DESERTED HOUSES

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 12, 5 April 1927, Page 5

DESERTED HOUSES

HUTS ON THE SANDHILLS WAITING FOR SUMMER (Written for THE SUN.) Deserted houses always seem to me to be like old men and women whose friends are all dead, and who are left with no one to talk to. They can remember, just as old people can, many interesting things that have happened in their prime, but their memoirs are shut away behind their drawn blinds. Oh, the blind eyes of little dead houses are sorry things. Miles from this city, on the sandhills of the West Coast, there are many little houses shut up for the winter rponths. They look so lonely, so desolate, that when I said good-bye to them from the long clay road i told them that I would write their sorrows for the city to see. And I fancied that they looked more contented. For, after all, it is sad to be a little grey, hut, perched up on one of the lupin-covered hills at Bethel’s, or Piha, and to be used for perhaps only one month in a year. The eleven months when there is no sound but the deafening roar of the tide must be very lonely ones. At least they are if little houses have souls, and I like to tell myself that they have. I like to tell myself that the wooden walls of my little hut on the seashore understand and remember my joy ol the short weeks I spent in their care. For X want none of this joy to be lost. I wish that the memory of these things may go into eternity with me—the scent of the lupins in the sea wind, the hot, uncompromising sun shimmering on the sand; the rush and roar of the foam as it came pounding through the “gap” at Piha; the long line of crimson pohutukawas in full bloom along this beach; the steep little track through scented bush, from the road to the sand; the strangelyformed rocks, through whose cracks and crevices scuttle gailv-coloured crabs; and the miles and miles of sea, stretching, it seemed, away to the edge of the world. These things are too wonderful to ever be lost, and I like to think that the joy they brought me is stored within the walls of my little hut on the sandhills, waiting for my return.

Do you know that I often think that joy and sorrow are stored in the walls of houses? Do not the ancestral homes of the Old World owe much of their charm to the atmosphere the ages have lent them? The daily lives of generations of gentle ladies and gracious men have given dignity and grace to the grey stones, and the laughter and tears of centuries have given voice to their silence. The great old churches are consecrated by the >rayers of ~ million dead —prayers that give meaning to the supplications of the living. These temples are not lost. They are treasured in the hearts of the temples man has built to guard them, and upon their* wisdom the generations build. I believe that I am not expecting the impossible when I think that the holiday spirit will greet me on the doorstep of my summer hut. It is waiting

there to be liberated, as it is waiting behind the drawn blinds of all the other little houses that line the shore of Auckland’s Christmas campingground. I can imagine the scene on the 24tli of next December. There will be a long line of cars streaming down the concrete, and over the winding road to Muriwai. There will be a scattered few going to Piha, and fewer still to Anawhata, that picturesque little cluster of beautiful bays and headlands. All the way from the top of the ranges to the Anawhata beach will float to these lucky motorists the scent of hot bush and damp undergrowth, and the

sound of the sea. And soon the little houses will be hapm* again, for their doors will be flung wide to the sunshine, and the blinds raised from their eyes. But Christmas is a long way off, and there are many things in store for the little houses before the sun grows warm and strong again. Great flood tides and terrific storms, when the spray leaps heaven-high, and piles of driftwood are washed on to the beach, to dry like bleaching bones. Cold win-

ter nights, with clear stars, and many evenings when the sun will dip into the sea from a frostv sky, and the moon make long wavering shadows over the' calm water. Oh. what memories our little houses will have when we open the doors next summer! May the days go quickly! —K. M. KNIGHT.