Landscape Under Snow

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 941, 23 August 1957, Page 22

Landscape Under Snow

by

SUNDOWNER

AUGUST 3

DON’T know how old the hills around Dunedin are geologically, or the valleys, or the bush. I have no geology, and no astronomy. But when I saw the hills under snow last week, and the city under a half-grown moon, I wondered how often the two had arrived together in the last 100 years, and how

many million times it had happened before there was a human eye

to see it. Though it is difficult to imagine an uninhabited Europe or Asia, the mind turns easily. to a manless New Zealand, and is not disturbed by the vision. The disturbing thought is that the human race has not learnt in a hundred thousand years to be satisfied with earthly visions. When such a sight breaks on us as Dunedin presented last week we call it unearthly, as if we knew, or had ever known, what unearthly appearances are. I can see no. sin in enjoying the earth, and no folly in clinging to it. Though men in all ages have reached out for something more-for beauty that endures and happiness that will never pass-it is a bad preparation for eternal bliss to refuse the bliss within reach. I see more wisdom and piety in the attitude of my old friend Charlie Johnstone who greeted me as I passed through Beaumont. When I asked if he was well, he said, "Very well. It’s a good world, and Beaumont is the best part of it." _ a. =e

AUGUST 5

7. T was lucky for Otago’s winter shearers that snow came before the machines started. I am not going to call it a warning, or suggest that anyone thought it a warning; but they must all have thanked God

for their escape-if "all" does not exaggerate their numbers, I am not in a position to know how numerous this bold company is. I

hope that it is only five or six

| or seven or eight; and if it is I know half of them. But if it is 50 or 60 or 70 or 80 that is still a long way short of most farmers, or many farmers, or a considerable proportion of farmers, Otago and Canterbury between them seem to have about 7000 farmers chiefly oecupied with sheep, but I drove more than 500 miles last week before I saw a single sheep without a fleece. Then I came on a shed in North Otago in which shearing had just started. This means that I could multiply all my estimates by 10 -suppose the winter shearers to number 500 or 600 or 700 or 800and still have nearly 90 in every 100 farmers who refuse to be persuaded that it is not necessary for God to temper the wind to the

shorn lamb, since the lamb can do the tempering faster itself. I noticed, too, during the first few hours of the storm, when it was my misfortune to be on the road, that every woolly flock’ without exception, and, as far as I could see without letting my eyes wander too dangerously, every individual sheep, moved to shelter if the paddock provided any. Where there were gullies, the sheep were in those. Where there were no gullies, but trees or bushes or hedges or scrub, the sheep moved into them. Where there were only wire fences on flat bare paddocks the sheep streamed along those, or stood pathetically against them. I saw nothing anywhere to support the argument that woolly sheep forget to take shelter and in a storm lose their lambs, Perhaps it is only laboratory animals that do that -symbolical’ sheep composed of tendencies and coefficients, fed on indices, and fenced in with Q.E.D.’s.

AUGUST 6

Sd bad bd | WISH I knew why owls do cry--in the middle of the night and the dead of winter. Crying in spring and summer can be understood, if it is understanding a natural fact to be able to think of a reason for it. But what reason can there be for a continuously repeated cry from the bare branches of a walnut

tree in 20 degrees of frost? Why is the owl there to begin with,

instead of in a bushy pine where all its potential victims are sleeping? It was suggested to me once that owls cry to frighten small birds into revealing (continued on next page)

their position by a momentary fluttering. That is ingenious, but I don’t think it can be the real story unless the eyes of an owl are less sharp than we think they are. I suspect that owls have no difficulty at all, in any season of the year, in finding all the birds they want, and that if they ever became really numerous not many small birds would survive. Of course, the owls would then decline, too, until the balance was restored again. One result of their insistent calling must be that we hear nearly all the owls our plantations hold; and the number, I am sure, is not large. Two or three pairs could easily be the full owl population of most homesteads, and I would be surprised to learn that it is often more than three or four pairs. But I can’t think why they are so anxious to reveal themselves. If there was music in their call, or any kind of excitement or exuberance, I could suppose that they call for the same reason as men and women sing-not to pleage others but to please themselves; that they make a noise because they can make a noise; and that, like men, they are incapable of hearing themselves as others hear them, But men don’t have to capture their meat by stealth or terror, though they perhaps did once. They don’t have to mesmerise somebody or go without a meal. If they did, they would not whistle and sing in the bathroom. Perhaps owls do cry after a meal and not before it, and the cry is their expression of satisfaction. In that case male and female would both cry, and I am not sure that both do. If only the male cries, he is saying something to the female. It is difficult to have opinions without facts, though it is common enough, The only fact of which I feel sure is that the habit has been observed and explained, that there is a neat little exposition in some book, and that if I came on it, I would probably refuse to accept it. (To be continued)