Driving Through the Weka Pass

There are two main ways of getting into town. One leads just off our road on a winding and steep 32 kilometers of narrow shingled roadway

that eventually ends up at the main south road into Christchurch. If we go that way the scenery is spectacular but the tiny lane hugging the mountains is quite daunting and sometimes cattle trucks roar through towards us while I have a mini panic meltdown. So despite the many enticements of valley after valley of incredible views of vineyards and farmyards and even a posh retreat for celebs that fly in one way or another, we usually go the other way. Don’t get me wrong. This regular route is gorgeous too and a lot flatter with more moderate curves and faster traffic. But it gets tedious after a while to only go one way to get to the other towns or into the big city.

A few days back we had another very dramatic rainy day with mercurial skies that kept threatening then calming down all the way into Christchurch. But the best part of the ride on that particular afternoon was that we were following an older white caravan that was going slowly in front of us. Since there’s no passing in the Weka Pass that can be done safely, John remained at the same steady pace as the vintage clunker. I snapped several shots of it because it seemed like we went back in time, decades back.

The picturesque vistas didn’t stop. We passed the Frog Rock, which incidentally does look very much like a giant frog, on the limestone cliffs, and went around every bend at a snail’s pace. That felt really good to me. I could have been in my father’s ‘41 Chevy, Betsy, on that gabardine upholstery. We were just tooling along.

Looking back at these photos I feel the same sense of slowing down and getting off the rat race for a few precious minutes, before we passed her further down the road at the straightaway. Then everything flipped back into modern times and my daydreaming reached an abrupt end as we merged with the faster cars careening down the highway. As we passed the caravan I wondered if a gypsy woman might be driving and true to my premonition, she was. I got a glimpse of an old lady with long hair gripping the wheel and gritting her teeth. She looked as out of place in modernity as her vehicle. But that clinched it for me. I really felt I’d entered some sort of time warp for those few minutes.

The Schumann Resonance stopped yesterday for 15 minutes. Apparently that means that all timelines are now in sync with each other. Although I don’t actually understand all that I do believe that it’s true and that time and reality are changing. And slowing down I get to ponder all these imponderables to my heart’s content.