17/07/2025
I’m back visiting my parents in the town where I grew up, so took the chance to climb East Peak, a high point in the Hokonui Hills that overlooks the town and surrounding farmlands. The sun doesn’t rise until around 8:20 this time of year so the climb was by torchlight listening to the sound of the Ruru and starting to recall the names of the plants that were being picked up in my torchlight – Coprosma, Horopito, Miro, Matai, Totara, Tree fuchsia – it has been a long time since Joyce Osborne’s field trips and my Uni silvics classes but I was surprised by how much came back to me.
Above the bushline the ground was crisp, rocks exposed to the night air were slippery with ice, and the wind bit hard against bare skin. More lights started to move on the land below as people were getting about their day. Dawn colour stretched over the Blue Mountains behind Tapanui, rain bands streaked the sky scape, and snow briefly swirled as the night faded. Then light started to hit the peaks staining the snow tussocks a brilliant gold and far in the distance the snowy peaks around the TeAnau and Wakatipu basins turned pink. Shadow started to play across the rolling hills – the green pastures and sun chasing shadows and darkness into the shadows and gulleys and the meagre warmth of the rays wrestling the cold of the wind.
Then back into the bush, this time the way lit by daylight filtering through the low canopy of stunted forest of Richardson's Ridge. The track weaves through gnarled old trees, groves of ferns, and jungles of supplejack. The final stretch back to the car through tree fuchsia with their distinctive orange papery bark, then the road home to join the lights on the plains getting on with their day.
That’s my memories of the hills I grew up being able to run around in. The tracks have improved since I was a kid, thanks to the work of Hokonui Tramping Club, but otherwise the colours and cold and contrast seems much the same!
