From my view, up here over home, I wrote twisting stories, staring out my window. I realised I didn’t need the fabricated circadian rhythm of the city to stimulate my senses.

And over the land, a sleeping mist crept. 

E hoa, this is our time, let’s go home and wānanga with the Zooms, and the moons, and our mums. And our tūpuna maunga that cast their hā over our days... happy that we finally see them again...

That crappy aluminium frame the only thing I really ‘owned’, so to speak, when I looked north from my bedroom-home-office to Manaia mountain.

Pandemic.

I left the scenery of Tāmaki lights for the healing lands of Te Taitokerau and like many others, my world got so close that everything in it I could touch, and see just outside my window. An experience of being nowhere more present than on the inside peering out. Huddled and sheltering from an invisible storm.

This view taught me to stand still, like the maunga does. Soak up the aural-soundscape: joyous giggles of tamariki streaming past me daily. Those state-mandated hikoi finally got more whānau on the sidewalk. My niece and nephew doing loops on scooters, searching the seashore, and rediscovering their superpowers. 

This view, though, looks back. Not something you can own, but from whom my mana is connected to. Manaia Maunga, jagged peaks define the story of an eponymous ancestor of Ngātiwai. Frozen in time. Maybe Manaia was waiting out a pandemic, sis?! Waiting for a time that our earth could breathe again. Less pollution. Less road rage. Less single-use coffee cups. We’re just waiting for less racism, and then maybe Manaia will awaken and so will we. 

Maybe, even, the view brought me hope.

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