Nina’s Ornamental blog is the place I wander to when I’m in need of that feeling I found in New Zealand.
I used to live in this funny little cottage with huge windows on the edge of a harbour, and I had a beach for each mood back in Dunedin. And there was a creek my Labrador and I ran away to when we lived in the mountains beside Fiordland National Park. Lake Te Anau did just as well.
There was a tiny road that twisted and turned, taking us to a small bay in Marlborough Sounds while we lived on the Airforce Base in Blenheim, and there once was a place where the mighty Clutha River flowed into a smaller quieter side-stream and that became ‘our place’ while we were living in Cromwell ... although some days we’d throw off our responsibilities and race through the Kawara Gorge to visit the Arrow River in Arrowtown.
My dog was a wanderer too and travelled all over New Zealand with us. She died at 16.
I always had a special place and a dog in New Zealand. Here, in Belgium, I miss the wild peace of home. Just ‘being’ in Nature is far more difficult, perhaps because Nature is much less powerful by virtue of so many centuries of ‘civilisation’.
I’m looking for a golden labrador crossbred with some kind of sheepdog because I’ve had labradors since I was 9 and the best was a crossbreed.
Meanwhile I couldn’t resist parking my bike and taking this photograph because the scenery on the way from the new house to the old apartment is nothing to sneeze at ...
Tot straks from Belgium.