PohanginaPete's Xanga

Friday, July 22, 2005

Fri, 22 Jul 2005 19:34:22 GMT

Having just had a call from a friend encouraging me to think about sharing the xanga blog more widely, and having been thinking for quite some time about switching from the juvenile-dominated xanga with its intensely frustrating idiosyncracies (like not loading all the photos), and having checked out blogger last week, I've finally decided to set up a blogger account to see if I can replace pohanginapete at Xanga with pohanginapete at blogger.

Why switch? Two main reasons: 1.) anyone can add comments there (if I choose to allow them), but at xanga you need to sign up for a xanga account; and 2.) xanga is best known for blogs **~WrItn lykE diS~**>!; blogs promoting anorexia as a lifestyle choice (it's true, but don't expect me to support it by giving you a link); and blogs by people struggling with puberty (including some over 20. Or 30. Or...). There are some exceptions, but, not unreasonably, I'd feel more of a sense of collegiality among bloggers like norightturn(to whom I'll turn for validation when the upcoming NZ Parliamentary election depresses me too much) and fuelfools (to whom I'll also turn for validation when the upcoming election ..., etc). Cheers, Wordgirl, Comfy and the rest of you :^) )

So, if you're not a regular visitor, have a look around here first, then head to pohanginapete at blogger. Otherwise, you might as well go straight there.

Go to the new pohanginapete site

(that's: www.pohanginapete.blogspot.com)

Monday, July 04, 2005

Mon, 04 Jul 2005 04:43:53 GMT

The day after arriving back from the Sounds I drove into town to drop off the computer to have the DVD drive replaced, and after a few miscellaneous errands, I picked up the photos I'd had framed. It was late afternoon as I headed home, getting on towards evening, and I found myself thinking about the photos sitting beside me in the car; one of a kea, the other of Te Awaoteatua Stream. I wondered what the kea was doing (probably still lurking around the summit of Avalanche Peak, trying to filch stuff off humans) and thought how, if I wanted to, I could park the car, walk onto the bridge and look down into Te Awaoteatua Stream to see the same twig bobbing next to the same small, natural weir, looking much the way I'd photographed it just 5 weeks ago. The kea has probably been photographed thousands of times; its image must be sitting in computers and albums all over the world. Long after it dies, after it returns to the mountain wind around Rolleston and the Crow River, it will still prowl its way around the globe. And it will still try to stare me down from the wall, the way it stared straight into the lens of my camera as I lay stretched out on the rocks on Avalanche Peak the day after New Year's Day 2005. The driftwood twig, however, will surely have vanished before the winter's gone—I'm mildly surprised it's lasted those few weeks—and I'm confident no one else has photographed it. It's likely no one else has even seen it.

I realised that, sooner or later, what we think of as the "real" objects [1]—kea; twig and weir—will be gone, and the most immediate connections we'll retain with them will be their images: on walls, in albums, on monitors. Eventually, even our memories will fade and disappear, outlived by those images. As I mulled over the thought, I felt a kind of responsibility to the kea and the stream; in a moment of insight, I understood that often I photograph something at least partly to honour it.

Until that moment, the motivation seemed to have been unconscious, but I think it's been part of many of my photos. Perhaps it explains in part why I feel uneasy about images that have been excessively manipulated; ironically, it might also be why some judicious manipulation can be not just acceptable, but desirable. To manipulate an image so it conforms to popular (or, even worse, saleable) perceptions of what's attractive seldom honours the subject—by too readily destroying authenticity it says, effectively, "you're not good enough." Conversely, a little respectful tweaking honours the subject by drawing attention to its essence. Of course, some will argue that one person's respectful tweaking is another's excessive manipulation; some will even argue that manipulation of any sort is wrong because you can't define what honours a subject. However, the latter would deny photographers the use of filters, of any darkroom manipulation—no dodging or burning, please; no toning; no local reduction, etc.—and, indeed, would place on shaky ground the use of highly saturated films like Fuji's Velvia or Kodak's E100VS, which certainly do not represent how most of us perceive colours [2].

However, the most important rejoinder is that we see with our minds; vision is a psychological process. It's subjective; it's as much interpretation as perception. What matters most is not what sort of manipulation was done, but why it was done—if the intention is honourable, the likelihood of excessive or cynical manipulation will be low.

I do accept that asking how a photo respects and honours its subject might sometimes seem irrelevant or inappropriate. A good example might be that of photojournalists faced with acts of evil—in what sense would you want to respect or honour Robert Mugabe while his machines are razing homes and killing people in Zimbabwe?—but perhaps the intention is always important. Why should I take this photo? Or, having taken the photo when the situation precluded even momentary deliberation, how should I share the image (if at all)? Maybe, in those hard situations, what we respect are those affected by the acts, and what we honour is truth. Maybe, too, this is one way to recognise the difference between a photojournalist and a paparazzo. And, in conclusion, I said earlier that often I photograph something at least partly to honour it; I can say also that sometimes I don't photograph something for that same reason.

[1] Object or subject? The former has connotations I dislike; the sort of connotations associated with "objectification": the reduction of something complex and wonderful to something simple and simply to be used. The latter's not much better. Both imply a dualism which demeans the ... er, ... object? subject? Ah, the delights of language...

[2] The issue is greater than just oversaturation—these, and indeed all films, distort colours. Each represents colours in different ways. I've picked on Velvia and its Kodak counterpart because these are the most obvious examples.

Notes about the photos: The bottom photo is ongaonga, New Zealand's tree nettle (Urtica ferox). Those hairs are like hypodermic needles. There's plenty of ongaonga in the Ruahine (although I photographed this near French Pass in the Marlborough Sounds) and I've been stung often. After the initial pain subsides, it usually takes about two days for a residual numbness and tingling to vanish completely. The middle photo I took just before dawn a few days ago, from the verandah outside the kitchen, and the top photo... well, I'm interested to hear what you think.

Monday, June 27, 2005

Mon, 27 Jun 2005 03:50:20 GMT

After two weeks' helping with research on dolphins and seabirds in the relative isolation of the Marlborough Sounds I returned to Nelson, then Palmerston North and at last to the Pohangina Valley to find that little had changed—except me. On my way home I stopped at the Countdown in Palmerston North, where I walked the aisles and found it an effort to think about things like "where's the jam?" or "what sort of bread should I buy?" and "do I have any spuds at home?" The worst was the moment of mild terror when I whipped out my credit card and realised that after a fortnight of not spending anything, I couldn't recall my PIN number. Fortunately, years of habit kicked in, and the lapse of memory proved only momentary. But the odd feeling persisted. I felt strangely dislocated, as if I were jet lagged. Actually, it was more likely to have been car lag, but you'll get the idea. My own kitchen seemed slightly unfamiliar—instead of automatically opening the cutlery drawer I had to pause to remember where it was. I picked up the jug to make a brew and began filling it through the spout instead of opening the top; I powered up the computer and looked in horror at the password prompt.

By the afternoon of the next day, the dislocation or lag had relocated or caught up. Perhaps it was because I'd become absorbed in trying to work out why I couldn't transfer 4 CDs' worth of photos to the hard drive, and after deciding that the DVD drive was knackered, I'd hurriedly taken it in to be replaced. Picking up a couple of photos from the framing shop helped, too. The assistant brought them out and put them on the counter.
   "Is this yours?" she asked, pointing to the photo of Te Awaoteatua Stream.
   "Yes," I said.
   "It's gorgeous," she said, thereby replacing any remaining sense of dislocation in my head with an excess of egotism. She began wrapping the photo, presumably so I could enjoy unwrapping it when I got home.
   "Are you an environmentalist?" she asked. How do you respond to a question like that?

So, what caused that odd sense of being somewhere else, of being simultaneously at French Pass and Pohangina, and maybe other places as well? The main reason, I think, is because I learned so much and it takes time to assimilate that new knowledge; during the assimilation your brain has not only to process the new knowledge but it must deal with what's happening now—decisions about jam, bread and potatoes; stuffed computers and whether you like the tag "environmentalist". Eventually, you grow. I know so much more now—"know" in the broad, vague sense. I know what it's like to sit in a gently swaying boat on a fluid, reflective sea, listening through hydrophones to the life and sounds beneath me. I know what it's like to race over chaotic water, the sea boiling up and pouring outwards, mounded up by immense subsurface pressure; to speed past and stare into a deep, empty hole surrounded by whirling, sucking sea—the stuff of nightmares. Water as smooth as oil meeting foaming, churning water in a distinct line and disappearing the way continents slide under and over each other: the two contrasting surfaces at different levels. I know what king shags [1] look like; a tiny bit about how they act; how wary and apprehensive they are; the fact that there are only about 500 still surviving and they're found nowhere but in the Marlborough Sounds. I know the colour of light reflected from the ocean as pastel orange and pink fades from the clouds at dusk; the way the headlands stretch and taper until finally there's nothing but sea, sky, clouds... The silhouettes of small, upright islands on the horizon, almost as distant as memories of things that might have been...

This is knowledge you can't articulate, only describe. Inadequately. To ask what these things mean is to miss not just the point, but the plane of knowledge, the sphere of understanding; what you utter, when you see these things, is no more than an expression of emotion—and it needs to be no more than that.

But the most profound response is silence.

...

Looking down from Clayface Point, we watched a pied shag [2] struggle with and finally swallow a leatherjacket. Afterwards, it ruffled the sea through its feathers, shaking a spray of sparkling drops before taking flight. Earlier, we'd watched hundreds of fluttering shearwaters [3] fishing with the dusky dolphins [4], interspersed with white-fronted terns. Gannets [5]cruised and circled Admiralty Bay; occasionally one would jink, partly fold its wings and plummet into the ocean. For a long time afterwards you could see the column of foaming bubbles, white in the grey-blue sea. Cloud shadows drifted across brown, chiaroscuroed hills; the shadow of the wind moved across the water as fast-moving, wrinkled shapes on an otherwise shining sea. If there were no dolphins here, what would this place feel like? If there were no dolphins, what would this world be? Can you miss what you've never known? I think you can. But I also wonder—perhaps, you can't truly know what you've never missed.

1   Leucocarbo carunculatus
2   Phalacrocorax varius
3   Puffinus gavia
4   Lagenorhynchus obscurus. A good website about dusky dolphins is provided by the University of Michigan's Museum of Zoology. (Incidentally, the UMMZ's site has a cool collection of photos of animal skulls which you can rotate by clicking and dragging). However, the UMMZ website has no photos of dusky dolphins; to see what they look like, you can't get much better than Danny Boulton's great photo of a leaping dusky dolphin. Danny and Lyn host French Pass Sea Safaris.
5   Morus serrator

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Wed, 08 Jun 2005 03:15:51 GMT

At last I have a day to relax, to do whatever I feel like doing—or, more accurately, to do nothing and do it deliberately. It’s been over a month since I’ve had that sort of freedom. At the beginning of May I started a contract job, editing science manuscripts. It’s a busy time of year for the major science organisations in New Zealand, because the end of June is the end of the financial and reporting year; there’s a flood of contract reports, journal papers and other written “outputs” to be edited as researchers rush to meet 30 June deadlines. I know what it’s like for them—I was in that position for many years. Too many? I’m not prepared to say that, but I know that, unlike those days, the last month has been hugely satisfying and enjoyable. Frustrating, too—sometimes, nearly driven to despair by the impenetrability of particular manuscripts or the reluctance of some authors to call a piece of apparatus designed for extracting approximate volumes of biophysical substrate a spade, I found myself wandering the corridor, taking deep breaths and visualising a gentle breeze rippling over snowgrass near a happy little mountain stream... However, many papers were written well; most were interesting; some were unquestionably exciting. I’d been given an insight into what was going on in the organisation—not the administrivia that torments most of the staff, but the truly important things the administrivia is supposed to support; the work that allows science to claim that it really does improve our condition, and our prospects; work that will help conserve a world worth living in. Work, for example, that means your great-grandchildren might be able to explore a wetland or a lowland forest remnant close to home. That's where the satisfaction came in, for me—the realisation that by putting a little polish on those papers; by making them just a little more readable, I could help get the message across.

Of course, with the steady flow of work, and some significant other editing contracts, I ended up working nights and weekends as well. I still managed to meet friends at City Rock for a couple of hours' climbing, a pint at the Celtic, a few films and a few other social events, but I haven't set foot in the Ruahine for quite a while, and rather than maintaining a reasonable level of fitness, I only got enough exercise to slow the rate at which I was losing it. Even the sporadic walks down the road and up No. 3 Line were fairly gentle, mostly because I became distracted by the land; by the chitter of finches scattering from roadside grasses, the sound of water rushing over stones, the curl of a dry, dead grass leaf, the last light through leafless trees, or a pugnacious piwakawaka (yes, that's him/her. Click on the photo to get a larger view). Perhaps my brain needed the rest from all that editing, and instead enjoyed paying attention to things that can't be articulated.

Now, the day's relaxation is almost over. I have to get myself organised for the next fortnight's work—something entirely different from poring over someone else's writing; a world away from a computer screen.

For the next two weeks, I'm working with dolphins.

Sunday, May 29, 2005

Sun, 29 May 2005 09:16:36 GMT

Robert Fisk, whose surname has become an eponym—"Fisking"—for the systematic, point-by-point destruction of an argument or viewpoint, has joined the outcry (or should that be philippic?) against "academic" speech. Perhaps, he speculates, academics use phrases like "universalist mythic constructs" because they have to be complex; they must speak in a language others simply won't understand. As he puts it, "To enter this unique circle of brain-heavy men and women, all must learn its secret language lest interlopers manage to sneak through the door". Finally, he opts for plain snobbishness as the most plausible reason and concludes with a call for rebellion: that students who hear the phrase "hermeneutic possibilities" or suchlike should "...walk out of class, shouting Winston Churchill’s famous retort: 'This is English up with which I will not put'".

All good stuff. It's a clever and entertaining article, if you're not the sort of academic who speaks of "fundamental dialogic immediacy" and "prosocial tendencies". But, I have reservations about this sort of diatribe.

First, the people who use "academic" language are still people. They're human beings, and Fisk's essay abounds with sarcasm which will wound not just those who use that language for the reasons he assumes, but others who use it with the best of intentions. Moreover, some (perhaps many) who use "academic language" use it because they truly believe this is how you should write for academic publications; some (perhaps many) believe it's necessary to write like that because you'll be ignored if you don't (they may well be right). For those reasons, some have worked hard to learn how to write like that. Should you pillory these people, even if you detest their orotund language? And, even if it only hurts the people who deliberately use that language for the sorts of reasons Fisk suggests, who has the right to decide that those people "should" be hurt? By all means, attack the ideas (or better, discuss them), but focus on the problem, not the person.

Sadly, this approach seems to prevail among bloggers (it's not ubiquitous, because I try to avoid it). Blogging seems now to have adopted the attitude, "This is my blog so I have the freedom to say what I like". Yes, you can, but I get the strong impression that much of what's said is not opinion: it's invective; it's not argument: it's confrontation. Sure, blow off steam to your mates over a beer, but blogs are public (even if no one other than your mates reads them)—spray vitriol and it's always possible that you'll burn someone. Maybe badly. It might also be constructive to consider Oscar Wilde's comment that, "Public opinion exists only where there are no ideas".

Secondly, clarity is not always a virtue. Yes, there's a time and a place for it—and to be fair to Fisk, the time is most of the time and the place should often be within academia—but sometimes, clarity can limit understanding. Sometimes, ambiguity conveys additional meaning; sometimes it illustrates or emphasises an assertion. A degree of uncertainty about the meaning of a statement can be a better stimulus for thinking than a crisp, clear, boring assertion—you begin to wonder about the nuances of meaning, and maybe you might even come up with an idea of your own. If clarity is always a virtue, why do we not employ translators to turn poems into plain, understandable language? Poetry is a quality, not a form: many "poems" lack poetry, and much prose is poetry.

Moreover, the sort of language Fisk describes is not always impenetrable. I've read academic language that uses phrases like "disjunctive dissidence" yet remains transparent; in that particular example, the writing had a subtle poetry that drew me in and encouraged me to think and wonder, to speculate about the subject. More recently, I edited a manuscript about clay polymers—a subject about which I knew nothing, and which, in terms of being arcane and potentially recondite is right up there with string theory and cricket. Nevertheless, I finished with a feeling that, on a certain level, I'd actually understood the paper; the technical terms meant something because of how they were used and how the sentences linked to create an easily followed, logical paper. This impressed on me that opaqueness is not necessarily a function of vocabulary; it's more often a function of the structure of sentences, how information is located in the sentences and the flow of reasoning that links them. While that point is missed by many users of the academic language Fisk rails against, so does he.

[The photos are details from Te Awaoteatua Stream—one literal translation might be "The River of God". I walked down there yesterday evening, between showers, before the rain set in... climbed the small section of wooden fence, down into the paddock of steers. Light from the grey, cloud-crumpled sky filtered through the fractal silhouettes of poplar branches; a lone leaf dangled, waiting for the wind. I'd hoped for a wild sky, for evening colours reflected in long pools, but the light had no energy; it lay listless over everything, too weak even to cast shadows. Still, you find what you're open to...]

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Wed, 18 May 2005 08:47:20 GMT

Pukaha-Mt Bruce, the National Wildlife Centre, remains one of the best places to see endangered native birds, like kokako, hihi (stitchbird), kakariki (parakeets), takahe... and others, including kaka (Nestor meridionalis), those forest-dwelling parrots— hard-case, close cousins of the kea. I drove to Mt Bruce on Saturday, arriving at 3 p.m. in time for the kaka feeding. The birds are not confined, although to call them wild would be misleading; several times, I was brushed by wingtips as they swooped past. They know that three o’clock means a free feed and they’re waiting. It’s by far the easiest way for the DOC staff to check how many kaka live in the forest around the visitor centre, and it provides wonderful entertainment—and education—for visitors.

I tried to get photographs that would reflect the birds’ personalities, but they move fast, seldom pausing more than momentarily. Most of the images proved unsatisfactory for one reason or another—usually because a bird against a galvanised iron background, or clutching a segment of corn cob (not often found in the New Zealand bush unless you’re tramping with Tony Gates) seems, well, wrong. The photo here is perhaps the best of a mediocre bunch. But to be right among careening, cackling, clowning kaka was well worth the drive... and I was lucky enough to have time alone, watching a kokako half-running, half-leaping through the shrubbery; a hihi darting back and forth, quick, almost staccato, through the clipped vegetation in its cage... what must Aotearoa have been like hundreds of years ago? You get glimpses when you visit places like Kapiti Island or Titiritiri Matangi, where the birds thrive, free from recently introduced predators, among habitat restored or rescued from the ravages of possums and other mammalian herbivores... you go there and you think, maybe there’s hope. Maybe the dawn chorus will be restored; maybe one day you’ll walk alone into the Ruahine, wade the clear green Pohangina up to Ngamoko hut, and you’ll sit there in the warm summer evening watching the tieke foraging, listening to the kokako calling... perhaps a hihi might flit close overhead and if you’re lucky it’ll drop a little shit on you and you’ll laugh to yourself and think, “Jeez, if that had happened in 2005 it would’ve been national news”.

I drove home the quiet way, into the dusk on back-country roads. The last light seemed to suffuse everything; night creeping out of small gullies, from folded hills, from under old macrocarpas standing steadfast and black, silhouettes against a sky with a million shades of grey and mauve and tinges of violet and salmon... somewhere on a long, empty stretch of road I stopped the car, set up the tripod and tried to translate what I was feeling. A car drove past, headlights skimming the road. It disappeared into the dusk, just its red tail-lights giving it away, far down the road. I drove on, only to stop further along the same stretch of road, arrested by the light. On the skyline, the windfarm churned in a blustery wind; I was kilometres away but I could hear the mills roaring—not loud, but invasive nevertheless. The lights of Woodville punctuated the distance, and I took several photos. They were all crap, and I don’t care.

Monday, May 09, 2005

Mon, 09 May 2005 19:09:00 GMT

Flight

a glimpse of silent water
a shard of sky, white clouds
and something falling
tumbling into the dark

it was said
you loved to look down
not on but at the world falling
away below you the giddy
whirling heavens almost

within reach
and you somewhere between
blue and white, nowhere
to go but down, the dark water
a silence beyond homecoming.

[For those of you who don't recognise the bird, it's a kea; New Zealand's mountain parrot (Nestor notabilis). Click on the photo for a slightly larger view]

Photo and words © 2005 Pete McGregor

Thursday, May 05, 2005

Thu, 05 May 2005 20:25:48 GMT

After 60 years, the ivory-billed woodpecker has been rediscovered in North America; an event which some ornithologists have likened to "rediscovering the dodo". The popular story appears on several websites, including that of the Big Woods Conservation Society, and it got me thinking about whether there's any hope of rediscovering any of New Zealand's supposedly extinct birds—notably, one of the world's most remarkable and (in my view) beautiful birds: the hiua; but also piopio, bush wren, the South Island kokako and perhaps others. After all, New Zealand precedents do exist: the takahe, for example, was long presumed extinct until it was found in a remote valley in Fiordland in 1948, and the taiko (NZ storm petrel) was rediscovered as recently as 1973.

Later, I began to wonder about the feasibility of cloning extinct species. While Jurassic Park's science fiction scenario is likely to be more fiction than science for a long time yet, the (re)creation of living organisms using genetic material from recently extinct species does seem achievable. In 1999, exactly that proposition was mooted for the huia. Nothing seems to have eventuated, but the concept poses awkward questions. Of course there are the usual objections to this sort of technology, and there are additional ethical questions, but the issues I wonder about most can be summed up by asking whether we could really consider a "resurrected" species—the huia, say —to be a "real" huia. Complex organisms are not just genetic material and its expression; for example, any learned (i.e. non-hereditary) behaviour must differ from that of the "original" huia.

However, there can be no question that preventing an extinction is far better than attempting to reverse one, and this raises interesting questions about how we assign priorities to endangered species. The ivory-billed woodpecker, as a large, beautiful bird, seems assured of its place near the top of the list, but where do we place drab, small, inconspicuous species—those lacking popular charisma? What about those that actually harm people—malaria, tapeworms, dust mites and so on—and where do rats fit in the list? If there were only a dozen or so Rattus norvegicus left, how hard would we try to prevent their extinction? At the bottom of the list I'd expect to find organisms like tuberculosis, plague and smallpox. Few people lament the extinction of smallpox (although cultures used to be held in Russia and are still maintained in—yes, you guessed it—the USA), but reasonable arguments can be made for ensuring that even such horrendous diseases as smallpox should not be completely eradicated. Unfortunately, I suspect that the main reasons for keeping cultures of smallpox are not benign: they're probably military.

But I'd better not get started on that. Instead, I'll just rejoice that we still have the ivory-billed woodpecker, and I'll keep hoping that I might have the opportunity soon to rejoice about something similar, much closer to home.

[The photo is of a hoiho, a yellow-eyed penguin, (Megadyptes antipodes) on the Catlins Coast—the south-eastern corner of NZ's South Island. It's believed to be the world's rarest penguin].

Monday, April 25, 2005

Mon, 25 Apr 2005 09:25:12 GMT

This seems to be the year that ANZAC Day seems at last to have attained the status of New Zealand's national day. The discussion of the day's history on the NZ Ministry for Culture & Heritage website seems, from my limited perspective, to provide a fair and clear summary of how the commemoration and New Zealand Society's response to it has changed—and continues to do so—over the years. The official Government site also has good information, including facts that are well worth remembering: in particular, that while 2721 New Zealanders were killed, the Turks, defending their country, lost an estimated 87,000 men.

Throughout New Zealand, many memorials commemorate those who fought in the First World War. The Pohangina Valley has its own—a stark arch, seemingly neglected and probably known by few other than local people. When I visited it this morning, it stood alone under an overcast sky, its lichen and flaking white paint a visual echo of the snow-dusted ranges behind. A ute towing a horse float drove past; on the hill behind, a quad bike growled up the slope behind old pines. Two people with a small dog began to burn branches from a felled tree in a nearby paddock. I don't know if anyone else visited the memorial today; I don't know if anyone even thought much about it as they drove past.

Last night I watched the documentary Revealing Gallipoli, co-presented by New Zealander Peter Elliot, Irish Professor Keith Jeffrey and Turkish narrator Savas Karakas. Today, the larger part of every media news item has dealt with ANZAC Day; not just the day's events, but commentaries on Gallipoli, New Zealand's role in other wars, ANZAC Day's relevance for the evolution of a national identity and more. Much of it was moving; much informative; and much left me with an uneasiness that's hard for me to pin down. Maybe it's something to do with the way that too much discussion and analysis and fervour—perhaps too much attention—can destroy its subject. But amid all the tragedy and remembrance; among all the eulogies and the rhetoric about glory and sacrifice, one comment stood out. It came from a Turk, an old man who fought at Gallipoli as a boy of 16. Interviewed in 1985, he said, referring to the ANZACs: "I never hated them. Never".

[Late afternoon, Pohangina Valley near Totara Reserve]

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Tue, 19 Apr 2005 22:44:53 GMT

"...a raid on the inarticulate..."

Yesterday was one of those brilliant autumn days: crisp, still, cloudless; the sun low enough to lift details out of the texture of bark, leaves, forest-floor litter, old fence posts... I drove the ten minutes or so up to the No. 1 Line carpark, intending to walk up the track, but when I arrived at the road end I found a ute parked there. The roar’s still underway and hunters are making the most of it—on my way out from Leon Kinvig hut last Friday, I reached the top of the Ngamoko Range to find two hunters and a dog heading in for nine days.

I looked at the ute and, not wishing to be shot, decided to potter around looking for photos at the base of the track and making lots of undeerlike noise. As it turned out, perhaps I saw more than if I’d marched on up the track. I spent some of the time being frustrated by small birds: piwakawaka (fantails), tauhou (waxeyes) and invisible titipounamu (the rifleman, NZ’s smallest bird) which I could hear but not see—no, wait, I did see one which allowed me to get the camera to my eye before it vanished... But mostly I entered the tiny world of mosses, shimmering webs, small flies (the photo is of some kind of acalypterate fly) and other, incomprehensibly alien lives. By the time I was ready to call it a day I felt as if I’d slowed down to a pace appropriate for seeing things at that scale.

That feeling stayed with me. Back home, I became distracted by this little jumping spider; by one of the few Ancistrocerus gazella that still linger around the verandah—even by a big, sluggish blowfly (look closely and they’re spectacular; you can just about see the bacteria...).

The intricacy, the complexity of this world; its structure and how it all fits together, simply astounds me. Perhaps that’s why I’m finding it difficult to write—because words seem so ridiculously inadequate. As T.S. Eliot put it, in East Coker, "...one has only learnt to get the better of words/For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which/One is no longer disposed to say it."