Winter landscape
Tony Milne from Rough Milne Mitchell ponders the winter landscape and the traditions that embrace the chill of the season.
I write with one eye on the rhythmic roll of the Pacific Ocean as it laps the seawall upon which the café I am in sits. The café is called Long Dog. An invitation, it seems, for all the incessantly yapping small dogs in the world and their owners to gather.
To the northeast, the cliff faces of the Otago Peninsula abruptly push the sea back. Ironic, really, as the Peninsula has been named one of the most romantic places in the world to propose marriage. Funny, too, that Dunedin on the east coast of Te Waipounamu geographically sits further west than Hokitika, which fronts the Tasman Sea.
It is a splendid winter’s day here in Dunedin. While the cloud banks further out to sea, St Clair is bathed in sunshine. The seaside suburb is awash with life. Along the beach, locals perambulate while others line up at the ice-cream van. Plenty imbibe at the handful of cafés that adorn the land’s edge. The rounded form of the hills that make up, and enclose the city, are clear against the sky.
It is the day after the night we mortified our daughter by dancing with her and her friends at a well-known Octagon establishment. In fact, at one stage, we danced to the chanting of ‘who brought their parents’. She recoiled in embarrassment and horror. I really should too. I can’t dance. Unlike the sea, I have no rhythm.
While a balmy day, I do enjoy seasonality and winter in the landscape. As parts of the landscape freeze, extra layers we adorn. A winter landscape can be one of beauty and bite. The crispness of the air heightens one’s senses and tingles the extremities of the body.
Winter brings traditions. In Dunedin, the hardy, and possibly mad, continue to ride the ocean’s energy through the winter months. Throughout Aotearoa, on the first weekend of May, men, mostly, and often fortified to beat the winter chill, gather around ponds to shoot ducks.
Some of these ponds often freeze, and the convivial call of bonspiel one can hear echo off the frost-bound mountains that enclose. If you have lived in Ophir, you know winter. I haven’t. However, in the company of a farming couple, I once spent a colourful and crisp night in Voss. An alpine town in Norway that embraces its proximity to the North Pole. A town whose lake freezes to a depth of over two metres through winter. In Voss, they race cars on the frozen lake.
I am sure we all have memories of experiences we associate with a certain time or tradition in the winter landscape. I don’t shoot ducks or race cars, but as a young lad, the walk to the school bus on a winter’s morning in Kirwee, I vividly remember. At the time, I was rolling Norsca deoderant, a fitting match to the gnarled and solemn macrocarpa that stood guard over our lane.
Voss, St Clair, Ophir and Kirwee, winter’s chilly tendrils reach.
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