s e v e n i s a j o u r n e y

Wind and Water. Wellington’s had both Wind and Water in abundance for the last couple of days — in abundance, and at speeds in excess of 70mph. Umbrellas are more a liability than an asset in these conditions, really, more sail than shelter. Getting hit by a 70mph gust, for those of you used to less fractious climes, feels a lot like getting hit by a freight train made of air. Getting hit by a gust like that with rain in it… It’s kinda funny watching the poor gulls try to go about their business — there’s no point trying to fly anywhere, since you’ll never manage to end up wherever it was you were aiming for, and even the little flock I pass in the park, wisely staying on the ground — wings tightly furled, beaks into the wind, to let the wind just go by them as much as possible — were getting pushed around like game pieces, staggering through the grass on their little red legs.

These are, I have come to learn, “southerlies”, although not as cold as southerlies often are, since these were kind enough to take a little tour around the Tasman before hitting us, instead of blasting straight up from Antarctica. I can tell the difference between these and “northerlies” because these shove me toward the train station (“GetoutGetOutGETOUT!!”), while the northerlies push me *away* from the train station (“No, no, stay!“) — as good a reminder as any that on this side of the planet, the North Wind is the friendly one.

In the Water arena, the news tonight was full of pics of streams and rivers Running Amok (which usually means either running somewhere they oughtn’t, like through living rooms in Lower Hutt, or just generally being hooligans, and pulling down parts of roads and things). The harbor, usually this amazing clear greenish teal color, turned an opaque slatey green almost as vivid as those green chalkboards, but darker, and all frothy. The trees in the park across from the office spent all day thrashing about, and the buildings are all howling at their corners — but I guess that’s back to Wind, isn’t it ?

In general, Wind and Water do some pretty amazing things together here. Sometimes it’ll be a fairly calm, fair day at ground level, but the clouds are *racing* by overhead like some Discovery Channel time-lapse. Sometimes a front line will move in and just stall, and hang in the same place all day, changing only its color and texture with the light. Sometimes both will happen at once, at different altitudes. Sometimes the clouds come down and run misty fingers along the curves of the hills like the back of a cat. Once a couple mornings ago I walked out of the house and could see a single blurry cloud sitting down the bottom of the valley, but by the time I got to the train station, I guess it had finished whatever conversation it was having with the river and gone about its business.

Sometimes the river itself puts up mist, the way rivers do, and one morning it was so thick and yet so localized — just right there, over the river, but completely opaque — that from my vantage point at the Silverstream train station it looked like nothing so much as a giant dragon made of cloud, snaking its way up the valley on some draconic business of its own. You could *see* it moving, veerrry slowly, and sometimes a coil of it would billow up as high as the poplars that hemmed it in and then very slowly sink back down again as it chugged along. I wonder if ancient (or even modern) Maori would have thought of it as a taniwha, or as river mist, or both. I know I’m willing to call it both. The Hutt River, by the way, is beautiful, and I *will* get good pictures of it sometime and post them here. It’s a braided river in many places (when it’s low) in a gravel bed, and there’s park all along both sides, with a path that you can walk or bike all the way to the harbor on.

I *think* the southerlies are supposed to die off tomorrow, taking the rain with them. The pongas in the garden outside my door certainly aren’t roaring the way they were last night, so we’ll see what things look like in the morning.