauty within beams that found their way inside and all along the simple but elegant room.

   ‘She was ‘thrilled,’ I don’t think, with her gifts of gold.’ Jane continued; ‘A signet ring, a watch, a bracelet; but so disappointed, as well; ‘Didn’t they know?’ she said. She was very grateful, though. . . . Strange. I wonder why I remember it all so vividly. What was it she said? Something about, that it wasn’t that type of gold, but a purer one, by far, she wanted. I’ve often wondered about that. But people were very kind, she said, and she’d make do. Sharon went home to England two months later . . . at least, that was . . . ‘

   There was a noise coming from the kitchen; and suddenly Jane seemed to shake herself, mentally and physically and got up, hurriedly, and said, ‘Goodness, you won’t want to hear all this! I’m sorry! I got carried away. Memories; quite powerful, really. . . .’ She turned and had just started to walk briskly away, clutching the sketchbook, when suddenly she spun round and came back to me. ‘Here, you take it!’ and Jane thrust it towards me. ‘Take it up to the hut with you, Raef. Use it. Fulfill its purpose. It’s what Sharon will want, I’m certain of that.’ she paused and stared at me; then continued. ‘You know it was for no unmeaningful reason that you found her book. All such coincidences have a deeper meaning and purpose. Of course they do; they’re synchronistic: all along, perfectly in line with the overall play of things.’ she then looked puzzled. ‘But I wonder how on earth her book got there, where you said, you found it? How could it possibly get there? She never visited the North Island, while she was here; let alone, Northland. Just those three hours between flights at Auckland airport. . . . There’ll be a story there, Raef.’ and she smiled at me, knowingly. She was she again: cheerful, efficient, not too self-controlled, and loving; and still good looking, too. Jane wore her old age, well; it suited her.   

   I smiled back and thanked her. But I just could not leave it, at that. I had to clarify things. And though I knew it would probably hurt her, and I felt sickened in my gut to do it, I asked the guileful but inevitable question, ‘I know it’s a very long time ago, Jane, but I am sure Sharon will remember her book. Can I not post it back to her? I’d much rather do, that.’

   ‘No. You can’t. Sharon is dead.’

   Jane watched me reel from her gunshot reply, looked at me keenly, then turned swiftly on her heels and hurried away to the kitchen. I had got what I deserved. I had known all along. But still, I stared bleakly after her, the sketchbook in my hands.

 

 Tekau ma toru (13) The Crossing of the Rubicon; Stronach Peak Station; 6. January

With a long tramp ahead of us Mack and Jemalynn and I were to leave immediately after lunch. This was another friendly gathering of the woofers who were staying here, and a sumptuous feast of barbequed mutton, presided over by Alec garbed in a butchers apron and wielding tongs and a happy banter. It was hard to pull ourselves away. But we soon collected our things and went out into the yard making our way to the sheds and to one of the station trucks to stow our gear; our three hefty packs. We were just about to drive out of the yard, for we had said and done, all our goodbyes and hugs, when Jane came rushing out of the house again waving something in the air at us. ‘It’s for you, Raef! Came last week; I almost forgot it. Here; take it!’ Jane smiled at me as she thrust the small package through the open window, then stood back and waved happily at us as we drove off.

   It was only a ten minute drive along the gravel road, with frequent stops to open and close the various gates we passed through and we arrived at Stronach Peak Station’s supply depot. This was a good sized, red tin shed on the flat not far from the braided riverbed of the Lithy River. Mack and Jem showed me around the inside of the shed and explained its purpose. I only vaguely took it all in, at this stage; but enough to marvel at the foresight and, yet again, the efficiency of the Stratton-Wylds, and their passion about their retreat hut and their extraordinary care of its guests.

   Mack left the station truck parked at the back of the shed; and here we loaded our heavy packs onto our backs about to head off past the shed to the start of the track. I was struggling to tie my guitar on, and feeling not a little embarrassed by the old fashioned, plastic coated tablecloth cover that Ann had sewed for it. It was patterned with large, orange and yellow sunflowers and I felt I looked ridiculous. I could feel Mack watching me. ‘Hey, bro! Give me that. The track’s quite tricky in places. You don’t want to keel over and smash it. Here, give it to me. . . . Hey, no worries, bro! I’ll look after it with---my life.’

   I put up a sufficient amount of resistance to his kind offer to sooth my pride; then felt a little thrill of joy as I suddenly understood what was happening. It was another example of how pride locks you up in first degree life. So, I capitulated, happily; pleased to see Mack attach it to his own pack with great care and real delight; who, to my laughing explanation, for the ridiculous flowers, said he hadn’t noticed them. It was his passion to be of service wherever he could; and it was better to give him the wherewithal for it, than to take it from him, for my pride’s sake. Life, it was all in letting go and losing, not in taking and gaining; and the way of learning it was in leaving what pride wanted and entering what life gave you. It was a trivial incident. But I realized that a build up of such things dealt with unmindfully, and you tied yourself, further up in wool; blinding yourself to the way out.

   As I trailed after Mack and Jem, gazing up at the astonishingly beautiful scene all around us, I could feel myself slipping away inside. These gold and grey mountains, this beauty, it was to be my home? I was awestruck. Then I zoned out completely and froze. There was a stream before us, before me . . . the track began . . . on the other side. I needed to cross it before I could begin the long tramp up to Monk’s Hut. This was my Rubicon. Because to cross it was the irrevocable step I was taking committing me to my determined course of action; which was surely, totally crazy. But right here was my final place of no turning back. The actual crossing of my own pathetic little Rubicon River.

   I was going beyond the usual. Beyond even the physical isolation that I had chosen for myself, for one year. I was taking a deliberate step into the unknown; going beyond all I knew. Undertaking, what to one mindset would be an action of total self-centredness: selfishness; and therefore, unreasonable; even unacceptable. Yet I was doing it. And I had the backing of these equally crazy people who ran this place. In their foresightful, cutting-edge thinking, their ahead-of-the-times position, which was the opposite of it---the opposite of that natural mindset---and which was life in the second degree: the self needing to be centred in order to be understood, so as to live happily with unclouded self; which took you even farther into that for which you were ever looking.

   I saw that you were right in thinking you should not be self-centred; and you were right in thinking you ought to be; although this was quite a different level of it, which seems dark at first. It was the cusp of a new dimension of living: second sight: second degree life. It was a strange fit at first and felt uncomfortable; misunderstood: because it went against the self you were centering on and that didn’t feel too good.

   But this was only in the beginning. Once you accepted the truth against yourself with joy, you knew then that life would develop further and farther, and take you with it, and to all the places that you had longed for. But it would be always against the grain; for each new step of light was dark by comparison with the one above it, (which was nearer the light,) appearing as its opposite, because it was only its shadow and, therefore, lifeless to you. It was incomprehensible or even offensive when compared with your present thinking: it was as yet, unlighted, dark, and different. Unknown territory. You had never been there before. There is always a time to break with every tradition and rule that was ever made. Although, people are as open to new things as a shut door is to what is beyond it.

   These thoughts ran through me, visually, in one fleeting moment of insight, and, seeming outside of time, an instant as long as eternity. I stared at the stream in front of me. But I saw only stairs. An ascending stairway. It was a little tributary, which ran down this steep, wooded gully to join the main river. Suddenly, I turned my head to the right. The haunting call of a bird. One which long ago had left the earth. And I saw that further down, the stream was divided into two. There was a tiny, willow-clad island in its centre. For a moment I saw the two threads turn red. The flowing wine. The blood of the sunset backwater of the Rakaia River and two strands of life alternately merging and diverging. The moment passed. But, blindly, I followed Mack and Jemalynn across the five smooth stones that spanned the stream, and up the seven that were inset as a stairway in the steep bank on the other side: twelve stepping stones to paradise on a mountainside; and a twelve month stretch ahead of me of solitude. I had crossed my Rubicon. And for a fraction of a second I panicked in a flash of foreknowledge. The practical realities of further and greater degrees of light and life within the year’s unswerving journey ahead of me; where I would be utterly alone and yet not alone: two birds were engraved upon the front cover of the sketchbook.

 

 

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continued/