When the tail end of Cyclone Gabrielle spun away from us in Pauatahanui things became eerily still. I had an intense urge to climb up somewhere, perhaps to try and make sense of the climate tragedy that just happened further north. At the top of Kahu Road the rain and wind departed and the sky started to clear. The only sound was the intense ringing of cicadas, as if shouting out the shock that vibrated through our collective psyche.
Days before, the vast cyclone had spiralled southeast across the Pacific Ocean, hitting northern and eastern Aotearoa with unimaginable consequences, sweeping away lives, homes and livelihoods with epic floods and landslides.
It’s hard to comprehend the scale of the impact, loss and pain. Just a few hours’ drive from here, in the Hawkes Bay, friends of ours, like so many others there, are lucky to be alive, plucked from their roof by rescue helicopters. Everything else lost in a wall of water, silt and slash. More-than-human stories are also emerging. Cats, dogs, horses, cows, pigs, bees and hives, chickens and trees which were not washed away by the torrents have somehow survived, injured, contaminated, homeless. Among them, goldfish rescued from a drain.
Edge of Things 