a rocky road to peace

When I walk Zacchi, I am sometimes frustrated by the number of stops we make to make to mark the spot. When Zacchi walks me, he is confused and frustrated by the number of stops I make to capture the spot. I look up, he sniffs down. On Thursday we decided that we really do need one of those retractable leads, no matter who is walking whom...

...

I love to be up, in all ways. Up high, physically, helps me to be up emotionally, spiritually. So even though I live up on a hillside and can look out over the valley, there is always the urge to climb higher, to look further. On Thursday, I did just that. I had had an awful day on Saturday, the day for celebrating women. Wednesday, my "day off", my day for me, I worked. It was still a day for me, I came home very much "up" after my guiding, but it was a work day. So on Thursday, feeling a little guilty about not working until I rationalised it as above, I went up. I found a spot in the sunshine, and just let the view and the sun fill my soul. And as I rested there, I told myself that this was me, just "being".

But now, as I write this, I look at my words "just let the view" and "just being". I think "just" has to be redefined in my personal vocabulary. I hereby renounce it's meaning "no more than, only", in relation to myself. I use that too often. Today, should I happen to go up the hillside to be, it is me, being. And it is right and just that I should be.

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Thursday saw our long walk, the first after the flu. It was celebratory really, being "up" again, and of course the camera came too. I stopped, repeatedly, much to Zacchi's frustration. But the photos of the rocks I posted last night I have taken off the post, because they couldn't begin to convey what I felt. I was so full of the sense that, although it has no "logic" to it, it is right and proper that I should live here, in this rocky, ancient place.

It's the rocks. I absolutely love the rocks. One day I will try to put it into words, but for now it stays within my heart. But when I walk from my wee hamlet to the historic centre, along my mountainside, I am filled with a sense that it is so right for me to be here.

As a child I had a fabulous rock and river stone collection. I had an obsession with the Kerikeri Stone Store, long before I ever saw it. My favourite parts of the New Zealand landscape are the raw, powerful escarpments, the cuttings through the rocks on the Desert Road, the Napier-Taupo road, the Wairoa-Napier Road. When I went to my school reunion I have to confess that, contrary to my expectations, I felt little when I walked into the school, when I met old school friends. But driving the Napier-Wairoa road filled me with a sense of belonging, to the landscape, to the hills, to the ridges, to the rocky faces. It is a wonder I made it there safely at all, I don't think I looked at the road ahead of me as I drove.

My mountain, without a doubt, is Whakapunaki, although for more than 25 years I looked at Mt Te Aroha every day. But it feels as though, despite all my years in New Zealand, it was the rocky mountains around Roccasecca that were persistently calling, calling me home.

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Whakapunaki, a sleeping giant, viewed from the place I once called home

Above my village

The Liri valley, and "my" little village

And further up...

Call me crazy if you wish, but I am very sure I have lived here before. She who couldn't stand on the glass panel in the Auckland Sky Tower without holding onto the rail felt young and as sure-footed as a mountain goat amongst these ruins.