“Our” planet’s water surfaces are all shifting, always.
This reality is not always readily apparent.
It is, however, strikingly evident when one looks across a substantial intertidal zone when the tide is “out”.
This post’s musical component is Surface Level III – a particularly beautiful piece from Appearance, Chris Abrahams’ 2020 solo piano album.
Just southeast of Christchurch, the Banks Peninsula juts from New Zealand’s South Island like a hitchhiker’s thumb.
On closer inspection – most especially from the skies above the peninsula, or from its high points – the Banks Peninsula’s spectacularly indented shoreline makes inescapably obvious that volcanic eruptions were its parents.
Two of its prodigiously-many indentations are very much bigger than the others.
On the south side is Akaroa Harbour.
On the north – pictured above – is Whakaraupo/ Lyttelton Harbour.
The port at Lyttelton is the South Island’s principal seaport; it sits on the north side of Whakaraupo, at the foot of the Port Hills which separate it from Christchurch and the Canterbury Plains.
I took the photo at 2.23 pm on 4 July 2010, en route back to Christchurch after several days on the Banks Peninsula.
The winter afternoon weather was glorious, but black ice had only recently released its slippy grip on well-shaded sections of local roads.
At 2.23 pm my beloved and I were at or near Head of the Bay, looking northeast across Whakaraupo toward Lyttelton.
Several hundred years of human habitation have wreaked enormous degradation upon the Banks Peninsula.
It is, nonetheless, a magnificent place…and some parts of its once-dominant forests have recently begun their several centuries of recovery.
Banks Peninsula human history only extends over seven centuries or so of Maori occupation.
James Cook, in 1770, was its first European “discoverer”.
Discover more about the Banks Peinsula, here.
For an overview of intertidal zones, click this
One day, a Pelican Yoga post will feature a selection of my intertidal images.
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New Zealand born, but long resident in Australia, Chris Abrahams is best known as the Necks’ keyboardist.
Chris has always done various other, also-interesting things, including his (very) occasional solo piano albums.
The current one lives here.