A Trip To The Beach

I'm lucky to live where I do. Despite the fact that I complain constantly to my parents about how far we are away from the Shore, making it a slight pain every time I want to go and see any of my friends, living on the edge of the urban sprawl certainly has its upsides. West Harbour is virtually the closest that one can live to the countryside without actually being in a rural area. One of my favourite weekend activities is to drive out towards Kumeu and Helensville, often sidetracking to the surfbeach at Muriwai. Living so far out makes doing this that much easier!

It usually takes around twenty minutes to get to Muriwai, and as a bonus it's a nice drive because there is not really a significant amount of traffic travelling in there on an average weekend. Upon reaching one's destination it is very easy to be overcome by sheer awe at the majesty of it all. As of this year, most of the times that I have been to Muriwai I have gone on my own. This affords me more ability to do exactly what I want to do; which is usually just to relax and make an attempt at taking it all in. There are carparks on the clifftops at Maori Bay. I can pull in there, put on my music and watch the waves, the surfers, and the paragliders taking off from the slope that leads down to the sea.

However, the real drawcard of Muriwai is most probably the gannet colony, which occupies a group of rock formations at the point that lies between Maori Bay and the main, occasionally over-populated surfbeach. The way that the water churns around there serves to boggle the mind. When I stand out on the viewing platform I feel completely separated from all the fuss that is going on in civilisation (which is, nonetheless, only twenty minutes away). There is a sense of being much more involved with the forces that are acting upon those cliffs than anything else. It's humbling to look out over the overwhelmingly blue Tasman Sea, which stretches uninterrupted all the way to the horizon, and down into the natural washing machine at the base of the gannet colony. At Muriwai, the scale of everything is accentuated tenfold. It's surreal in its scope.

It is easy for one to come to realise that the forces of nature acting upon Muriwai could easily destroy them. But in turn it's also established in the beholder that they could just as easily destroy the ocean, which harbours so many important aspects of the Earth, through various human means; in fact the ocean is the very reason that the entire coastal landscape at Muriwai exists in the form that it does. This brings one to the humbling realisation that every aspect of the entire system is important.

I very much like the idea that any individual on its own is insignificant, but the united whole of which it is a part is the absolute epitome of significance. It gives a thoroughly comforting sense that in the end, everything of nature is connected, and that as a result of that connection all of the Earth's creatures really do mean something. Every component of the Universe is special because without each one, the entirety would simply not be the same. Every person, every seabird, every wave and every tussock, every rock and every gust of wind, are all a part of the universal balance; and for the most seemingly tiny aspect missing there is a consequence.