‘View Of Rangitoto From Tahuna Torea’
Looking northwards from the sandspit near the mouth of the Tamaki River to Auckland’s iconic volcanic island, Rangitoto.
There are few sights that make me happier than a clear view of the island.
I know I am home then.
Ebb Then Flood 
Even when they aren’t my own places, views like that make everything in me relax a couple of notches. Something about mountains does that for me every time, never mind that my origins are among the flattest of flatlanders. 😀
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Absolutely! Mountains are powerful signifiers.The Maori word for mountain is ‘maunga’.When Maori introduce themselves in a formal situation, they cite the principal mountain of their ancestral region as their maunga. Like a living thing that is part of them. By the way,Rangitoto means ‘Blood Sky’,harkening back to the eruption that created it only 800-900 years ago.
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I was fortunate to live for a few years all but at the foot of Blanca Peak, one of the four Diné sacred mountains by which they also mark ancestral lands and a great deal of their cosmogony. I could feel that mountain’s power, long before I knew about its sacred nature, and my time there was an explosion of spiritual and creative energy for me that I’ve not felt again since. That region still plays a major role in my poetry, and I dream about the mountain fairly often. There are more physically imposing and impressive looking mountains in Colorado, but I never saw one I found more beautiful.
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Wow,that must be your maunga then! You carry its spirit with you.On a personal note in regard to Rangitoto my favourite view of is when swimming at one of beaches facing it. Especially at high tide,standing in water up to my neck – the island fills the horizon and most of the sky.So awesome!
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That sounds wonderful, like the ultimate blending of earth and water.
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Hadn’t thought of it like that Beadberry,but you may be right! When you are at actual sea level you straddle the two parts of the world.
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Liminal space is incredibly powerful space, and I believe something in us senses that.
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True.Every so often,and you may have seen them,I post pics and words of the piles below wharves.Luminal space, places of transition.Powerful things and great learnings occur in transition.
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It’s a lot of what drew me to this place — sea lochs, mountains, islands, all within reach or vision. I consider myself retired from shamanic work, but there are days when I’m pretty sure this place doesn’t agree.
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Shamanic work! What does that entail? I lov the sound of yr environment and having been in that area in the past, it is not too dissimilar to where I live. Maybe its why Scots (like my grandmother)came here in droves.
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It’s a challenge to tackle shamanism in any detail in space appropriate to a comment section; for me it’s meant using various methods to drive my consciousness out of the physical world and into the spiritual realm to accomplish different things in partnership with the spirits I’ve worked with. I’ve used drumming, dreaming, plant medicines, and ordeal to cross over; ordeal works best for me, but it’s very hard on my body. I’ve done healing work for people — the most common task — on and off over the years, but my calling was primarily healing land, and I traveled a ridiculous amount in the past 25 years because of it. It’s the combination of being tired of not having a home and my body not being able to take the strain of ordeal the way it used to that retired me. As I’m recovering from both, I’m starting to hear the call again; the spirits do tend to consider the partnership lifelong.
This is a really special place. My origins aren’t here — that would be Austria, Ireland, and Wales — and my roots are more in Minnesota than anywhere else; my family established a homestead there the year it became a state, 1858. It’s home in that sense, but this is home in every other one.
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What an awesome personal insight.I feel privileged to read your account,really.
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Thank you! 🙂 I’m considering a longer discussion of my path to and through shamanism (in my own space, so I can go on and on and on…), though that’s been one of those things I’ve hesitated to talk much about because of how people often react to it.
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