TE RERENGA WAIRUA • LEAPING PLACE OF THE SPIRITS by BARRY MITCALFE At one flank old Tasman the boar Slashes and tears And the other Pacific's sheer Mountainous anger devours. Denis Glover I had seen tidal-rips before. But here at Cape Reinga, where Te Moana-a-Rehua, the man-sea of the Maori, meets the woman-sea, Te Tai-o-Whitirea, there is a frenzy even rock cannot withstand. Only Te Reinga, last jagged extremity of the island, remains. To the ancient Maori, Cape Reinga was known as Te Rerenga Wairua, leaping-place of the spirits. Here, the Maori believed, the spirits of his dead departed the island to return to Hawaiki. There is no more appropriate point of departure for the journey between the living and the dead than Te Rerenga Wairua, not only for its desolate appearance, but also for its situation, at the northwestern extremity of the island, angling into the Pacific, towards the islands of origin. Most Polynesian islands have a Rerenga Wairua but as we move Northwards through the Pacific the Rerenga of each island swings Westward, homing towards mysterious and enigmatic Hawaiiki. The landscape is desolate and fearsome. One of the first Europeans to visit Cape Reinga, the Reverend W. G. Puckey, C.M.S., who in 1834 walked to the Cape from the mission-station at Kaitaia, was so impressed that his journal departs its usual humdrum style and takes flight! The