si dawson

I grew up on a faultline.

This shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, since New Zealand only exists because two tectonic plates decided to get together and have a rub-yourself-up-against-each-other party. To the West we have the Indo-Australian plate, to the East the Pacific Plate. Which I guess actually made it something of a “bring your own plate” party. Ohhh, I’ll be here all week, try the veal.

More specifically though, the actual faultline was about 50 metres (160ft) from my house.

What’s it like growing up in this kind of environment? Well, let’s just say, anything under a 5.0 on the Richter scale you might lift your coffee off the table while you assess it & check your nearest safe zone (table, doorway, etc), but other than that you more or less ignore it.

You become blasé surprisingly quickly.

A more interesting question is: what the hell does a faultline actually look like?

Well, my folks have moved since I was a kid, so I’m now living much farther away. About 50 metres farther.

To get there I have to cross this most excellent bridge:

I do like well considered architecture (and blues skies).

I also have to pass this rather interesting (non earthquake related) tree:

Definitely an odd tree – there’s only one of them.. ahh!

Anyway, just past that, you get to this rather innocuous looking bank:

Just like any old golf course really. Except for those weird blue poles. What’s up with them?

Well, if you sight along them, they look like this:

Notice how they’re perpendicular to the bank. That’s not an accident.

These poles were put in by the government white coats to track plate movement.

That innocent looking bank above? It keeps going in both directions… and there’s an identical looking bank on the other side of the river. That’s the faultline. Twenty years ago that ground was bulldozed flat.

So why do the poles line up, if there’s been all that movement?

Because we’re standing too close. Here are three poles:

Notice how the two on the other side of the fault are angled off to the right of the viewer (ie, the most distant pole is to the left of the central pole).

That is very, very much out of alignment.

When they were put in, they all lined up perfectly. It would have been done with one of these. Theodolites are great, love me a theodolite. If you’ve never used one, I highly recommend it.

So let’s step even farther back:

Remember how the most distant one is slightly to the left?

So you can see that drawing a straight line between the two most distant poles goes off to our right. A straight line between the two poles on this side of the fault goes screaming off to the left of the furthest two.

Not only has there been significant vertical movement, but a ton of lateral motion too.

So here’s the odd thing: There’s been no major earthquakes here, certainly nothing like Christchurch.

What’s happening is something that scientists have only really been able to track since about 2002 – slow earthquakes. These are tricky to spot, since they occur over hours or months, and don’t typically register on seismographs (the scientists use GPS to track them instead).

Many of these slow earthquakes are huge though (R7-9) and they’re radically altering New Zealand’s shape. This isn’t a terrible thing though, NZ’s a weird shape to start with, a bit of a haircut might do us some good.

Why can’t we be an elegant, tastefully shaped country, like Italy’s boot?

Update

I found this brilliant overhead view which shows the faultline perfectly:

The middle arrow is about where I was standing when I took the last four pics above.

The view is stolen from this thoroughly informative page on the subject. Kudos to them!

It’s just turned New Year, 2012.

Generally for New Year’s Eve I prefer to do something contemplative. Meditate on the past year (or years). Feel my way to a better direction for the coming year. Assess and makes choices that will guide me positively forward.

With that in mind, around 10pm I took off up a nearby hill (it’s only 345m high at the peak). It was a 45 minute hike in the dark to the lookout point I was aiming for. I chose to use no lights, partly as a more interesting challenge and partly so I could see the glow-worms on the way up.

Oh boy, they didn’t disappoint. Unfortunately, photos just don’t do those bright little bundles any justice.

I was right about it being an interesting walk. For a start, it’s been raining like crazy the last few days, so everything in the bush is soaking wet. Combine heavy cloud cover with only a quarter new moon, and it wasn’t exactly clear where I was supposed to be walking either. The path was (theoretically) fairly light, except so were the ferns on either side, oh, and the rocks… and the puddles… and the grass. Also, that light coloured path? It was covered in various dark coloured flora, tree branches, grass, leaves, stiles, animals, dead bodies, burning cars, zombies*.

* some of these items may be a complete lie.

Mostly it wasn’t too bad though. My eyes adjusted pretty quick and I only slipped over a couple of times.

I got to the top around 11, but had wildly underestimated how warm it would be trekking up the hill, so promptly stripped down to let my shirt dry out a little. If there were any ghosts up there, I’m sure I scared them off with my stunning whiteness (it’s a sight to behold, I assure you).

I then spent the next hour meditating, absorbing the essence of the previous year and sipping the delicious coffee I’d taken up with me.

I also got treated to lightning on the far off ridges and fireworks up and down the valley. Theoretically fireworks are illegal in New Zealand outside of Guy Fawkes‘ week (the week before Nov 5) but people still store them up for New Year’s. I’m happy they do, it makes New Year’s a lot more festive than just a bunch of yahoos yahooing.

Surprisingly, the march back down the hill was significantly more dangerous than up. My eyes had adjusted so I could see better, but even with that I hit a lot of unexpected drops in terrain. I ended up walking most of the way down in a half crouch. Imagine you’re sitting in an upright chair. Now take the chair away. Yeah, like that. An odd posture, but effective and a lot safer than walking normally (which had left me unharmed but on my arse a couple of times). When I got back closer to civilization, I also had to shield my eyes from the street lights just to see where I was going. It’s hard to comprehend just how much light pollution there is until you’re walking back into it from the pitch black.

I did end up soaked to the skin up to my knees – it’s hard to see invisible wet grass – but it was totally worth it. Walking down in the dark, brooks burbling by the track, the glow of the worms, giant trees majestic against the skyline, it was an utterly beautiful experience.

And proof you can take the boy out of Scouts, but never take the Scout out of the boy; other than what I wore, I also took with me and used:

• hat
• gloves
• scarf
• camera
• blanket (my Grandma gave it to me over 20 years ago; it’s the only thing I have left connected to her)
• thermos of coffee

but took and didn’t use:

• three torches
• phone
• bottle of water
• fabric tape
• plastic bag
• leatherman

I figured if I accidentally walked off a bank & broke a leg (a reasonable risk) I might as well take enough to be comfortable & safe until morning.

Turns out I didn’t need most of it, but it was worth it without the added excitement. Partly for the peace & calmness that comes from occasionally detaching completely from the world. Partly for this:

Here’s to a gorgeous 2012.

Today I woke up and there was honest to god, real life snow, just lying everywhere, being all lazy.

Even though it’s winter, around these parts there hasn’t been snow since 1995.

So, what better way to spend a Monday morning than to go for a walk up a local hill? (rhetorical question)

This hill, unsurprisingly.

Mum brought her gloves, made from 100% genuine Muppet, and we were away!

We passed a couple of ducks. One looked like this:

The other looked different. Grumpier (I think).

There were also some wild quail. They hopped away in that bizarre quailly manner, which can’t really be explained. They weren’t particularly scared of us, so I’m guessing there aren’t a whole lot of quail hunters in this suburb. As a side note, guns are rather damn difficult to get your hands on in New Zealand, so that probably helps. I’m not sure, exactly, how quail keep up with current gun legislation, but they did seem to have a   handle on it.

New Zealand is also very green (you may have heard).

There’s plenty of green to go round. Lots of other bits look like this too.

Mum got very excited by the first bit of snow we found (I did mention it’s rare here, right?)

It was also crunchy under foot (always a nice sound).

I told Mum I was going to take a photo of myself throwing a snowball at her. Thus, this is blurry – as I’m frantically clicking with one hand & biffing with the other. However, note, just left of her left shoulder – voila! Snowball! In the air! I claim victory! (even if this one did miss her, dammit)

We also saw lots of crazy gorse. Flowering (in winter), in the snow:

Gorse is something of a huge pest here in NZ. This is similar to many innovative & brilliant ideas we gained from the British, who brought gorse over to use as hedges. They didn’t allow for the fact that NZ is on the other side of the planet (surprise!), thus has a completely different climate.. and voila! Gorse The (now) Noxious Pest took  over the country. See also: rabbits, and possums. Thanks England! (I’m signalling my disapproval with two thumbs up!)

Gorse is, however, rather pretty (aww).

We’re also pretty good at growing ferns over here:

Mum insisted I get this pic. The framing is crazy coz the ferns were so giant, and the track so small, the only way I could get the pic was by holding my camera over my head (ie, I really had no idea where it was pointing).

When we got to the top, there were a ton of gums & pines (it’s forestry area, sorta), all looking as pretty as a picture:

So, you know, here’s a picture.

I also made a snow man (I said I would!). Well, a snow alien:

He was tiny but cute (kinda like me – at least some of the time).

Mum reckoned he was starting to look like a rabbit, but No! He’s An Alien!

Mum did try to twizzle her hair up into antenna, but since everything was pretty wet by now (snow! it’s wet! who knew?) it didn’t work so well. I reckon she’s got the arms pretty much perfect though.

Which was good timing, coz about a minute later one of the arms fell off the alien (who obviously didn’t have quite such a strong grasp on the whole arm/body concept).

The view from the top was pretty spectacular:

You can just (if you tilt your head and squint) see the blue of the sea, right off in the distance between those two hills. Trick is, the river runs down into it. They do that sometimes, I’m told.

I also took enough shots to get a panorama of sorts, but I need to figure out how to do that (without wasting hours of my life painstakingly aligning everything & adjusting brightnesses etc).

Everything in general was pretty damn pretty.

Also, we had coffee from a thermos, which made everything more awesome.

This gum was quite beautiful too:

I’ve always had a soft spot for gum trees, but I think five years in Australia has made me love them more than ever.

Oh, and proof that the five or six snowball fights weren’t all one sided?

All that snow on me? That was after I’d brushed myself off. I was covered in it! All thanks to my Mum. Sheesh! I used to think she loved me! What a meanie.

One reason I’m laughing so much was that she’d never used my camera before, so picked it up the wrong way. She was about to take a giant photo of her face – which of course I could see perfectly, since the screen was facing me. Oh Mum!

On the way back down, we found a giant branch that had fallen onto the road, so we dragged it off to the side so no-one would come round the corner & drive their truck into it.

We also found the perfect picnic spot:

And that was in the middle of a snow storm! Now imagine how beautiful that’ll be in the summer!

Wow.