“Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps 20. And yet it all seems limitless.”

― Paul Bowles

Today’s snow up on Hemi, the ridge that I live in the lee of, has me thinking of things that happen that we measure our lives out with. In this temperate environment and along this strip of western coast that is heavily moderated by the Tasman Ocean a dusting of snow up on Hemi Matenga is, so far, a roughly regular half decade occurrence. It seems as good a measure as any. Even if it isn’t a good measure my brain has chosen to use it as a scale, so there we are.

The Great Snow of 2011

2011 is known as ‘The Great Snow’ as it was a particularly heavy snow year. The South Island was white to the sea, Wellington had snow right to relatively central hill suburbs and Auckland even got a short-lived dusting. I was happily living with partner and working at Regional Wines and Spirits. Both my parents were alive and my father was more or less still with us cognitively.

We ended up closing Regional early that week as it started to become treacherous for staff in hill suburbs to get home. There also were no customers as everyone else was headed home for drams by the heat pump. Sarah and me had a planned weekend at our bach here in Waikanae however the weather caused us to borrow her friends bach instead as it had an inside shower and toilet and a log burner. We lit the fire, drank beer, ate good food and it snowed right to the sea. I would be lying if I said I wouldn’t go back there.

Installing the brewery, 2015

It’s 2015 we are unloading the brewery vessels from the container that took a painfully long time to be filled and leave China. I take a moment between truckloads of stainless steel arriving to look up at Hemi Matenga. Above us the ridge is black liberally sprinkled with white like icing sugar on chocolate cake. Since 2011 my relationship has disintegrated. I’m living part of the week in the house in Island Bay, Sarah downstairs, me upstairs. I still work 3 days a week at Regional then I come up the coast for brewery install work. I stay in Sarah’s bach when I come up but this is proving untenable and the family is buying the house at Kapanui Rd. Living in town in close proximity to my ex is like surviving a car crash and then camping next to the wreckage on the highway shoulder. Both casualties are bleeding.
I don’t cook at Island Bay; I live on takeaways. My 20-year boycott of McDonalds ends as my breakfast needs outweigh my morals.   

A new world , 2021

Year 2 of the pandemic. It has changed the world in ways we realise and in others we are yet to grasp. I have lost my 2IC due to him being the loser in a lockdown love triangle. The need for the business to survive has for the moment paused the disintegration of my business partnership. My father’s body mercifully gave up before the virus turned residential care homes into biohazard containment units. Rosie the shih tzu dashound cross came to the end of her road. Ruby the fox terrier is in her prime. The great snow seems like a lifetime ago. In some ways I am not the same person as back then. My fallacies and faults are I am sure all still intact.

Hemi is dusted along the ridge. My new 2IC is from Auckland, we gave him some light-hearted shit about being a JAFA and not handling the cold. To spite us he has decided to wear short rugby shorts to work through every season. He is changing into his overalls while white gently builds up high above us.

All the time, 2026

This is the second winter where I haven’t had to solder out to the cold brewery to keep the beer flowing. I can now add business divorce to my list alongside the romantic one. After a false start finally the cold front has come through properly. Yesterday I walked the dog around the village between sleety showers as rainbows extended up to the heavens. I replenished the liquor cabinet with a bottle of scotch. Strictly medicinal you understand. This morning I stand barefoot at the end of the garden next to my compost bays. The vantage allows me to get a view of Hemi above. The ridge is white and the air is so fresh it should taste minty. Rubes doesn’t budge from her cocoon under the top blankets on the bed. Shortly after her warm body cures my cold toes.  I tweet it’s good to be alive and I mean it.