Haikau 23/08

Languid sun, spring is at rest,

Grass moves with cold wind,

Thoughts come strong as I sit.





Mark Humphreys

Haikau 22/08

Tempest wind comes,

Bearing stories from the frozen land,

Old trees lie down.






Mark Humphreys

Cattle Yards

One summer taking the opportunity to have a job close to home for a change, I took a contract to build a set of cattle yards, on a station out on the west coast. The original yards that had stood since before the First World War. To make way for the new yards I was to heap and burn the old timber. The railings where old slabs of hard wood of unknown origin; they had a weathered beaten texture to them and a character that suggested countless stories from years ago. Something stopped me destroying the old wood; I took time to salvage as much as I could; taking those that were still strong and true.

My father was in his early sixties having retired a few years earlier and at a bit of a loose end, I hired him to build the yard gates, I set him up with a generator under the shade of a stand of pine trees. Dad had been a farmer and a carpenter it was great working with him and having someone to bounce ideas off. He toiled away all summer producing gate after gate.

There were in fact three generations of our family working that summer my son Joel was ten years old. He alternated his day between eel fishing and yard construction. It was a time to remember, spent with Dad and Joel working hard and enjoying each other’s company. Dad had made a rough bench and table under the trees where we would sit during the break time, He would tell stories of growing up on a farm during the Second World War, and in comparison we had a much more convenient way of life than his early years.

 Over lunch one day my father suggested he could make outdoor furniture with the salvaged railings. Each evening we loaded a trailer, Dad transported them home storing them in his workshop under his house. They were heavy and the old trailer seamed to groan each evening as we placed plank after plank onto its deck.

Later the same year during winter dad loaded them up and delivered them to a local mill with the intention of having them cut down to a usable size. The miller thought it was the hardest timber he had ever worked with; the process had blunted two large saw blades and cost him many extra man hours. The end result was a more trailer loads of hardwood in various sizes and lengths.

In his workshop, along with two chairs, my father produced the bench and table I am writing on today. They are twenty years older now, weather beaten by even more time but still strong. They weigh a ton and having withstood the strongest Wellington winds, a large snow storm and the odd earthquake; I struggle to think of another test they could not stand up to.

Each time I sit here they remind me of him, strong, simple, a little worn, still standing the test of time. Dads gone now, but I have no doubt his furniture will outlast me.

The First Hit

The full moon woke me in the early hours before dawn. I turned in my sleeping bag seeing my fellow travellers where still asleep.

I lay listening to the dawn unfold, fighting the urge to extract myself from the warmth to go to the toilet, necessity eventually won over warmth. Crawling back into my bag stillness returned. In the distance the sound of a truck winding its way up the road, we had climbed last night, drifted over the valley.

Slowly others started to wake around me and before long I could hear the sound of a gas cooker being coaxed into life. Reaching in to the bottom of my bag I retrieved my cooker and too started the morning ritual. Taking a cup of hot water I spooned large spoon fills of fresh ground coffee. Setting it to side I waited.

They say the first hit of heroin is the best and those afflicted by the drug spend a life time trying to visit that first event over and over. For me it is coffee, not just any coffee but the first of the day coffee that has the same effect. I spend the balance of my day trying to revisit the first hit.

Sitting in my sleeping bag I look across to the hills we must climb today, I take a long pull on the cup I hold between my hands and let the magic of the drug take hold.

Old Can Be New Too

The bush was heavy blocking out the winter sun. Light flickered from bright to dark and back as I picked my way along the trail. I could smell the damp leaves, it was still and cold, my eyes watered from the chill.

Today I had set out to explore an old trail, the orange danger tape had been broken and the sign warning of entry lay faded on the ground. It had been several months since the storm; my curiosity had gotten the better of me.

Everything looked different now a stream had carved its way over the pathway sweeping branches and debris over where once a trail wound its way down the valley. Often pushing sometimes riding I made slow progress. The power of nature was evident at every turn the familiar was gone, water sat in pools caved out of the hill side by some unseen power.

Change was all around, occasionally an odd point of recognition flashed in front of me strangely out of place now, like a face in a crowd you think you know but can’t say why or who? The riding was a challenge roots unearthed made slippery by the water waited on every corner setting traps for the unwary. Rotting leaves coating stones too made me concentrate to the point of sweeting, in the cold I could feel it running down the back of my neck cooling in the damp air sending a chill down my spine. Down the valley I rode twisting and turning under, over I rode, walked, and carried, old had become new.

 I was riding down a stream that had changed course and consumed the trail, it was the trail. The valley walls rose up on either side, the stream stretched from wall to wall or now correctly, bank to bank. A small shoal of gravel meandered its way cutting a curious path downstream allowing me to pick a path along it. The water was only a few centimetres deep on the shoal, looming on ether side deep dark pools awaited my navigational errors. Nature has a way of reminding you how small you really are.

Concentration furrowed my brow, eyes narrowing, arms tensioning, was it fear or excitement? What is the difference? The thrill of the unknown, or new, it was an adventure in once familiar surroundings