I know it wouldn’t be top of the list for most people, but I’m a bit pleased about the new walking route to work I figured out last week. (In case you haven’t noticed, I lead a quiet life.)
I live in the suburbia behind Te Ahumairangi Hill, and to get into town I must traverse the hill’s shoulders (over the top is doable, but not paved). For the last ten years I’ve walked around the southern end of the hill; and this has been from where I’ve taken a series of 211 photos over the past seven.
But it turns out that my new way, around the northern shoulder of the hill, is about 500m shorter, and quite a bit faster with a long shallow gradient that can be walked down at speed. And I get to look at a whole new bunch of things on the way.
This morning I had to go to work a little earlier than usual and the sun was just over the eastern rim of the harbour. I was rewarded with this photo down Wade Street:
And closer to town there was this rather large chap:
It (probably a “she”, but I’m not sure) had been sitting on a pole beside the Molesworth Street overbridge most of last week, the only nearby cover a patch of low and likely inedible conifers, and I meant to shift it into the undergrowth before it got eaten or otherwise killed.
Each day I would note the beast but keep walking on, fixated on reaching work in time (why, I know not). Usually a couple hundred metres down Molesworth Street I’d think I should have rescued it but of course by then I was never going to circle back for it.
Even after the weekend’s storm I was surprised to see it was still there today, so I picked it off and carried it into the nearest patch of likely looking native plants, its legs slow windmilling until it found purchase on a broadleaf.
This was, I am pleased to report, the highlight of my working day.
