Chapter Twelve: We Had a Farm in New Zealand

Water, space, light, and something dark

Dec 16, 2023

a person drowns underwater — Photo by Stormseeker on Unsplash

My own mother, Eva, always said about me, he wants the whole world and a big slice of the moon. Beau and I had decided to spend the night camping out on our beach and we took the dogs with us. Sophie and Deva were running all around the paddock as Beau and I walked from one side of the upper paddock to the other. Looking out at Doubtless Bay I thought, She was right. Mom was right. The whole world and a big slice of the moon.

It was still afternoon, but a big slice of white moon was already rising in the blue cloudless sky over the curving arm of the Hihi Peninsula to the right. The sun was heading west over the curving arm of the Karikari Peninsula to the left. And straight out across the big ten-mile circle of Doubtless Bay, straight out beyond its embrace lay the open ocean, the South South Pacific, looking north to Fiji and Tonga and Samoa and the Cook Islands and Nouvelle-Calédonie.

Our farm sits right on the middle of the south edge of “doubtless a bay” and the coast runs west and east from our farm and then curves slowly inwards in those two gigantic arms stretching slowly northwards, northwards and then a little inwards towards each other, leaving that wide opening to the Sea, an opening almost seven miles across. Standing here, you are embraced by the earth and Doubtless Bay is embraced by the two curving arms of its peninsulas.

Before going down to the beach, we dropped our sleeping bags and the dog beds and a few camping supplies on the saddle between the two headlands and began walking back and forth across the farm. The green winter pasture grass was long. We had taken all the stock off the coastal paddocks to prevent erosion and had started planting the rather steep coastal slopes with native trees to hold the soil and beautify the hills leading down to the beach. On each side of the farm, the land rises to a hill about 50 meters—or 160 feet—above the Sea, and the land in between forms a natural half amphitheater which curves around and out, facing the Sea. Everything here mirrors the harmony of the far peninsulas.

Below is a golden sand and shell beach, protected on each side by volcanic rock formations, rock arms which extend out and curve inward, again mirroring the distant peninsulas. The entire ensemble, violently created by ancient eruptions from the earth’s interior and by massive movements of the earth’s crust, are now settled into this most harmonious and peaceful of vistas. The gentle surf rolled in below, soothing in its rhythm, soothing in its white foam on turquoise-green-blue waters, sands golden soft and golden warm in the winter’s comforting afternoon light slanting from the west.

Each headland, to the west and to the east, to the left and to the right, had been pointed out to us by Maddy Jane’s son Graham as ideal locations for building our house. Beau and I walked slowly back and forth from one headland to the other. One could not have been more perfect than the other. We went back and forth several times and sat on each spot for a long while, imaging a home here, then there, but could decide nothing.

“If we build—”

My leukemia was still known only to the two of us, and Doc S. of course. What did it mean for us? Should we build our dream house in our dream land of New Zealand? Would I even survive long enough for the construction? We did not know. But we continued to act as if. Somehow a decision not to build seemed like giving up hope.

A few weeks back, prior to my diagnosis, we had decided to name the farm Vara Prasada. Most everyone in New Zealand gives a name to their farm or house, usually something Māori, Wakatipu or Wai-Rangi-Aho, something like that, or else they choose something very British, such as Grassmere or Cotswalds Cottage, something like that.

Beau and I had chosen Sanskrit. Vara Prasada. Here’s why. A few weeks before that conversation with Doc Stearns, I woke up in the middle of the night at the little house in Whatuwhiwhi. This was before Dee had surprised us with her visit. Beau was sleeping like a Prince, sleeping like a blessed Buddha, as he always does. And the cats and dogs were all sound asleep, sleeping like the blessed beloved ones of the universe, as they always do. I am usually the light sleeper of the family. But not this night.

I awoke from a deep sleep and a dream so vivid that it seemed to continue. Moonlight all through the little house gave everything a silver-white glow, the waters of Doubtless were making a gentle symphony below as the tide came in on the three different beaches around our point at different intervals, different songs based on the slope of the beaches and rocks and the different angles of the waves on the various shores. One, two, three and then repeated, one, two, three, the same soothing melodies. One. Two. Three. Crash. Swoosh. Faaaaan—

In the dream, I was standing in the native forest on our farm across the Bay. Beau and I were clearing dead brush and opening the neglected forest so we could walk through it beneath the old trees. Totara, kauri, rimu, pohutukawa, the giants of the native forest, and kawakawa, karaka, puka, kohekohe— Now we had really been doing this in waking life those days, clearing the underbrush and opening the beautiful forest, and planting native trees on the slopes above the beach, preparing the land to welcome the home we wanted to build. Land on which no home had ever been built. Land which was all native forest until most of it was cleared by the Reverend’s descendants for pasture. We loved the fact that this land we had bought was, as far as human homes went, new territory.

So in the dream, we were doing what we had actually been doing for those days and weeks. But now I was aware of a man, a very tall man, maybe fifteen feet high, a giant, standing behind me and to the right of me, just over my right shoulder. I could see him although I never turned around. He said one thing and that is what awakened me.

The name of this farm is Sacred Gifts

And so we named the farm “Sacred Gifts.” Vara Prasada. After a little research, we decided against Māori because the word “sacred” in Māori is the word “tapu,” from which we derive the English word “taboo.” Tapu means both “sacred” and “forbidden.” To be sacred, prohibited, restricted, set apart. We did not want that additional layer of meaning. Forbidden, restricted. In my dream, the naming of this farm had been expansive, all-inclusive, open and sacred.

The name of this farm is Sacred Gifts

We did not want to use English. I thought it might sound as if we were going to open a New Age/Angel/Sacred Gifts/Crystals/Dream-Catcher Shop for “tourists to the Spiritual Vortex of New Zealand. Lemurian vortex.” Way too LA-LA even though we are from California and I tend to believe that just about everything that can’t be disproved just might be true. And probably is on some level of being and consciousness.

So we emailed Beau’s friend and colleague back at IBM, Asita Prabhushankar, asked her to find out how to say it in Sanskrit, the ancient sacred language of India. Both Beau and I have been pulled into the world of the Vedas and Upanishads and the world of Buddhism since our first trek in the Himalayas in 1885. Whoops. Typo. 1985. What would Freud say? (What would a Holy Man from the Himalayas say? What happened in the Himalayas in 1885? Was I there?)

Asita’s father is an interesting person. He calls himself an atheist and he is one of the world’s true authorities on the Upanishads. He lectures about Vedanta to monks in monasteries all over India and has written volumes on these ancient, holy books.

This reminds me of what Vivekananda said. An atheist is God pretending not to believe in himself. Perhaps that is true. I would like to question Asita’s Dad about that.

Or about the Bhagavad-Gita. People may worship me in any form they wish. My only concern is the quality of love which is expressed in worship. I accept every kind of worship because I am supreme.

In any form they wish. Even atheism. Of course. As long as the quality of love for the creation is there—

So the word came back from India. Vara Prasada. So.

The Name of this Farm is Vara Prasada

Aaron do you know you have leukemia

Now, while the dogs played and hunted for field mice and lizards, Beau and I continued to walk, back and forth, headland to headland. The view from each is magnificent, each with a slightly different perspective of Doubtless Bay and of the rocks and beach below. On the third or fourth time that we reached the headland on the west, we both fell silent. We had been discussing the relative merits of each as though a decision about building a house had already been reached, as though we were going forward with our dream project. Though we knew we were still undecided.

“It is as beautiful from here, Beau, as from over there, maybe more, we’d be sitting out here a little more and we’d have a view of little Puketu Island over there as well as the entire sweep of Tokerau Beach, all ten or twelve miles of it. But I don’t know. It doesn’t seem right. I don’t know why.” I turned to look over my shoulder at the paddock behind us. It swept back and then up to the highest point on our farm, up on our western fence-line. “I don’t want to build here. I don’t know why, Beau. It feels as if there is something very big and very heavy back up there. Very dark. Just up and above me. I don’t know what this is or even how to express it. But I can feel it. It’s palpable. This is not the place for our house.”

We started back towards the other headland yet again, feeling a little dejected, something unnamed, unnamable. When we got to the center between the two headlands, without a word, we both sat down in the long grass, just where we had dropped our camping gear. Long silence, just watching the waves roll in on Vara Prasada Beach. Suddenly I realized, this is it, this is the spot. Neither of us said a word but Beau stood up slowly and held both arms out chest high and then curved his arms around as though embracing a giant tree trunk three or four times bigger than him.

“Right here,” he said. “Right here on this spot.” His arms were mirrored by the land to the left and to the right as it curved out on each side to embrace the sea, they were mirrored by the volcanic formations on either side of the beach centered below us, mirrored by those rocks which reached out to embrace and be embraced by the waves, they were mirrored by the long and distant peninsulas to the west and to the east as they curved out and embraced and half enclosed Doubtless Bay. From right here, everything was in harmony, double, triple harmony, and the open Sea was straight ahead, right down through the middle of the open arms, open arms of Beau, open arms of the land, open arms of the rocks below and open arms of the vast peninsulas beyond. Open to the sea, open to the sky beyond, open to the universe and all possibilities.

“Yes, if we build, we will build right here,” he said. But I think at that moment a decision made itself for us. We would build. There was no “if” present.

And we would live here until it was time to let it all go. It happens to everyone, nothing personal. You just have to let it all go. Some just sooner than others.

We picked up our gear and started off down the steep track to the beach. Sophie and Deva ran along after us, panting with the joy of the fields, the joy of running and smelling and seeing, the pure joy of being alive and energetic and healthy. What joy!

When we reached the sand, we stopped and watched the waves jostle into the long narrow, intrusive volcanic dike that leads up and through the rock formations on the western side of the beach. Eons ago, this trench was filled with a softer stone, long since eroded away by the relentless waves, leaving the hard and black volcanic rock with a perfect trench about fifteen feet across, straight sides cut away and dropping down ten or more feet to the sandy bottom. When the waves are violent, the ocean runs up this trench and then crashes heavenward, sometimes sixty or seventy feet in the air. Today was calm, calm sea, calm sky, calm steady light. Calm Aaron. Calm Beau.

Water, space, light. We watched the waves rolling in and then without a word, we started across the sand to the far side of the beach. Our favorite spot down here is against the cliff face and under two giant spreading pohutukawa trees whose trunks and branches have been growing here from this rock face for more than 600 years. Metrosideros excelsa. Metrosideros, Heart of Iron. Excelsa, the Highest.

Gloria in excelsis Deo

These glorious intertwined trees are seventy or more feet tall, with gnarled trunks growing right out of the cliff’s rock face and long, gnarled and far-reaching branches growing down onto the beach and then up again like separate trees. In here is a magical world of dark branches and dark green leaves and broken moving light and blue sky etched with branches and leaves and bearded aerial roots, and a magical world of the sound of the ocean coming up against the cliffs and reverberating more softly.

Beau and I had already planted hundreds of little pohutukawas on our farm, little trees no more than two feet high. In distant days they would all be hundreds of years old, reaching out over some others’ heads, some other dogs, some others’ lives.

Metrosideros. Excelsa. In the Highest—

Here we place our mats on the sand and prepare our sleeping bags and the dog beds. Little Sophie is over on the sea rocks trying to get to the crabs who escape sideways from her, who hide just out of her reach in the volcanic crevices. Big Deva is content to walk back and forth and wag her strong tail and watch Sophie’s hopeless antics. Beau and I settle down to watch the sun set in the west. To sleep on our farm for the first time.

The whole world and a slice of the moon

Through the pohutukawa branches

Dreams perhaps

Distant past

Distant future

Future near

Dreamless present

No past No future

Always already Enlightened

In the middle of the night, our two dogs throw themselves at the surf, barking and snarling furiously. A small boat is landing in the moonlight, the moon has moved over to the west now, and seven or eight figures are jumping out of the boat and on to the sand, now they are hauling the boat further up the sand.

END OF CHAPTER TWELVE

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Aaron Allbright’s novel in five parts will be published on Substack.