Endurance

This morning I took the circular track around the Mount. Past Pilot Bay a thumping and grinding echoed out across the water from the Port. The shags didn’t mind. Perching on rocks or fulfilling their endless hungry needs, they ducked and swam in the water, their heads like little umbrella handles bobbing in the swell.

To my right Mauao stretched to the sky and a hardy few took the upward track. I wasn’t up to that. Small every day worries gnawed at my shoulders and ached themselves up the left hand side of my neck, clenching my jaw. I wanted an easy walk, a good view, enough to distract me. 

The sea peeked through jumbled branches as I passed a lonely worker flattening out the track. He nodded hello over the whirr of his machine and I strode past, throwing him a washed-out smile. I passed stretches of grass, tangled trees and fallen logs. Their old, furrowed bodies hosted moss and vines and who knew how many thousands of small beings.

I picked up the pace, meeting other walkers and runners; some taciturn and absorbed, others offering a cheery good morning. Soon I glimpsed the bronze sea god Tangaroa - his handsome sculptured backside at least. Keeping guard over the waves, his tarnished muscles tensed in endless watchfulness, he looked like a true warrior. Who are our warriors now, I asked myself. Those who fight other people’s wars? Those who struggle to feed their kids? Others who battle disease or old age?  There are many warriors who silently endure every day.

My thoughts were interrupted by an acquaintance hastening past, running and talking fast with her fellow jogger. We smiled and said a hurried hello. She panted and beamed her way by me. In her eyes I saw my unsuitable, mismatched sportswear. It weighed me down, that forced smile. It sat between my shoulder blades and opened my eyes to the grey skies and mist which covered the higher reaches of the Mount. Some glances, like some mountains, make you feel so small.

But on I went, walking and looking and taking it all in. Around every corner an award winning view. Here a winding path surrounded in rich, gleaming green. There a lonely bird pecking at the fertile, wet soil. Vistas of blue green water rolled in to touch fingertips with the twisted rocks and calm sands of Mauao. 

I strolled beneath Pōhutukawa. They reached their broccoli bunches and spindly branches to the sea. Arching ballerinas, their roots splayed from the soil like tutus, arms sweeping over my head towards the waves.  My mind joined their dance as my eyes were drawn continually to the ever present ocean.

It came to me then, on a wave. A feeling of ‘now’. A kind of peace in the moment, resonating out of the wild.  It rippled over me, from earth and air and water, the elements of this world, to me. Little me. I was a part of this sanctuary and it was a part of me. Mauao had been here before me, nature would be here long after I was gone. 

The ebb and flow, the continuity of this thought was such a comfort that my shoulders eased and my mind cleared. I forgot my worries, my unfortunate clothes and began to enjoy this place. I walked, I breathed, I smiled. Nothing more, nothing less.

A glossy seal chose this moment to appear before me in the water. Its whiskery snout dipped and dived, its dark eye searching. Ignoring me, it slithered in and out of the ocean, searching the seaweed for a meal. I stopped, transfixed by its beauty and couldn’t help pointing.

“A seal,” I said to a couple approaching me along the pathway.

They too stopped, immediately attentive.

“Where?  Oh there,” the woman said, spotting it. “How beautiful.”

“It’s gorgeous, isn’t it,” I said.

“Maybe it’s a male out hunting for food for its children,” she said.

“Could be,” I replied, eyes still glued to the magical creature. It was slick and cool in the inky water.

“Oh, but that’s the female’s job isn’t it?” she said with a chuckle, turning to her partner to check he got the joke.

I laughed and walked on. The seal disappeared beneath the waves, as we, the people, became strangers again.

 What a gift, I thought. What a wonderful thing to see.

 Walking the homeward stretch I recognised a promontory of rock jutting out in to harsher waves and forming a channel dotted with large clumps of weed. I remembered this landscape.

 Many years ago my friends and I decided to try snorkelling there. I had been apprehensive. The current was strong and the seaweed thick. I didn’t expect to see anything. My three friends jumped in and I followed, twitching in terror as the seaweed clasped its rubbery fronds around my calf or tickled at my toes.

 We kicked along the channel, pushed back and forth by the waves, staying close to each other. There wasn’t much there except weed and rocks. It wasn’t until our return swim, foggy masks lowered in to the churning water one last time that we saw an enormous stingray glide by, half a metre below us. Grey and tactile, its body slid through the water with a silence and importance which mesmerised me. It was only there for a moment and, in a few breaths, we were up and screaming and shouting in joy at our find, but I remember its power. We didn’t see any other marine life that day. He was our only visitor.

 As my walk neared its end, my eye caught the building-block colours of a container ship heading in to port. It came out of nowhere, the thrum of its engines unobtrusive. As it sailed closer, I made out its name: Spirit of Endurance.

So quiet, so powerful; so unexpected. How apt, I thought.