365 Days of Fun and Chillaxation – Blog#143 – The Kahurangi National Park – The Best Morning Kick You’ll Find Anywhere Folks
Yesterday I heard Craig Potton – one of Nelson’s most famous and green photographers – enthusing about the Kahurangi National Park. He said that those of us who are lucky enough to live near-by are “living amongst the hottest hotbeds of biodiversity in New Zealand.” I was pleasantly surprised to hear this. I live close by, and watch her daily. Because she’s beautiful and irresistible.
Honestly, living beside such a thriving, pulsing, green mountainous patch of wilderness rates up there with having a spirilina smoothie each morning. It’s way better than a shot of coffee, with a more drawn-out, yet just as effective hit, as a can of V. All you’ve got to do is point your face at her and inhale, you’ll feel that clean oxygen entering your blood-steam, weaving permanently into your cells and filling you with a goodness that can’t be bought.
It was such a relief to hear Craig explain how loaded with precious bio-diversity those hills are, because I realise I’m feeding off them. And they’re meeting all my daily requirements. Every time I look at that great, green cloak of park I get this rush of good-cheer, no it’s more than that, it’s this injection of energy, wonder, awe, and I’ll throw in the word ‘reassurance’ too. Why? Because that park still exists. Those old trees, all those millions of ancient trees are still standing, are still inhaling and exhaling and making the world a far better place for us oxygen junkies. Those trees are still there, like an army of elders, quietly watching over us. Marveling? Are they marveling that they’re still standing? No, I don’t think these trees marvel. They’re too austere to marvel. They’re like a tribe of age-less zen masters who have been observing life so long that nothing could ‘shake’ them.
You know, we don’t talk about our interconnectedness with the land so much within my culture, but another culture, who we live alongside, have this kind of ‘speak’ woven into their language – Maori. In te reo Maori, words such as ‘earth’ and ‘placenta’ share the same word. They refer to the earth as ‘her’. And on the occasions that I’ve walked on the other side – in te ao Maori – I’ve felt pure, strong relief at being able to address the land with such emotion. Because I feel a part of those hills. I honestly do. Recently someone mentioned that there was talk of mining them and I noticed my heart contracting as if they were talking about mounting an explorative operation into a loved one’s body. I realised I am far more a part of my environment, emotionally and energetically, than I was raised to understand. And today, though I don’t quite intellectually understand it, I appreciate it, because those hills feel like my ancestors.
Ten years ago when I spent some time in London, there was a part of me that kept reaching out to find the trees, the greenness, to feed off. This aspect of me kept automatically unfurling and searching, searching, searching for the live trees. It found none. And so I dreamed of New Zealand’s native forest, and of her tui calling me home from across the waters. And gradually the pain in my heart pulsed too strong, and the pull to return home became to heavy for me to ignore. So one night, a group of us had a clairvoyant women around to our house for a reading. She did my charts. She told me I had an extreme amount of ‘Leo’ in there and told me to get back home to New Zealand as I had work to do. That was all the nudge I needed (she also told me I’d marry a red-headed lawyer, though that part of the plan fell-through). And so I arrived back home in little old Aotearoa, where trivial news such as shop-lifting (rather than murder) made the front pages because there just wasn’t that much bad stuff to write about, and politicians hen-pecked through more laws per MP than anywhere else in the world. I’d decided some thing big was going to happen. And I think it’s happening now. Though I’m still not sure what exactly it is.
Those hills, they do feel as close to me as a brother or a sister. The pakeha, the European in me squirms a little as I write this, but it’s true. That “hotbed of biodiverstiy” sustains me, just as it did my ancestors. And I intend for it to feed my children, and their children, and their children.
Today’s rating: 10/10
365 Days of Fun and Chillaxation (as I raise my gorgeous son and grow my good news website to a subscription base of 100,000 people). The Low Down on this Blog.
Check out yesterday’s blog.
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Wow. Charlotte, you’ve hit the nail right on the head there. Beautiful.
Clair x
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