Being Away From Home

I’ve just completed my first week away from home and I’m taking it all in. I want these images to be seared into my memory. I want to savor them all over when I get home. I’ve longed to be here ever since the kids moved away last November. The last time I saw any of them was for a few hours in April last year. So this is more of a catching up visit than usual. When they moved to Nelson a few years back it was so easy to stay with them several times a year for weeks on end. John would drive me halfway and then go back home to take care of our animals and one of the kids would drive me the couple of hours more to reach their house. No planes needed and I could bring every outfit I had and matching shoes or whatever or plants for them or anything really. But of course having flown in with limited baggage and having to fly back with limited baggage my shopping is also limited to what I’ll bring back. So I hardly care if we go anywhere or not, although I do want to see more of the stunning countryside, wet or dry and what I buy will most likely be for them anyway for the house and the two birthdays coming up in a few days. 

A few nights ago the skies from the house were incredibly piercing at sunset. So I went from upstairs window to upstairs window, with a quick sprint to take a shot of the mirror at the top of the stairs on the one accent wall that's been painted, as I ran through the rooms catching the best vistas of the hills and dales and cloud formations, just in time to hear the groups of small birds in the camellias and tall rose bushes serenading us with their particular outburst of song that they excitedly warble, chirp and whistle to mark the end of their long day. I was astounded with the scope of the views from here, out of these windows, that goes so far into the distant landscape, yet it’s so close at the same time. I’m more used to the views of our garden at the House of Cluck-Cluck that are limited to our patch and edged by our tallest trees. But this perspective from a second story house with higher windows sees well beyond that, into the wider world beyond this property, and it’s quite stirring. 

I’ve always shied away from flat, rectangular lots or plots where houses are all lined up, one on top of another. Coming here to New Zealand we’ve actually been fortunate enough to have mostly lived out of sight of other houses on large properties even if we had an entrance on a more conventional street, as in the case of Glenmore House, our historic home from the 1850s. But every one of the houses we’ve lived in has had some hills to view and some to climb, along with magnificent trees or some sort of natural growth around the perimeter, like the north fork of the Kowhai River on our orchard, where I used to dig up the silkiest alluvial river sand from its bank to add to my planting soil. But I wasn’t prepared for what was in this region or at this oddly shaped piece of land in this town where my kids have settled. I had no real picture in my mind although I’d briefly seen the real estate sale, offering online images of the outside of the house and a smattering of rooms. I hadn’t really seen the contours of the grounds or where the house was actually situated at the end of this cul-de-sac or how the surrounds wrapped around the house on so many dramatic levels. My daughter wanted me to be surprised and boy was I when I arrived at dusk. Every day since I’ve barely closed my eyes as I discover new parts of this place that I hadn’t noticed on my initial walks. 

So I’ll end this with the views of the first sunny morning we had after a week of gray, rather bracing wintry weather with mostly rain and low visibility first thing and some days that lasted all day like that, only getting worse with rain and wind and lower temperatures at night. Again the starkness of the views from these upper windows was like a painting of the glory of nature…. startling me, inspiring me to throw on my clothes and go outside.  And that’s just what I did.