KAPAI: Crimson blooms and sweet kina help clear my head

There is a wonderful proverb in Maori which says "When the pohutukawa is the colour of crimson then the kina are sweet and ready to eat", and it came to me this morning as I started my hikoi around the trampled tracks of Mauao.
I was looking for inspiration, so I walked around our magic mountain in an anti-clockwise direction, something I only do when I need to delete old thoughts and download my hard drive. Bit abnormal and eccentric? Maybe but normal and me parted company a long time ago.
It has become somewhat of a ritual for me, when I am about to embark on a new literary project and this pukapuka is special and totally different.
Fresh ideas are not something you can buy nor do they come in a gift-set of 12 with a set of knives. For me they only seem to show up when I have a garage sale in my head and clear out all the junk. So this ritualistic walk around the Mount was my way of weeding out the weird from the wonderful and it worked.
No two walks are ever the same when it comes to being caught by the light around Mauao. This morning was superbly special.
It seemed like Mother Nature had put on her best summer frock and was dancing to the tune of Chris de Berg's Lady in Red. From the first corner past the first gate, it was all on and all red. Not just a ruby-red of visual feast but an eye-kissing crimson you could share the breath of life with from 20 paces.
And hongi her, I did. In fact she was so vivaciously vibrant that I could almost taste the fat kina embroidered into the lacy foreshores of her flash frock. And I wasn't the only one.
There must have been a whole lot of hui on with permits aplenty for extra kai moana on the wharekai table, because there were more waka than a rowing regatta parked up off Kuia Rock. But then again they may have all been vegetarians, eh? And Mr Maf had nothing to worry about.
Each new corner greeted me with a new celebration of summer. Little rock pools with lots of little bright bandanas and colourful caps, butterfly nets and bucket at the ready. All looking for that gi-normous, big-as cockabully, that will grow as the story travels back to the classroom.
And then what I call "the walk of life". The twisted time tunnel that winds along the backside of Mauao like a pre-historic cathedral with no particular pattern or reason. A crimson corridor only a live audience can appreciate and an inner sanctum that no camera lens or artists easel could ever capture in its entirety.
Then to burst out, through the corridor, facing Matakana Island, was like a lonely surfer leaving the green room of a perfect wave. And all the while Mother Nature and her mates on Mauao kept soothing my soul and washing old thoughts from my word processor.
The busy and the dizzy thoughts walked away like an outgoing tide to the other side of wherever it is they both come from. Who built what where mattered about as much as who joined John to unlock the Opposition's key. Humour is never to distant in my thinking even when I am chilled out. I couldn't help coming up with the initials of KGB as the new trifecta for the new National party (Keys, Gerry & Bill)
And perhaps Bono could plant a pohutukawa up on None Tree Hill while he is in town, so next time they come to town they will have a real venue to play on New Year's Day.
And that's about where I got to on my walk of life as I reached the waters edge, alongside the statue of Tangaroa, who is a bit like Mona Lisa. You never quite know where or what he is looking at. But he didn't seem to care and by that time nor did I.
It was another U2 song that came to mind on the last leg of my walk. Well two of them really. The first was when the sun came out and the sand said "give it your best shot big fulla" I was in that water quicker than a born again baptism, with no togs or towel.
The other U2 song in my mind as I passed the abandoned Pilot Bay jetty was "I still haven't found what I am looking for". And I guess that song says it all about my wonderful walk, backwards, around Mauao. I may have not found what I am looking for but life is a garden and I am digging it.