Moon over Martinborough

It was early as Rick and I climbed into the car for a day trip to Martinborough. There were apples in the back seat to snack on later, and we had travel mugs full of hot coffee sitting in the cup holders between us. The morning light was pale blue as we pulled out of our driveway.

We’d been living in Wellington for two years by then. Somewhere along the course of our lives we’d accidentally become itinerant Americans, moving first from the North Side of Chicago together to northern Japan, then down to the bright lights of Tokyo, and most recently all the way to the bottom of the planet to New Zealand. In the two previous years alone, we’d lived in four different spots in Wellington.

Although this was just a day trip, there was something bigger behind our reason for the drive to Martinborough. We were going because Rick had proposed something radical. He proposed we settle. That day we were off to look at his Fantastic New Idea. I admit that I was skeptical.

Across Wellington's harbor lie the Rimutakas.

To get to Martinborough from Wellington, you pass the clustered office buildings of Wellington’s central business district, get on State Highway 1 and head out of the city along the edge of the harbor.

That morning the harbor was calm and Matiu/Somes Island in the middle looked green and peaceful. Across the blue stillness we could see the southernmost end of the Rimutaka range. Those mountains make a massive wall separating Wellington from the Wairarapa valley, and that was where we were headed.

The Saturday morning traffic was light. We cracked the windows and the cool morning air filled the car. Eventually the city and the harbor both dropped away behind us, and we passed suburbs dotted with houses. There were green hills above us on either side. Then the suburbs gave way to farms and open spaces, paddocks with horses and cattle.

As we approached the foothills of the Rimutakas, the road began to wind back and forth and up and down. In front of us, the mountains loomed.

Rimutaka Hill Road

New Zealanders call the stretch of road over those mountains the ‘Rimutaka Hill Road,’ and whenever they’re travelling it they say they’re just ‘heading over the hill.’

I assure you, the Rimutakas are no hill. With the tallest peak reaching 949 meters above sea level and the entire range stretching 34 miles long, referring to those mountains ‘the hill’ is a classic example of Kiwi understatement. It’s this same low key spirit that makes Kiwis refer to traveling to Australia – a trip involving a three-hour flight over 1,381 miles of ice-cold, shark-infested waters – as simply ‘crossing the ditch.’

In fact, the Rimutaka Hill Road is notoriously bad. Surface flooding, slips and high winds close the road all the time when the weather turns nasty. As you approach the Rimutakas, a sign says whether or not the road is open that day. The local news is peppered with stories of drivers disappearing over the road’s steep drop-offs – even when the weather is good. Crashed cars are quickly swallowed by the thick tangle of native tree ferns and thorny gorse.

Rimutaka Forest Park - www.rimutakatrust.org.nz

Just recently the car and body of a local businessman was discovered down the bank. The guy had been down there for two months before anybody found him.

I heard the change in the engine as Rick stepped on the gas and the car began to climb. My stomach sank. I’d insisted he drive because there was no way I was driving that road. When I was a kid I was afraid of heights. I’m mostly over that now, but it comes back sometimes. Like when I’m in a car alongside a step drop-off, and there’s something like three feet between the wheels of the car and my death. Call me silly.

In most spots the fence along the Rimutaka Hill Road is just a line of little stakes with a few white wires strung along between them. I can’t imagine that fence would ever stop a car from going over the edge. “It looks like toothpicks and dental floss,” Rick said. My stomach sank some more.

The Wairarapa

Somehow, in spite of my firm convictions that we were going to die, we made it over the hill with no troubles that day. There’s a spot as you’re coming down the Wairarapa side when suddenly the view opens up and you’re looking out across the entire Wairarapa valley, its rolling hills and pastureland. The beauty is astonishing. Even I, sweating at the certainty of my impending death, could see that.

When you finally get to the foot of the Rimutakas on the other side, you breathe a sigh of relief and enter a little town called Featherston. There you leave the main road and veer off to the right to head toward Martinborough. Suddenly you’re surrounded by flat farmlands dotted with cows and sheep. Big rows of trees make massive hedges.

At one point you come to a T in the road, and that’s where you see the gorgeous Martinborough basin. It’s like a giant, hill-encircled bowl with a dot of a village in the middle. This basin, they say, gives Martinborough its special weather – hot in the day and cool at night. The grapes and people love it. We drove down the escarpment and into the basin.

In the weeks before that day, Rick had been spending time in the Wairarapa for work. In the process he’d come across a property in Martinborough that he loved. He came home one day saying, “Let’s move to Martinborough.”

I thought he was crazy. “It’s in the middle of nowhere.”

We are city boys. We thrived in Chicago and Tokyo, loved visiting Shanghai and Bangkok. What was he thinking?

“Just come and see the property,” he said.

It was such an obviously stupid idea that at first I refused to even look at the place. But his insistence continued for days and eventually, more to shut him up than anything else, I agreed.

“I’ll look at it, but that’s all.”

Seeing the property

Approaching the house

When we pulled into the drive, the house appeared to have been waiting for us all day, even longer. It had put on its best clematis and trumpet rose vines just to greet us, and it was charming. We walked around and peeked in the empty windows. The agent was to meet us there later.

Rick pulled at my hand. “First, you have to see the grove.”

From the front deck the house looks out over paddocks and hills. In the middle distance lies an olive grove of nearly 500 trees. We walked down alongside a rosemary hedge, opened a small gate and stepped over a small footbridge toward the grove.

The spring air of September was warm around me, the sky perfectly blue. The paddocks on either side of us spread out to rows of Poplar trees in the distance, marking the boundary of the property and providing a shelterbelt. We continued down a slight slope and across another small footbridge until we got to the olive grove gate, where I paused.

Underneath the olive trees, sheep were grazing. It looked almost biblical. A light breeze was moving the branches, turning up the grey-green undersides of the leaves to the sun so that the entire grove seemed to ripple with silver.

I don’t know the historic or religious reasons around why the olive branch is associated with peace. I only know that standing there at that gate, looking out at that olive grove for the first time, I felt peace. I was also instantly overwhelmed with a deep fondness for those trees, a longing to care for them, be a part of them.

Honestly, it felt a little bit like falling in love. I know that sounds absurd, but that’s how I felt. I don’t know if love at first sight is possible with people – my love for Rick has always been more like a bud sprouting than a bomb exploding – but I now know that love at first sight is perfectly possible with trees.

I opened the gate and stepped inside.

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Read the next post: Testing the train to paradise