Aramoana, Pathway to the Sea
The river road turnoff is 14km north of Whanganui and at 17km there’s a breath-taking lookout called Aramoana (meaning ‘Pathway to the Sea’) Hilltop Summit. It’s oftentimes called ‘the Gentle Annie’ (230 metres above sea level) and gives views of the lower valley and Mt Ruapehu.
The view made the eyes of my heart water and my restless soul want to collapse in a fit of sobbing. I don’t know why but I felt that affected by it. Perhaps it had something to do with having been away all this time. Homecomings can be as emotional as leavings. The early morning air smelt freshly laundered, crisp like the blue crease down the trouser leg of a well ironed pair of jeans.
The Deepening Stream
And the light. There’s nothing like the New Zealand light. I recall Writer Monte Holcroft in his essay ‘The Deepening Stream‘, reflecting that he ‘ … watched the colours change on the mountains across the lake, wondering at the depths which lie between the hard brilliance of noon and the tender drift of shadows in the dusk.’
And years before even him, in 1934 infact, the poet and art critic A. R. D. Fairburn said, ‘There is no golden mist in our air, no Merlin in our woods, no soft, warm colours … Hard, clear light reveals the bones, the sheer form, of hills, trees, stones and scrub. We must draw rather than paint, even if we are using a brush, or we shall not be perfectly truthful.’
The canvas of my minds-eye is overcome by the utter clarity of what this unseen brush is drawing on my soul, sometimes I think that’s what that sobbing rising up on my inside was. A deeper understanding of the truthfulness of my existence. I exist therefore I AM! A visual validation reflected to me in the eyes of guileless day. A day with no agenda. A wordless show and tell.
Modern Day Odysseus
Craig, my modern day Odysseus stood alone with his thoughts. Odysseus, the eponymous hero of the Odyssey. A man of ‘twists and turns’. The River Road to our right and below us, twisting and turning too, picking its way down between the ragged hills is like a fleet-footed goat following the awa (river).
In the clear air of morning I hear the sonorous melody of Peter Gabriel’s The Book of Love’ in my memory and allow it to lull my senses into a deeply thoughtful meditation. The air is intoxicating, it almost feels too hard to breathe. But breathe I do. Meaningfully.
I wonder, in this moment, about my travelling companion. This ‘lone reed’, this self-contained life that I feel is on the one hand open and on the other hand closed. Himself a living document, a ‘book of love’ with pages of stuff written into him. Some of it read and some of it that may never see the light of day. There is that about all of us, yes? I believe so.
They called this summit Aramoana since it may have been the place where a downstream traveller first saw the sea. I have placed a memory stick in the ground there. As a reminder of my spirit’s leap. A reminder to myself I’ve passed this way. I’ll make a mental notch in it when I return to write my River Poems. For now, we’re beginning our descent into the valley below. Stay with us.
