When the moon is bright enough, and it enters the bedroom through a crack in the curtains, I like to make shadow hands dance along the walls. I lay on my back staring upwards, watching dragons, turtles, and bunnies hopping among the stars. I can make my fingers long and scary too, so they stretch out over the ceiling like a reaching monster.
The best is when you have a shadow-hand partner. Then you can make whole stories together.
It snows for about one week of the year in Dunedin. My father always tells me the weather forecast the night before it will snow, having gleaned the information off the tiny plastic radio he listens to as he makes his toast and honey.
During the night, all is quiet, and then comes that glorious moment of the morning: when I leap out of bed and open the curtains. The windows will be so cold they seem to suck all the heat from the room, and the view will be breathtaking: a white blanket covering the hillsides, the trees, the ferns, the barns, and the sheep.
That week of pure winter holds the promise of so many small wonders...
Crackling the ice puddles into small shards with our shoes.
This works best, not if one stomps, but if one is patient and slowly pushes out the tiny air bubbles below the thin sheet of ice.
Going for winter walks.
The chill air makes my cheeks turn red, and the landscape becomes kind of unusual.
Digging for yams in the veggie garden. When I glimpse a bunch of bright red and yellow nuggets, nestled in the soil, I feel like I am digging for treasure.
Making all manner of spicy, ginger-laden, mouth-warming dinners, taken from the pages of my trusty old cookbooks.
Nestled in an obscure hillside, and guarded by a long and winding uphill trek that would put off even the hardiest of white knights, lies Rawhiti Cave.
The stalactites stretch out towards the sunlight like daisies on a hot day. Formed over a million years, the stones icicles are festooned with various mosses and algae. They pay homage to the continual 'drip drip drip' of unseen waters.
Through a strange kind of alchemical process, the unseen waters deposit calcium carbonate over the stone, plants and all, thus incorporating them into the structure of the stalactites. This bonding creates a new material, called Phytokarst. Because plants respond to light, growing faster on the sunlit side, the stalactites also grow towards the light.
