🥝 Changing Seasons
Matakana, Omaha and Tawharanui
There is never a shortage of awe and inspiration to be found outdoors. (…) We don’t have to understand nature to appreciate it. This is true of all things. — Rick Rubin
Some weeks ago, we took a car and drove for about an hour north-east of Auckland on a sunny Saturday. It is incredible how beautiful the landscape of these lands is: something reminiscent of the English countryside with those soft green hills, but touched with a tropical flavour of evergreen palm trees and gorgeous long almost-virgin beaches.
The first stop of our day trip was Matakana’s Farmer’s Market for breakfast. A little enclave of a village with so much vibrancy on a Saturday morning. I popped into the bookshop and found 2 books to add to my collection of Architecture Walking Guides: Wellington and Christchurch (both in preparation for future planned trips).
After breakfast, we headed east to Omaha Beach, where I stayed sketching while my friends had a (cold) swim. The light was beautiful, and the beach was very quiet. The sky was blending with the ocean, and at the back, one could get a glimpse of The Little Barrier Island, present as a backdrop for the rest of our day.
We had lunch back at Matakana and then headed south to Tawharanui Peninsula. We entered the gated Tawharanui Regional Park playing Jurassic Park’s soundtrack in the car, and we enjoyed the rest of the afternoon walking along the bay and hiking the area. We finished the day sitting on the top of a rock at the beach watching the sunset.
On our way back to Auckland it got dark, and the city offered us a colourful RGB Sky Tower and all the city lights.
I have been craving Springtime for a whole year.
We moved from London to Auckland in February, and after a long dark winter, we went straight into a wet, rainy Autumn here in the Southern Hemisphere. I called this my Springless Year. And, very much inspired by David Hockney’s Spring Cannot Be Cancelled, I set myself the task of paying more attention to the arrival of spring here and now in Aotearoa New Zealand. The thing is, apparently, very few of the native trees are deciduous (I recently learned this word in English), that is, they lose their leaves in Winter. Auckland and the Northlands have quite a sub-tropical climate, with lots of evergreen species. Spring is only noticeable in very small doses. Yet there is a strong change in light.
Seasons, especially the changing times between them, are a great source of creative inspiration. Change happens quickly and forces us to notice: the trees, the light, the smells... We can also find that source of energy and inspiration in the way we look if we make the effort of being more connected with our surroundings. Rick Rubin puts it nicely in his book The Creative Act: A Way of Being, a book I’m currently enjoying reading:
Deepening our connection to nature will serve our spirit, and what serves our spirit invariably serves our artistic output. — Rick Rubin
Go out and notice the change in seasons. Get inspired. Capture it, sketch it.
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Happy beginning of Spring in these lands, happy Autumn in the northern ones, and happy sketching, everyone!
Ana
We're heading into Autumn now in the UK and it seems like it will be a long time before we see Spring. It would be nice if we could follow our favourite season around the world... hopping from country to country to keep on enjoying it.