‘Bush Oasis’
Greenery and serenity on an Easter Sunday walk in West Auckland.
Bush Oasis
Tag: Bush
Boardwalk Bends
‘Boardwalk Bends’
“Going Bush”
“Going Bush”
There is an expression saying in New Zealand ,”going bush”, which is used where someone is, or intends to, escape the rat race for awhile.
It could literally mean disappearing into dense bush like that in the photo but it could be escaping anywhere really, just to get away from it all for a time.
I feel the need to “go bush” myself after the strange and awful year the world has had to endure – just a bit jaded. Should start planning to do just that, but then again,”going bush” is not something that lends itself to a great degree of deliberation.
When you feel the need to go, just go!
In Dingle Dell
Yeah, I know it rhymes with jingle bells and sounds sorta made up, like something from ‘The Hobbit’, but Dingle Dell is an actual place.
What it is, is a bushland oasis, a sanctuary if you will, right in the midst of suburban Auckland ,and only five minutes from my home.
Decades ago a group of forward minded individuals planted out the difficult terrain in native tree species. Matured now, it is the thriving habitat of numerous endemic species.
I was there yesterday, on the last day of school holidays, with my daughter.
She couldn’t recall the place. Surely I had taken her there…hadn’t I ? Well, not for years , if so. Remiss of me. I mean, I could remember being taken there by my parents but….
Together we stood quietly as tui and fantails fed and preened in the bush canopy. No one else around. Special.
My learnings from the time amongst the trees, navigating the shaded, serpentine tracks were:
That we often take for granted what is very familiar to us; we need to spend a little more time in the quiet wonder of nature – it is humbling actually – and , god, time really does fly – the child becomes the parent and is the guide, not the guided, in a flash.
Oh, and magic is everywhere, not just in fantasy fiction…
The Shade And The Space
The cool greenery of native bush is a shady lure as the summer continues to heat up in Aotearoa/ New Zealand.
A refuge from the amped up glare amongst the palms and ferns.
There is just something tranquil about disappearing into a grove of trees and being immersed in green light, the sun battling to break through the leafy canopy.
For however long you are in the bush, it is as if the outside world is irrelevant and time stops ticking.
We all need a place to go like that, I think.
Ebb Then Flood 