At this stage, I am looking for the next post and I can't see it. I have left the brochure and map at home. I walk around to the south and still no post, so I make my way back.
Ah, there's a gate, and a blue stone,
but it hasn't been used for some time.
Down along the fence, I am reminded of Kevin Irelands poem, Antic Hay: "...Starlings like quavers dot the fencelines..." For a minute or two I am off in my head wondering if that was powerlines or fencelines in Ireland's poem, and I cannot later find my copy of his book to check it out. I half look for the "counting cat" that "pricks through the needles of the pines".
To the north, the broad, low lying landscape. I am starting after several visits to value its gift of space.
We veer around to the left, where we can just see our next Gpost,
and we look back towards Pukeiti and the ridges that mark the lava flows.
We pass G6 and G7 and head down towards a gate in the wall.
The stone wall faithfully echoes the ups and downs of the slope. Every stone, picked up, carried and sorted and carefully placed. I recall a reference in one of Robert Frost's poems to a stoneboat, a sledge-like vehicle used to transport stones for wall building:
Never tell me that not one star of all
That slip from heaven at night and softly fall
Has been picked up with stones to build a wall.
and it ends, I recall
Such as it is, it promises the prize
Of the one world complete in any size
That I am like to compass, fool or wise.
Well, stars, maybe not, but these would have had their time of flying though the air, glowing hot.
Across the way is the line of pines that take you down to the coastal walkway from the entry gate. A couple of rock piles and I am wondering about the possibility of early gardens.
Well, hello. Have we got an old midden here?
Up ahead is what looks like a fairly recent break in the wall.
We head on uphill, signalled by another stone, but still not sure where the next Gpost is.
I recognise this spot from oher photographs. Off to the side of the direct route a touch is this lava cave, fenced off to prevent accidents. What I recall is that human bones were found near here.
That's fairly vigorous looking vine there, exotic, I'd reckon, and probably worth removing while it's possible.
Also this patch of smilax.
We head along the wall to the gate
and just on the other side is a deepish depression, lined with rock, containing a couple of senior karaka trees.
Again, in the bottom of the depression, with no signs of a recent cooking fire of any kind, a bunch of bones that do not make up anything like a complete skeleton.
Onwards to G9
and we're almost home. Just follow the blue stones
and here we are.
We pass G10 on the back of G1
and Alice
spots a cow.
We head out, Alice close by me but just ahead a little. Thanks for joining us.
