Photo © Geraldine Forde-Buckley
The sea is thunderous, waves crashing onshore, driven by a strong northwest wind. I know that within two or three days the clouds will be a thick grey, lying long and low across the sky, and it will begin to rain.
We will have rain until the wind turns further toward the west, then southwest and I will be buffeted about while I work in the paddocks. The southwest wind will blow hard and fast, pushing off the rain, and drawing forward the sunshine behind her. This I learned from listening and watching and noticing the repetition. Nature has proven more reliable than the weather forecast.
Now, the starlings have begun to return and build their nests in the corners of our eaves. Their timing in sync with the departure of most of the tui. The myna birds also move in, audacious in their presence, they strut about as if they own the joint. Swallows have returned to the stables in their annual attempt to build nests. It’s a messy business and a game we play each year as I remove the nest, and they start another one. These are the confident spring birds, and they will remain for much of summer pushing the gentle birds aside. The piwakawaka fantail will be more circumspect when they join me as I collect horse manure, and the tui will visit only intermittently as they seek out the last of the silky yellow banksia flowers and await the sweet nectar of the harakeke flax. The change of guard has pushed aside the light touch and ushered in the bold ones. I know these rhythms because I have seen them unfold the same way over the last six years that I have lived here.
There are some birds that will not be pushed around, even by the change of seasons. Like the kotare kingfisher, who hold the ground as they choose. They may be less visible, but they remain, voicing their presence and showing themselves from time to time. The blackbirds and thrush stay on, but quietly and with perhaps a hint of apprehension that was not present before. A lone thrush won’t be silenced. She sits each morning and evening atop the harakere and sings her joyful heart to fulness. The minors rasp back. They are here for strategic purposes; joy is a luxury.
Today I sat in the mamaku tree fern valley while the southerly wind decided whether she would stay blowing west or change to the east. I sat close to a freshly unfolded frond of soft green fingers and closed my eyes as the ferns danced this way and that, brushing my hands and face as the wind directed. The song of the tui could no longer be heard in the valley but a lone piwakawaka fantail kept the music playing. All is well, we are just changing season, she sang.
The waves come in and the waves go out, but the ocean remains the same.
I love patterns, the interweaving of nature’s code into existence. The circular and enveloping nature of eternity spread out across the linear and distancing effect of time.
My horses also love patterns. When I set up a challenge in my obstacle course for them it is never the obstacle or the task they navigate by. They look for the pattern to make sense of what I am asking. It is the whole that allows them to understand the part.
I laugh at my own patterns sometimes. I know what I am going to do next by what I have done before. Sometimes I am disappointed by how predictable I am. Other times I am grateful for such a reliable compass.
Patterns embody mathematics, though I am largely unable to understand them in this form. I just seem to notice the whole picture first, followed by its constituent parts. I’m not certain I could put the picture together coherently if I had to build something out of its parts. I can’t be confident I would arrive at the correct conclusion. My intuition would be rendered a poor student to its reductionist professor. What then of the outliers? Where would I place these leftover pieces in a jigsaw the professor thinks complete?
In my younger years I loved to knit. Every now and then I would drop a stitch – or two. Or I would get confused about the pattern and odd stitches would turn up and I could not work out how they got there. Sometimes I would sort this with ease, other times I would do my best to cover over the aberration and hope it would not be noticed in the whole. But slight deviations from the pattern were never the real problem, the demise always lay in the unravelling.
I have noticed a new pattern of terseness emerging. A change in the character of change itself. Change is constant but there is a chaotic charge infused into transition now. Change has become abrupt and impolite. New moons and full moons usher in intemperate weather and storms so repeatedly that I have begun to prepare for them now. This clamorous, tumultuous presence in transition is unsettling. The former easy flow within the in-between spaces is being squeezed, contracting into more rigid polarities without relief. Is this a flaw in the pattern? A necessary disruption? Or are we witnessing an emerging reconstruction of order?
We humans appear to be following suit. We declare a longing for rest and silence, peace and harmony while we noisily jostle for ascendancy and draw formidable demarcation lines. We too are squeezing out the spaces where we can dwell contentedly with one another. Perhaps the earth is merely holding up a mirror for us to see ourselves.
The first bird to return after a recent storm was the singing thrush. She resumed her place on the harakeke podium and sang again to the fulness of her heart. Other birds emerged and went about their day as usual, repairing nests, and enjoying the easy meal of worms that had surfaced after the heavy rain. The horses too went back to eating grass in a slow and methodical way as they regained their sense of place on the land.
I would like to weather change, storms and disruption with the grace and composure that nature manifests. To continue with the good no matter how dark the sky’s appearance.
This world has always had cycles and seasons and patterns. Perhaps there have been times before my lifetime where this brusque, curt persona of change has been evident. But it is a new pattern to me, so I need to make my own sense of it. Find my own feet in it.
After each of these incisive disruptions, I seek an ease of restoration to the expansive in-between spaces. I want to take deep breaths within this pattern of expansion and contraction, a pattern present even in my own lungs. To find the good way, the path of life and living, and stay the course.
Beautiful!