1.
I am walking and a little way along, I find that I am crying. I want to say that I don’t know the reason why, but that’s untrue. My crying is a form of bittersweetness; bitter for the loss that is to come. Sweet for the beauty that surrounds me in this moment. Perhaps our humanity exists somewhere in between. I don’t try to stop the tears, even if in my solitude, they feel a bit embarrassing. I pause within an opening, eat the last bowlful of light as it spills between the trees, autumn rations becoming smaller by the day.
I think of a passage recently I read of Dorothy Wordsworth:
“As a little girl she burst into tears when she first saw the sea, revealing the sensibility for which she was celebrated by her family. An old woman, she wept at the sight of her garden flowers after an illness had kept her indoors.”
Oh Dorothy, I tell her, I’m sure you had it right. There are many of us walking even now that understand your tears. I continue on with Dorothy, hand in hand.
What would you do right now if you won the lotto? A game that my husband and I often play.
Each and every time, my answer stays the same.
I would buy the track, I reply resolutely, my mind drifting to my loves that are the trees. I imagine myself not the owner of, but the guardian for; with my name on a legal document I would know that this area that has become so dear to me can remain unchanged. I could, to quote a line I read recently from Ruth Allen, allow the land to belong back to itself.
I feel so often cross that as humans we have dominion, can make decisions over that which is impossible to bring back. I force my mind to other things, knowing that in this moment, to dwell on this understanding is not entirely helpful.
The track is, of course, not her formal name, but the name we’ve given to a winding path that travels up the slopes of the old volcano Mopanui. The old track, that connects Blueskin Bay to my northwest with the steep and gravelly road on which I live used to be the main thoroughfare before the proper road existed, the clip clopping of hooves and the old wheels of the cart, moving goods, people and supplies from A to B.
At this time of year, the southern autumn, the track and her inhabitants are busy with the process of unbecoming. Underfoot is a blend of softly cushioned leaves and snapping twigs, the air being just enough to keep it damp and not quite enough to bring the squelchy ground that I know is soon to come. The weather is untrustworthy, uninhibited. We are in the Season of Bar Coded light. Spring, summer, autumn and winter all run past within the space of twenty minutes, a meteorological Pecha Kucha provided by the gods.
As I walk, I am surrounded by both close and distant birdsong. The sound of Tuis, the Korimako || Bellbirds vibrate the air. I’m followed by a performing troop of tiny Piwakawaka or Fantails, chirping, interacting, swooping at the barely visible insects that my feet unconsciously flick into the air as they move along the way.
I stop, speak to them out loud. They are impossible to ignore, and I don’t want to. It feels rude to continue on.
Hi, how you doing? I whisper loudly. They stop momentarily, have the stillness of a toddler. Cock their head to the side and look me in the eye. They fly, land, fly again with an energy that delights me. My eyes try to catch them, the antipodean version of the golden snitch, me on my broomstick, flying through the air.
Both the greenery of my surroundings and the elevation of the birdsong work their way beyond the edges of my skin, massaging away the cold and wet, working their magic. I sigh, wish again I’d won the lotto, which feels foolish to say. I never even buy a ticket.
To my right, I see a newly broken path leading to a cleared patch of land. I walk halfway up but the heaviness of sadness makes me turn right back around. I am not ready, do not want to face the fact that my track, the area that surrounds it is being divided up.
It’s being subdivided, each with building sites, someone recently told me. I could feel a hotness burning in my cheeks. I stay silent, the only way to contain my waving, foaming feeling world.
“For the writer and opium eater Thomas De Quincey, who became friends with the Wordsworths after William married, Dorothy was all nervous energy, rather, one imagines, like a highly tuned radio picking up waves. “The pulses of light,” De Quincey said, “are not more quick or more inevitable in their flow and undulation, than were the answering and echoing movement of her sympathising attention.”
I feel all my nerve endings, instead of being on the inside, are now out. I wish that love was a good enough reason to keep something protected and unchanged.
“The pulses of light are not more quick or more inevitable in their flow and undulation, than were the answering and echoing movement of her sympathising attention.”
I reach for Dorothy’s hand once more again.
Walking on, I make my way to the base of a big Macrocarpa, a tree who has become a friend. We have a silent conversation. Our communication is not formed by words alone. In the space provided by her comfort, I allow myself to hold my thoughts a little more lightly, to wiggle the edges of what’s becoming a tight container.
It cannot be, I tell myself, that I’m the only one that cares. To assume so is wrong, self-interested and egoic. Care, and the thought of its solitary belonging, is a lot to hold alone.
I send out a silent prayer:
Please remind me we are not designed to, do not care alone.
Interwoven;
allied; interrelated; intertwined
Care;
safekeeping; protection; watchfulness
2.
It is 3am and I am lying. My young Irish horse I can tell is not quite well. She is off, as we might say. Not sick enough to call the vet, yet her energy provokes the instinct of not-okay-ness. My mind frets; after losing my yearling, Bear, last year, the trip wire of concern is razor close.
I lie there, making a game plan for the morning, knowing that tonight there’s not much more that I can do. I have gone through all the usual procedures, ensured that within all earthly possibility due care is put in place.
I talk to Bear, who now lives in the realm of my horse ancestors. Take care of her, I whisper, if that’s something that feels ok to do. Please take care of her, I say.
In the morning, I send a voice message to my best friend Kathy. She seems ok, I relay again. Perkier today. I talked to Bear last night, I tell her, surprised to hear my voice fracture into cracking. I take a breath, pull myself together, and today it seems she’s more herself again.
Once, shortly after Bear died, I was riding on the inlet with my paint horse when I had the distinct feeling of him travelling beside us. I looked in the direction that I felt him and in my mind, but also clearly out, I saw him shapeshift. Free from the confines of his body, he played games, his delight causing happiness to land in prickles on my skin.
From playing in the softly moving water, he was quite suddenly, huge, tracing along the outline of the mountains. And then as quickly as pressing the buttons on a remote control, he was front, back, all around, moving faster than my eyes could hope to catch.
I ride, I sleep, I have conversations. We all do. Conversations with our ancestors, of which he is one of mine, passing between us like whispers in the ears of much loved friends.
Interwoven;
braided; inalienable; inseverable
Ancestors;
kindred; ascendant; origin
3.
Helllllloo!!
The slightly sticky side door bursts open, a handful of blonde curls bounces into sight. His long and lanky frame springs into my lap.
He’s been away three days, arrived back home just now. I kiss him all over his face, am met with shrieks and protestations as he pretends to pull away.
Oh no, he exclaims, amidst the snorting bursts of giggling. You’re stuck!
I pretend my lips have become stuck to his face, like a human suction cup.
I talk out loud, a ventriloquist who’s lost control, the words not matching up with the movement of the mouth.
I’m stuck, I repeat back, my voice now muffled, making an effort to keep up with the undulating movement of a small boy.
It looks like this is us forever! What do you think we’re going to do? We’ll have to figure out a new technique to bounce on the trampoline!
We continue with our charade thirty more seconds, a well-rehearsed act we’ve performed together many years, until the moment comes we break apart.
That was close, I say to him. So close, he giggles back.
He gets up, skips over to the sink to get a drink.
Interwoven;
as one; inseverable; indivisible
Stuck;
adhere; remain; endure
