Even the not-better days are good...

Ok, so Saturday was the better day. But Sunday was pretty good too. The weather was cold and grey. (An aside about weather predictions: Sunday morning, as the sky was covered in high cloud, the weather service said “sunny all day.” Then, at the end of a totally cloudy day, the weather service said Sunday would be “extensive high cloud, little sun.” I could be a weather person too if I got to predict AFTER the day was over…). But we headed over Takaka hill to be both stunned by the views of different ranges of snow-capped mountains in every direction and dizzied by the endless switchbacks.

We visited the clearest springs in the world and I itched to get my lips to the water (but one of the reasons they’re the clearest is because they won’t let you put anything near the water). Michael thought he was in a fairy garden. We had lunch at a funky hippy place where the building was chilly but the veggie curry was hot and delicious. But probably the best part of the day was in the afternoon when we followed Keith’s directions and made our way to “the Grove,” an other-worldly stand of rata trees growing around water-worn limestone formations. Most of New Zealand’s grandness is in the scale of it all—both in the massive landscapes and the tiny population. Here was another scale issue, but all of the pieces were somehow different. This was a grove that covered a tiny piece of a hill which was otherwise taken up by pasture land, cows and orchards all around. When we walked in, Aidan—already in a pissy mood—was sorely disappointed. “Why are we coming to see a grove of stupid old trees, anyway?” And five minutes later, climbing on the rocks in the secret darkness of the grove, he was laughing and delighted. We all were, really.

Here there were layers of time, all marked out in landscape. In these rocks, high on a clifface, we found fossils layered in the limestone. We saw nikau palms standing tall and soldier-straight mixed with rata trees looping their roots dozens of feet down into the ground from their perch high on crumbling boulders. We walked through a crevice just wide enough for us to move through, to come to a viewing platform that overlooked an expanse of field and sea and snow-covered mountain. The kids, who had been captivated by the sea shell fossils in the rocks, were now taken with calling “Moooo!” to the cows in the fields below us, and interpreting the moos that came back in return.

We were fully engaged in the magic of evolution, the long-term movement of earth and sea and rock. The ghost of water was with us always: in a scallop shell imprinted forever in rocks 20 minutes from the sea and 20 meters above it; in canyons and crevices carved into rock, liquid shadows of a former presence, now held still in natural sculpture, an abstract human form here, a carefully sculpted face there.

There is genius in the trees that start high in the air and reach their roots down down down. There is mystery in rocks that are wide and level at their top, creating a perfect platform for trees and plants, and then tapering down to impossibly skinny bases with swiss-cheese holes worn in to accentuate the effect. All that was missing in this eerie scene was the telltale rumble of the approaching dinosaur, the dinner-plate-sized spiders, the unexpectedly striking pythons. But no, this is New Zealand, where you get spooky and lovely landscapes without the attachment of dangerous animals or other unexpectedly dangerous things (although here, the rushing water and moving earth are the real dangers rather than any creature that roams there).

From the dark quiet of the Grove we went to the open magnificence of the beach at Golden Bay. Even on a chilly grey day, the sands sparkled gold and the ring of mountains across the harbour was breathtaking. Perhaps just as breathtaking was the way the five children all managed to get along on this holiday, eating their meals and feeling carsick over the mountains and tramping through the woods together. And now, after a windy and rolling passage in the ferry, we are back home to the spectacular land that is home for us. And we’ve learnt that while we don’t have snow-capped mountains to look at from our beach (only because they’re not quite high or south enough for snow), we do have a huge and curly dog to chase a ball. That is another form of magnificence, another piece of my delight. Most days are the better days here.