At this ecological crossroads, Central Otago writer Jillian Sullivan seeks a kinder path forward.
The Ida Burn is running shallow, the interstitial spaces between pebbles and stones dense with silt, and in the glides a yellow sheen of flowering broom. The wind that whooshed in the trees all morning has quietened to the sound of faraway surf. There’s just birdsong, and the tinkling of water over stones.
On a day of torrential rain several years ago, tips of waves surged through the broom bushes, powering the Ida Burn closer and closer to the house. The cane armchair I’d left by the pond bobbed and sailed across the paddock, negotiating fences in the tumbling mud-coloured surge.