Pipiriki

Pipiriki is 79 kilometres from the city of Whanganui and is seen as the gateway to the Whanganui National Park. We’d stopped by the kiosk before making our way down the hill to the boat-ramp. It will go down notably, to me at least, as the place where I fell in the great awa, making a precarious crossing that should have been nothing more than an easy step-together-step-together cross but became something of a minor splash.

I’d put my camera in my right hand while testing the stability of a river stone. The plan was a picnic on a shingle island across a small band of water. I felt the river stone rock a little beneath my foot. Sometimes we ought to know better, yes? I should have known better!

When a thing (in this case, an almost broad-faced river stone isn’t sitting snugly in the crevice beneath it) one ought to know better than to stand on it, right? Well, you’d think so. But sometimes life conspires to show us we really are mere mortals and that we have such an incomprehensibly high opinion of our oftentimes incomprehensibly poor judgment that we do it despite the glaring outcome in store!

Que sera, sera! We launch ourselves out into the middle of a thing and simply hope for the best! That’s what I did. Implicit in hindsight then, is a chastising gentleness (or not!). I’ve found it to be equal in measure with the degree to which one is cognisant of the seminal error of ones’ ways. Denial then is somewhat less gentle! Denial sticks it to us as a reminder that good judgment comes from experience and sometimes, experience comes from bad judgment.

As you do, during a incident of this nature, you immediately put your hand down to break your fall. It’s what I did. My camera with all 100+ shots still in it took a dive with me. My heart and me sank, knowing exactly where it was. Enjoying a little deep river diving! Sacrebleu!

Scrambling to my feet proved to be rather comical. I fished my camera up out of the awa (river) with a deftness that comes from utter desperation. There was some rapid fire plea bargaining with whatever benevolent angels cared to hear such a cry. I was feeling gutted!

The crossing complete, I dumped my wet jersey on to the stones to dry out, squeezed the water from my track pants and emptied the water from my leather footwear. A playful but cool breeze whipped up around my back. It’s dangerous for me this kind of cool. My immune system is shot to pieces. I try not to think about it and think warmer thoughts. A ridiculous rationale really!

I help Craig set out the picnic rug, take out our remaining sandwiches. We eat them and our thoughts are muted by the water views in front of us. They completely turn down the volume of our modern lives these views. Fancifully, I half expect a wild grizzly to come out of the scrub and wander across our view, too much sun perhaps.

It’s the feeling of wildness that surrounded me that made me think that way I suppose. I feel small in it but that’s okay. We ought to feel small sometimes against the backdrop that is life. It apportions to us our rightful place. I sit inside that thought for a long while.

Haere Ra – James K. Baxter, 1969

Farewell to Hiruharama –
The green hills and the river fog
Cradling the convent and the Maori houses –

The peach tree at my door is broken, Sister,
It carried too much fruit,
It hangs now by a bent strip of bark –

But better that way than the grey moss
Cloaking the branch like an old man’s beard;
We are broken by the Love of the Many

And then we are at peace
Like the fog, like the river, like a roofless house
That lets the sun stream in because it cannot help it.