THE CRYSTAL POOL

WHEN the days were fine we would make the trek up into the bush. The farm went all the way to where the land rears up steeply into the foothills of Mount Taranaki. There was a little stream which flowed through the farm. Iain had speared a big eel there the previous summer. The boys were determined to show me the Crystal Pool, so we followed this stream into the deep bush. I always thought that I was quite fit but picking my way through the tangle of creepers that littered the stream bed was shattering. It was a slow, hard climb in the hot sun, squeezing through gaps and climbing over rocks as big as houses. I can tell you rocks that size are tricky to climb, especially in gumboots. After about twenty minutes we all stopped talking and just moved on doggedly, trying to save our energy. The only sounds were our panting gasps and Jamie singing softly to himself. I didn’t mind the singing here because it seemed to give us a walking rhythm.

Then, just like that, we were there. It’s completely hidden until you squeeze through the manuka and there’s a pool about the size of a tennis court with a waterfall at one side. It looks as if no one has ever been here before. It’s really quiet, all you can hear is a trickling noise, the wind doesn’t blow, it sort of passes over the top and the water is that green colour you see when you look at a piece of glass from the side.

It’s a perfect place. Everything is just where it should be. Placed with precision and care. I can’t imagine anything more beautiful. All I could do that day was sit on a rock nearby struggling to take it all in.

The others stripped off their clothes and jumped in. They’d been there before and knew what to expect. They must have forgotten what it felt like to see something like this for the first time. How you’re sort of winded by beauty.

All I wanted to do was stare at it. Let it pour into me, and fill every part with its perfection. I wished I could memorise every stone, every fern leaf, the soft green moss I sat on. Part of me knew there was something in this place. Something would make me stronger. Not my muscles, but on the inside where things were not good. Maybe feed the things that were shrivelled or dying.

I could have easily sat there all afternoon but the boys kept calling for me to come. I stood up slowly, my legs stiff from the climb, took my clothes off and jumped in. The water was breathtakingly cold. It shocked me like a punch to the heart. So cold in fact, that I couldn’t speak: now that’s real cold, I can tell you.

Amazingly enough, after a while my body got used to it and soon I was diving to the bottom with the best of them. Jamie and Iain showed me a trick they do. You put a boulder on your lap and sit on the bottom. Then you can enjoy the underwater world without constantly struggling to stay down. At one stage there were three of us all sitting around, like we’re having a conversation: with huge globs of bubbles coming out of our mouths, hair floating above our heads, and all the while, we were nursing these big rocks like babies. From where we were seated you could look around the whole pool from side to side. I watched one of the twins dog-paddling his way across the silver surface.

Later, when we were all beginning to look a bit blue around our straggly bits we stretched out on the huge boulders at the waterfall end. No one had brought a towel so we dried out just lying there.

“What’s your greatest dream, Sandy?” asked Dougal.

I couldn’t think of one. “I dunno, what’s yours, Iain?”

“We often play this, it’s Mum’s game really. When I was younger I had this ambition to drive a road train across Australia.”

“Road train, what’s that?”

“It’s a truck they have out there, a truck with six trailers. Now I think I would like to climb this mountain in Hawai’i and look into its crater. There’s a lake in it, full of molten rock.”