BUSHLAND RAMBLES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19832, 30 December 1927, Page 11

BUSHLAND RAMBLES.

PLEASURES OF SOLITUDE.

REFLECTIONS OF BROWN.

DAY DREAMS AND SOLACE. It is one of Brown's greatest joys to get away to the bush and there are many like him who, just now, are satisfying the craving of their souls for the sweet solace of Nature. Most people, in this rushing, fretting, toiling age, are forced to spend most of their lives in an exhausting turmoil. Affairs demand a pace that is faster than what they used to exact, and social customs, permeated with the restless spirit of the times, often defeat their own end.

But holidays come and in the quiet of the country flagging spirits are refreshed. Folk become themselves again. They rid themselves of life's livery with its chafing stock and other useless features and in the garb of simplicity and freedom enjoy the change that is rest and happiness. Of course Brown cannot achieve perfection in this matter. The stock has left its mark and he may be likened in some degree to the men who still dragged a leg long after the chain of their captivity had been removed. Ho " misses " the stock still. Ho is very glad to have it off but habit and memory bring the moments when he must ask himself what ho is worrying about. We all know the feeling. Perhaps its occasional appearances are a necessary discipline against the day when holidays will be over and the livery be resumed again.

Something to Think About. Being a practical matter-of-fact sort of individual Brown is fairly successful in confining his thoughts when he has any—he often does his best to iio on his back for an hour or two and think of nothing whatever—to the moment or at least not beyond the hour of the next meal. Actually the next meal itself is often the subject of pleasant reflections. He is not particularly interested in his food as a rule but when he goes to the bush his appetite is so stimulated that he has real enthusiasm for his food and so when he might possibly give way to brooding over nothing in particular —the little haunting anxieties, the little clouds that shut out the sun as they pass—he finds a means of escape by realising that he is getting hungry and wondering what there will be for dinner. Thus appetite has more uses than one. '

Sense of Escape, Brown is not unsociable, but instinct tells him that during this respite from work and crowds and noise of the city, it is well that he should take solitary rambles and scrambles in the bush. He does so. He has no definite destination and no real aim except to get back to nature as completely as he can. And he can do so in a few hundred yards. He takes the way up the trackless creek., He pushes through a tangle of supplejack, trips and tumbles, but on he goes as if stern duty were at his heels. He makes unnecessary detours at places where the undergrowth is thickest and the denser the thicket that is behind him the better he feels. His desire, to which he does not give conscious thought, is to escape. That is it. Escape. He comes to a place where the roots of trees have dammed the stream. The long, narrow pool, which hardly ever catches the direct rays of the sun on account of the canopy of leaves, might be the secret bathing place of a native Puck and his tribe. There Brown lies down to rest. The only sound is that of the little waterfall where the pondlet discharges over the damming root. For a century, maybe, the giant kahikatea has had his feet bathed constantly by the creek. Creatures of the Wild.,

In the pond there is a plop, which in this retreat is almost startling. A native trout without a - doubt. What a happy existence for a fish! Nol for many a day, not since the pakaha came, perhaps, has ever a hook been dropped in that water. Long, long ago the Maori people must have fished here, for in the little clearing a few pi pi shells had been uncovered, but ilieir tracks beon completely obliterated. .Ihe bush has filled up the gaps and barred the way to all except such people as Brown who deliberately forsake the easy way and go into the fastnesses for liberty. Lving silent, a white eye flits down to the water and, choosing a place where there is the merest trickle, has a bath, which spoils the beauty of his feathers for the moment. The little fellow is rather interested in Brown, greets him as a sort of Gulliver in this small-scale kingdom of the wild, and shows him a trick or two in the art of catching food on the wing.

Day Dreams. It is all wonderfully soothing. Brown is lulled into a dreamy, hazy sort of happiness. That big tree, he reflects, was growing before he was born and before his father was born, and may be living after he is dead. That supplejack, so tough and strong, may have sprouted only last summer. The" bird may be a yearling and the fish an elderly party. These thoughts drift through the small section of Brown's brain that is awake, and in some mysterious way make him more content with life as he* has found it. For a while he has an Eastern sort of fatalism. Maleesh. Perhaps he goes completely to sleep. At all events he afterwards has the impression that a brown Puck sat crosslegged on a fallen log that might be the bridge of the bush folk and told him tales of the very long ago, of tribal wars, and heroes, and love trysts at this very spot, and children who fished for the koura there. He said he lived near the top of a puriri tree, but thai he often took a camping holiday by the creek. A friendly little chap. And when he said good-bve he simply swung out of sight on a vine rope. Brown went down the creek again and in a pool did see a koura having a quiet constitutional on £he bottom. Something bubbled from the mud —an eel, doubtless—and Mr. Koura darted beneath a root. So life evidently is rather a strenuous business even -in this solitude. Then Brown thought of food and went to it.