TRANQUIL HILLS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 305, 24 December 1937, Page 3 (Supplement)

TRANQUIL HILLS

BERNARD SHAW WAS SCATHING BUT BEAUTY REIGNED THERE ALL THE SAME

f The Race That Understands I If you belong to the race, if there I be blood in your veins from the men ' and. women whose footsteps blazed the trail you are following, you will understand. But if you are not of the race, have no flicker of sentiment | handed down to you from the dark bush days, when the plumed rata waved in the storm, when the white clematis shone out like a robed ghost I in the darkness of night, when th«- ' red supple-jack berries made bright I spots of colour in the deep green

WHO is there who does not love the open air, to feci the coolness of a summer breeze againsi the skin, tanning it to an almond brown? Wanganui can offer much to those whose longing at this time of the year is to leave locked up the scattered papers of a desk, to blot out the rumbling wheels of machines, b; gladly miss the heat of burning pavements and live far away from the thunder of the trams and trains and the hooting of automobiles on the glistening black surface of main highways. A modest mile or so bevond ;he city boundaries and one can leave all that behind. Olden-Day Glory Scarce True, the landscape round this I ’beautiful river city has lost much of its olden-day glory, when the bush in its natural state presented Natures crowning achievement in a world folding a lot that is really beautiful. Bernard Shaw was characteristically sarcastic about the gaunt, trees on their naked, slip-scarred hills, but he ■ did not stay long enough to realise that there i.s something strangely beautiful ever ’mid the felled bush ■ and the quiet tranquility of rugged hills. Go you to the top of Aberfeldic, on the Parapara Road, and look about you in the bright light of | a warm summer’s day. You will hear to cheer you the humming of a mil- 1 lion winged creatures, glorying in the j short life Nature planned for them, j Perhaps, if you listen hard enough, you can hear the seductive gurgle of the Mrngawhero River as it sweeps away from valley to valley to join its sister, the Wangaehu, on a good ■ river’s endless journey to the sea. Maybe, the very thought of those rivers moving through those steep, rugged hills will make an appeal to you more potent, than if the waters were still shrouded in the dense bush I of long ago. I Wo can forgive the sigh at the i memory of that bush and can forgive j Ihe slow awakening to a knowledge that, a powerful “triumvirate” has played a big part in the colonisation , of New Zealand—the axe. lhe tire, | Iho spado! Move you down from I Aberfeldie into the valley of the Mangaw hero, and take notice as you go of the heavy going along those steep faces. Try and picture them as they were before the chop, chopping of a million axes began to lot the sunlight beam upon ground strewn with deep cushions of leaves that har- i boured the cool, unforgettable smell | of the rich forest earth. Ponder how the men who conquered those slopes lived in those far-away days, and, in your own imagination, vision their goal. Many of them were deeply conscious of the beauty they were de- I stroying. but the ceaseless march of I mar. insisted and they went on. ply- | ing the axe. lhe lire, the spade (or 1 lhe shovel if you would prefer the more common designation of a family | circle in preference to that usually accepted).

above, when the strong matai trucks were green, alive and virile against the sky, instead of blackened and dead, then you will be like Bernard Shaw. You will have no thought to give the men who blazed the trail, .io gentle word of praise, just a scathing, bitter sentence. And what of those men? Hundreds of them are still alive, and while they are sometimes alone with their memories, looking out over red rambler roses to fields that, once wers bush-covered, wild and impenetrable, perhaps there comes to them the tingling of remorse Bernard Shawmeant they should experience. Perhaps they know to-day, more fully than they knew when they were young, the beauty that perished beneath the axe, the spade and the fire. But, even if they do, need it trouble them if they are of the race? Because the race came and conquered, destroyed and planted anew, and is still planting to-day. Move you along the valley of the Wanganui, the valley of the Wangaehu. oven to the wide sweep of the Karioi Plains, or follow you on by the Parapara to the heart of the King Country. through Raetihi and Ohakune. Note, as you pass along, the relics of

the old bush days—little wooden, unpainted shanties, red sawdust in heaps about -them. To those of the race there is beauty even there, beauty m the fallen trunks of trees, the little clumps of lace bark, or wild fuschia and wineberry, and. above all, in the rugged hills and blue, swiftly-moving streams. Have you ever made friends with the Wangaehu River in the heat of a summer's day. when a pale sulphurous blue colours its waters and creams itself into foam at odd boulders and corners? Here and there the men who came before you have left patches of the bush as it was. In one corner you may find a giant rata, in all the glory of life, being reflected back at you from the blue of the I Wangaehu. An odd totara may bespeak stateliness, and a drooping rimu the clinging beauty of green foliage supported by infinite strength. Maybe, lan odd hinau will stir a thought that the pigeons were once plentiful along these valleys which sweep down from the hinterland towards Wanganui. Beauty In All Seasons Of course, the summer season is the best in which to see the beautv of the landscape, but in the glory of

autumn, when exotic trees of the Homeland turn golden as heralds of the fall, even in the depth of winter, when hoar frost chills the shady sides of the hills, there is beauty to be seen. Even when the storm flings itself against the papa cliffs, and the lightning strikes across from crag to crag, or when the rain of summer. I he line warm, misty rain that means invigoration to plant life, the beauty still survives. Wo of the race know it and understand. It is good sometimes to feel the dampness of the rain, to hear the gentle falling of big drops through the branches of giant forest trees, and to smell the damp, earthy smell of the bush, or watch the frail wisps of mist rise from little pockets in the hills. They were familiar to the men and women who knew those trails in the rough bush days. Every valley in Wanganui, every high hill, every sound of running water, every call of the tui from the bush recalls memories of the blazers of the trail, and if one can see the beauty of the rugged hills and feel content life holds untold joys, notwithstanding that much of the bush has gone and the weka no longer calls plaintively to the stillness of the night.