THE RIVER OF LETHE BEHIND OUR WESTERN HILLS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23489, 28 October 1939, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE RIVER OF LETHE BEHIND OUR WESTERN HILLS

Pleasant Adventure beside a Waitakere Stream

By E. M. BLAIKLOCK

we reached the Cascades or not we never knew. "We trudged out along the West Coast Road past the end of the Waitakcrcs. We faithfully followed the track over the hill the signpost indicated, unspeakablfe as it was with the mud of early spring. The track lost itself in a farm of barking dogs, where two wooded spurs enfolded a green tongue of land. A man in a field pointed to the edge of the bush, where ringed nikaus stood in a stiff row,' and there, sure enough, was a stream under a high grey scarp. Was it "cascading"? It was tumbling merrily enough, to be sure, over the round stones. We had pictured something miniature Niagara-like, dropping light sheets of, spray, mossed rocks and maidenhair drenched in the shade. What oi that? Tho spell of the bush and tho sunshine was heavy on us. '.I he stones in the stream bed > were smooth and warm, half-buried in tho clean sand of the last freshet. These, perhaps, were the Cascades of the signpost on tho road. Perhaps, again, they were not. Nevertheless, in such a glen, what more appropriate than lunch? Wanted, a Myth A breathless, noisy, little stream, rt is not ten feet wide from bank to bank, but it fills the place with chattering. There should be some myth about, the voice of water. The horned river-gods of ancient fairy tales may

have something to do with the mad bull-bellowing'of rapids. The wild Wa:kato at Aratiatia roars like all the bulls of Spain's three-headed giant, but no one wove a phantasy around tho voice of little streams.

I tried to think of one as vainly as R. L. Stevenson sought for a myth about reeds shivering waist deep as he canoed down tho Oise in Hood. Our myth would have to account for tone aiid volume. And. that is a matter of depth and obstruction. What is it Shakespeare says in "Two Gentlemen of Verona"? Ho had boyhood days in Shottery and by tho Avon in his mincl and on his- pen: Tlio current that with frcntlc murmur elides. Thou knowest, being stopp'd, impatiently doth rage; But when his fair course is not hindered. He makes sweet music with tli* enamcll'd stones Giving: a nenlle kiss to every sedce He overtakelh in his pilgrimago. Remembering the little Stratford river lie sought for myths and nearly made one. And our Maoris might well have made us one here. Nothing could be more typically Maoriland than the stream at the foot of the blue shagged cliff, crowned with the packed kauris of the reserve. "Made Souls Forget" And speaking of myths, this stream is Lethe. The draught of Lethe's water in Plato's story made souls forgot the past and come iinrecollecting to rebirth again. It must be the noise of. the torrent which is playing the trick on us. On the long road up the hills our tale of troubles bad stretched from Wellington to Warsaw. We were ruined, stripped, confined. Somehow

now it did not seem to. matter that the Public Works were moving half the range to bring the train on a wider sweep to Swanson station. Who cared about the Reserve Bank? Or taxes? Or work? Or that these might be the last sardines from Norway? Climb a thousand feet arid sandwiches are spiced. And the noise of the stream guides all our thinking. Ruskin was wrong. The bottom _ of _a stream is riot unpleasant. It is in "Praeterita" that lie describes the Rhone leaving Lake Geneva "fifteen feet thick of living water, blue to the • shore, radiant to the depth." "For all other rivers," he says, "there, is a surface, and an underneath, and a vaguely displeasing idea of the bottom." Perhaps he meant a muddiness, a marshy shallowness. "Like a Piece of Canada" His ideal is beautiful. • See it at Taupo where the Waikato leaves the lake and pours under the bridge in one wave. Or a mile or two lower, above the tortured reach of the Rapids. The river can be reached a mile down the forest path behind the Wairakei Hotel, a "pine-filled landscape like a piece of Canada. The river at, that point is blue and deep as death from bank to bank. There is an open green of wild grass 011 one side where the path comes down, and 011 the other a low limestone cliff. It is a lovely, quiet scene, and if the river, soon to roar in fury, lias a voice, it is the gentlest murmur among the weeds, which hang and float and waver where the bank drops steeply down. It is a little terrifying. Not so our stream at the Cascades. It is friendly, shallow, loquacious, too simple to be treacherous. 110 place for the green eyes of Naiads. It is too young and untouched even to show us the silvery flash of fish. We can peer under the rocks in vain for the flicker of weaving fins. Magnificent Moment The muddy track need not be retraced. The back of Puljcmatakeo can be scaled. A rough pasture of shallow earth, barely covering the bones of the hills, runs tree-studded, narrowly, sheer out of the valley. Five minutes, and the farmstead drops below and the whole wide amphitheatre of the hills is open. Its three sides are lined with the most glorious bush in the ranges. There is one magnificent moment. The branches of two veteran totaras form a great frame. It encloses the black hollow cliff below the wall of flic Wnitakere dam. a thousand yards away. Down its hundreds of shining feet drops a slow ribbon of white water, ft is exactly Tennyson's picture in "The Lotos Eaters" • And like a downward smoke, tho slender stream Alonp tho cliff fo fall, and pause, and fall did seem. Weary of the ocean. Ulysses' long ship drove ashore in a land where it was always afternoon. Mild-eyed and melancholy, the Lotos-eaters came about the crew with the flowers and fruit of the strange plant of forgctfulness. Or, if the memory lived for those who ate the fruit, its content was "a slow, sweet piece of music from the grey forgotten years," and all was rich peace to lie reclined in Lotos-land, like gods on some Olympus, forgetful of mankind. "O. rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more." No Greeks we, but trousered denizens of another century climbing Pukematakeo. It is a motor-horn 011 the hill road still above us, which gives an unmusical reminder. Still, it is seldom that a landscape looks so immobile. All Nature's boundless energy seems to pause. In tho valley the thick ferns cluster like a host of star-fish. There is a vellow burst of kowhai in the green, and at the bottom of the frame a sudden constellation of white clematis. A surveyor's track and then the crest of the ridge. Auckland's red roofs spread wide. Work is yonder and the ferment of life. Lethe is behind us.