Writing is not a talent I possess. I have wanted to write about home for months, but I am a little apprehensive, I'm certain I can't do it justice, but will attempt to paint you a picture. Our wee house is old, so old that the kitchen and bathroom are add ons, it was built without a bathroom and the kitchen was little more than a coal range. Bits and pieces have been added on, little touches of every decade since it was built add to its character. None of the doors have handles, and most can't even be closed. At the front of the house is the kitchen. Its north facing windows look out over Mount Hercules, the foothills of the Southern Alps and up the Whataroa Valley. From the west we look over the farm towards Whataroa and the distant Okarito Lagoon. Out the back of the house is an old covered veranda, surrounded by ancient hydrangea bushes and my wee garden. The house is set back in the alpine foothills and the hills rise sharply from the backyard, the first row of the beautiful Southern Alps. A row of old macrocarpas shelter the veranda and the house paddocks, they are home to a shy morepork who we have only seen once despite hearing him call most nights as we lie in bed. The hills behind are thick with west coast rainforest, they ring with the songs of the cicadas and tui all day and with the calls of the kiwi and kea all night. A row of moreporks echo up the valley on clear nights, each one taking its turn, fading into the distance. Amongst the rainforest are hidden the clearest, icy fresh pools, and ribbons of tiny streams merging into waterfalls that flow into the Matainui which runs down the valley floor, past the house and towards Whataroa below us. Behind the line of Alps above us is a mass of glaciers, the rugged and rocky tops covered in snow and ice year round. They rise so sharply that weather moving in from the Tasman sea hits their faces and can move no further east, bombarding us with around six metres of rain a year. Rivers rise and fall rapidly, an opalescent blue from the glaciers the begin in. It is still and quiet, the only sounds of civilisation are the occasional sounds from the milking shed when the wind blows in the right direction or the odd helicopter picking its way up the valley to the glaciers or towards the Whataroa Valley and Mount Cook. The house paddocks are full of hydrangeas, cabbage trees and kowhai, the home of 11 chubby wood pigeons. Alex's chickens roam and forage in the long grass all day, following Buttercup the calf and Lambington the lamb as the stir up insects in their grazing. This is paradise.
