Christmas is spent with a friend from work and her family who live just outside a tiny place called Raethi, the looming presence of Mt Ruapehu, a still active volcano gleams majestically above the old logging town.
Christmas day is hot and sunny - the somnolent bellow of cows grazing lethargically on the verdant green pastures mingles with the busy clucking of hens teaching their butter-yellow chicks how to scratch in the dusty earth as we go to church, open presents and celebrate Christ’s birth.
Afterwards, we spend lazy afternoons floating in soft brown rivers tumbling past the mountain ranges as the red blaze of Christmas photukhuwta trees glows hazily against the azure pool of a blazing hot sky, the lamb-like clouds frolicking playfully across its cerulean depths.
On Boxing Day we climb Mt Ruapehu, its white mountain flanks still silken with snow despite the summer heat. We scramble up and past craggy rock faces, boulders shouldering their way flint-like down the mountain side as the volcanic sand shifts beneath our feet, the knowledge of the active volcano sleeping silently is like the beat of blood in our veins as the altitude saps our strength.
Cobalt blue, so deep it felt like the ocean had spilled into the sky, glows like darkness above the sharp mountain peak, its velvet smoothness calling hearts to soar with the eagles drifting lazily on silent wings above us.
Despite our early start, we end up racing the clouds to the top before they obscure the view, their grey arms dragging at our heels, clammy tendrils curling wraith like around the mountain peak. Finally, the white clouds are broken by the midday sun as we arrive at the top - hot and breathless from the effort, drawing deep breaths of cool, thin air as if to quench a thirst. Crystalline air sparkles in the cold, the deep crater lake glowing aquamarine beneath us, the high land singing eternal beauty before us.
In the evening, when we are back down on mortal land, the green twilight is threaded by the delicious scent of warm pink roses nodding in the gloaming eve. Soon, the night is awash with galaxies, Heaven so close you can almost hear the singing of the stars.
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