food for the soul

He walks every morning now the restaurant is closed for the winter. The dog is glad to see him and freed, pees on everything upright he can find, once forward then turning around, once again the other way. He stops at the feijoa tree and pockets a couple of the fruit lying on the ground and biting the top off another,
squeezes the sweet/sour flesh into his mouth reminding himself to pick them all up later to freeze. Their season is too short and they usually get wasted.
Crossing the road onto Flaxmill Bay beach the sea is flat calm and the wet sand soft and hard to walk on. No john dory left high and dry but the resident pair of oyster catchers are cracking open pipis left by the overnight tide. The dog leaves them alone, remembering the dive bombing in the summer when they were nesting, but chases the seagulls off the end of the beach barking and plunging.
Climbing the cliff track it's darker and cooler as the bush closes in, a lone fantail chases the disturbed insects while the dog follows rabbit trails and the earthy smell of wet decay takes over the sea scents. It's a stiff climb and he has to stop to rest, not as fit as he would like to be after seven months in the kitchen. At the top where it opens out to a grassy paddock with huge scattered pohutukawa trees, the sun has risen and the view over Mercury Bay and right out to the Mercury Islands amazing.
Again the bush on the track down to Lonely Bay and onto the Democracy Steps designed by Japanese artist Akio Hizume on a musical score so walking them the body gets a rythym and they become easier and more interesting. The artists' three week stay opened up new creative possibilities with his mathematical principles based on the Fibonacci Series found in nature and the Eastern idea of the space being just as important as the object.
Checking his kinetic sculpture (water pouring from a chute into open bamboo on a pivot, when full, dips, empties and comes back with a thud to fill again) in the stream beside the steps he walks out through the flax onto his favourite beach.

Continued soon...