Looking west

I’ll have you know I have become a chicken carrying pro in the past few days. The trick is to secure their legs between your fingers and nestle them firmly (but gently) against your chest. You pick them up when they are settled down for the night and they barely even raise a sqwark, they just quietly bok bok bok at you. My uncle has been endeavouring to re-settle his adolescent chooks. Great change is afoot in their lives, and they really don’t seem to like it. They are being shifted out of the cosy barn of their chickhood and being taught to roost in the chicken coop with the grownups. Only every day they strut and flap their way back to the barn and every evening, we pick them up and carry them back to the coop, hoping they will get the idea. Either they are resistant to change or their pee-brains really cannot fathom what it is we are trying to get them to do. Or perhaps, they just know were home is. Either way, I have recently discovered that not all chickens are cute and friendly. Some in fact, are vicious beyond their size and position in the pecking order. Yesterday evening for instance my aunty was attacked by a rooster. As she bent to fill their water bowl it jumped onto her head, sinking its talons into each side of her skull before running away behind the coop he shares with his three girls. I know now to avoid the rooster with white ear-flaps, especially when he’s at home. (Although let’s be honest, if he turns on me, I’ll get my chicken and cashew nut stir fry recipe out faster than you can say “I feel like chicken tonight.” Consider yourself warned Mr Rooster.)

The other day we packed up the mountain bikes, hiking gear, the two horses Katie and Sam and a picnic lunch and drove out to a National Park near Rotorua. Rotorua reeks of the sulphur steaming and bubbling up from the earths’ core that attracts thousands of tourists every year. They come to admire mother earth’s power – trust me, not even the worst fart compares to the stench she can emit. Holding our noses we wound our way past Lake Rotorua, its surface so peacefully undisturbed the mountains around it were perfectly reflected in it, and drove on up through some mountains, past a Redwood forest towards the Blue Lake. Only this funky smelling but otherwise picturesque story of our day trip ends here - on a patch of grass beside the road where we pulled over when the horse float brakes jammed on and literally brought the whole escapade to a screaming halt. Two hours later, with the brakes finally released, the horses were coaxed back onto the float and we turned around and headed straight home. Back on the farm Katie and Sam, stressed and sweaty from the trip, tore down the hill into their paddock and gleefully rolled all over the grass, glad to be out of the silly box on wheels and back in their paddock. Home sweet home, they seemed to say. Yesterday we took a drive out to where my mum grew up. The old family house was on Barrett Road, a road named after my family, who opened the first self-service supermarket in Tauranga in the early 1960s. The Barrett empire was a family affair, the supermarket and butchers were jointly owned by my Poppa, his two brothers, sister and their families. Long since sold off and renamed, the supermarket and butchers still stand there at the end of Barrett Road. It was an unfamiliar feeling standing in the butchers looking at the board of photos from 50 years ago of my Nana, Poppa and great aunties and uncles. It is unknown to me to have family history with stories going back two or three generations that connect me to a place. Although on my Dad’s side of the family it’s a similar scenario, our family lineage goes back to the pioneering days of the Waikato region. There’s so much I don’t know about this place, I’ve realised, although at the same time I am inextricably tied to it.

Looking westward whilst my uncle tossed chicken feed between the barn and the coop, trying once more to coax the chickens towards their new home, I watched the last bit of day disappear behind the distant pines. Here, surrounded by family I am at home. But even so I know that out west, far away west is my home. It is where I grew up, where I can pronounce the place names, where my heart lies and where right now, I most want to be. Home is a funny concept, so crucial to our sense of self. It exists at the nexus between people and place. The people that are dear to you can make you want to run away from a place and they can make you never want to leave it - they make a place home. Right now, gazing out my window at the westward bound mid-morning clouds, I know I belong were the day is only just dawning, where Yellow Betty waits and where still curled up in bed (quite likely with a hangover) lies a whole pile of happiness.