Moon over Martinborough

There is a river at the bottom of our property. To get there you step out the front door, then walk along the rosemary hedge, across the top paddock and into the olive grove, through the bottom paddock and a dense cluster of trees, then finally down to the water’s edge.

The river in summer

The miracle is that you can do all of this without ever leaving home.

I fell in love with the river during our first summer here. Everything about it was perfect. Time seemed to stand still there.

I had no idea that the river as I knew it would soon disappear.

That first summer Rick and I were trying to prune the olive grove ourselves, even though we had no clue what we were doing and had only the weekends to do it. The trees hadn’t been pruned for years, and I found myself spending long afternoons in the Wairarapa heat just cutting out the ‘suckers’ – the tender, unproductive branches that shoot up from the trunk.

At the end of those afternoons I’d wander down to the river, sweaty and hot. I’d throw off my shirt, boots, and socks and fall back into the cool, clear water.

It was mostly shallow, and the water ran slowly. I would drift, watching the branches above me sway in the breeze. Afterwards I’d rest on a nearby log, listening to the water bubbling against the rocks, feeling the sun on my skin.

I liked the river just the way it was. I didn’t want a thing to change.

One day Rick and I found a sandy spot on the otherwise rocky bank, and we dubbed it ‘the beach.’ It was dappled in willow shade.

Rick would pack the most incredible picnic lunches and we’d go down to the beach together, lay out a blanket, and eat and talk and read. Sometimes we’d see a trout fisher just downstream from the beach, his fishing line catching the sun mid-air. Sometimes we’d become drowsy and drift off to sleep, sheltered by the trees.

We passed entire afternoons this way.

Summer ends

As autumn came that year and the air grew cool, we no longer spent so much time down at the river. We’d still go for walks to see it, but we no longer lounged on its banks. That was when everything began to change.

The winter rains came.

Rivers in our part of the Wairarapa don’t rise on the day of a heavy rain. They rise the day after, once the waters have had time to work their way down from the mountains and into our part of the valley.

Our first winter here it rained so hard that we were at risk of floods. One night it was especially bad. The rain kept coming. The local Council issued flood warnings. Jim and Kiwi Bronwyn next door moved their cattle out of their bottom paddock, just in case.

There have been times when people have had their stock swept away in floods here. A friend of ours tells a story of fishing in a local river years ago, and noticing a terrible smell. There had been floods a few weeks before. When he looked up he saw a cow carcass, rotting in a tree.

We were lucky because on the night of the Council flood warnings, the rain finally stopped.

The following night the moon came out, and I stood on the deck and looked down past the olive grove toward the bottom paddock, listening. That was the first and only time I’ve heard the river from the house. It was like an angry monster out there in the darkness, roaring beyond the trees.

At the riverside a couple days later, I was amazed by the change. Gone was our calm trout stream of summer, replaced with a wide and frothing torrent. Debris hung in the trees. New pathways were cut out of the riverbank. I couldn’t get close, because the water still raged.

Last of the winter rains

Spring came, and by then we’d been living here for a year. It rained less. The river shrank slowly back into itself.

Rick and I wandered down to the river one warm day. When we tried to find the beach, we realized that our precious spot – the spot where we’d spent so many beautiful days the summer before – was gone. The floods had washed it away.

It felt like a kind of loss.

We hadn’t yet realized that every summer we’d have to rediscover the river, that we’d never have the same river twice.

We found a new spot. The river had split in one place, creating a small gravel embankment in the middle. So we started hanging out on ‘the island,’ surrounded by shallow, sparkling water on all sides. It was a new kind of paradise.

In the swimming hole with step-dad

Then, just as summer was turning the grassy hills around us into a golden brown, we discovered something even more spectacular: our first swimming hole.

Not far from the island, the winter floods had carved out a deeper spot – not so deep as to go up to your chest, but deep enough. It was hidden in a tangle of tree branches pushed by the flood. Rick and I went down to the river with a pruning saw one afternoon and cleared it out.

We spent the summer in that swimming hole, watching the light come down through the trees, splashing and laughing, then climbing up to the island nearby.

The river gives and the river takes away. Nothing ever stays the same.

A turn for the worse

When our second summer was over, Rick came up from the river with terrible news.

“All the trees are gone,” he said. I immediately went down to see for myself.

Tree mounds

In a push for flood control, the local Council had clear-cut a huge section of the riverbank. They left behind a barren, muddy wasteland and two gigantic mounds of tree trunks, like horrible scars.

Again, it was a kind of loss. But worse this time. The river has become something like a sacred space for me. It felt as though somebody had firebombed my church.

I  walked down to the swimming hole. The willows there were still intact there, surrounding the banks on both sides. Thank the gods for that.

Rick called the Council about the tree mounds. Not only are they an eyesore, but if we have any floods they could create a dam. Thankfully the Council plans to burn the mounds down at the end of winter. The river will heal and become beautiful again. It will change.

And now we’re less at risk of floods. It’s good. I remind myself that it’s good.

New river

Stacked rocks, misty morn

Just the other morning I walked down to the river to see what our most recent winter rain storms had done, now that so many trees are gone. The loose banks had given way and the river is wider than ever, split in a new place.

I went to last summer’s swimming hole spot. Our old island is gone. It’s too soon to tell if the swimming hole is gone. The water is dark and muddy and I cannot tell how deep it is.

We’ll have to wait for summer, for the hills to turn brown again.

Then we’ll rediscover the river a third time.

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