The Ruahine mean, and have brought so much to my life, which I have tried to share through my words and photos here. I am in the process of examining EVERYTHING in my life. Some are fortunate to know this when they are young, to seek at all times who you really are, and that which defines the values and the ethics you choose to live by. For me, it has come late, but it has come. At least I think.
Eventually that had to come around to the mountains, to the Ruahine, and what they have meant to me, the role they have played, the way I want to have my future interactions with such a huge place, with such meaning, in my life. I want to find the Truth about who I am so that I can honour and treasure this place and have the times I can spend there be full of love and integrity. They are not right now, the balance is skewed and I have simply become a Taker, a User, an Appropriator, and I am giving nothing back to them.
I go to the mountains when I am empty from my trials and tribulations out here. I go to the mountains to be renewed and filled with mana and life once again because all that has been drained from me out here. I go to the mountains to simply find the energy to carry on out here with my relationships with my wife, family, and friends, not to mention the state of the world as I see it and try to live amongst it. Soon the lightness I obtain there is drained away and I return again to the Ruahine to simply take more from her grace. So I am essentially draining the place I love most of her energy and leaving nothing in return. There is something fundamentally wrong with that, wrong with me. And it is a place I love too completely to dishonour in such a shallow way. And in my heart I know I am also dishonouring myself.
I want to experience what it is to enter this sacred place when I am already full of spirit and aroha, when I take that first deep breath of mountain air and feel myself ready to burst as I am already so full of life. I have to live out here as I live in the mountains, and I have had that all twisted and turned around.
So I am examining all this out here now, and making myself confront who I am as a man, a husband and father, a friend, and a human being. It is exhausting and terrifying at times, and at times already has been full of tears of both pain and joy. It is like learning to breathe and walk all over again. A journey I am finally ready for at the age of fifty.
It means I have to write Ka kite ano (Goodbye for now to people I know) here in this place I also have grown to love, and to people whose presence I also love and honour, at least for now (I mean your presence and honour always, just me being here for now). Till I can write with the complete feeling of honesty and truth I want to feel. Not that I have not shared my entire fibre and love for the Ruahine and all wild places here. What I want to do is to write that way even when I have not just been there, and right now I cannot. That is not truly honouring my love for the Ruahine. This journey does not hold room right now for me to be here. I do hope to return, but I do not know when, if at all. It doesn't mean either that I am giving up on the Ruahine and wild places. Her mountain breeze is always upon my face, the sweet water always slakes my thirst, and the smell of woodfire one I will always seek. I just need some time to get my shit together.
To so many friends here, kia ora, and I will still check in at your places , even if silently for awhile. You have been places of refuge and grace for me, and it is an honour to have had you here, and I hope you will return when I can once again do this with complete Truth. Seek out those Wild Places and Rave On. I truly hope to see you soon. Kia Kaha!
Aroha,
Robb
