Boo to mono-season

“Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence. Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance. Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence. Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance.” 

Yoko Ono

To those suffering year by year in the endless hell that is mono-season, we salute your perseverance. We did two weeks of Groundhog Day recently in Rarotonga, but there is still nothing like the deep of winter to give one a sense of reposeful quiet that we never experienced in warmer climes.

There's a well known phenomena here in the deep south where climate refugees from the North Island such as ourselves buy a property of unparalleled rural tranquility, only to up stakes and scamper back to the warmth after their first winter. The locals all shake their heads and mutter that the real winters are long gone in the past, and that today's cold is a pallid shadow of previous profound freezes.

We'd like to experience one of those freezing antecendents, but for now we just love the current stillness of the quiet cold, waiting for snow, sitting by the fire's warmth with a rich red swilling about the gums. Such joy!

Our mobile phones are not real cameras of course, and do struggle in the low light, but from the pictures below we hope you get the general idea.

Ruminants joined in peace during the hay ceremony

Leaving Hobart around 5pm to head for the hills

Early morning light straining through the trees

Finally a small taste of the wonders of the morning commute through the shrouded landscape, underwritten by the guitar and vocals of the amazing Alexi Murdoch.