Magazine Articles
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Chicken Run
Chicken stress is real. If you know, you know. Chickens are a great idea, in theory. Also, in theory, theory and reality are the same thing. The idea is simple. You provide some hens with a safe place to sleep, food, water and some table scraps, and they provide you with plentiful, healthy and (crucially)…
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Beyond the graves
The 1964 guide to storied cemeteries of the rural South. When I was a kid, someone told me to hold my breath whenever I passed a graveyard, or else the souls of the dead would slip in. Boo! I still do it out of habit, which happens a lot when I’m travelling the roads of…
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Love stories
Romance writing is having a moment. We found this out after Wānaka-based writer Catherine Hart got in touch with us about sending us a romance-style story set in the town. Why not, we thought. A quick Google delivered promising headlines like ‘Gen Z loves smut. NZ authors are cashing in’. Thank you RNZ. And we…
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Young man in The Clutha
The heart can never grasp these unbearable early departures. —Jim Harrison, Complete Poems. The Clutha River ran misty blue in the hot summer of early 1969. Within a couple of decades the great river would be stilled by the dam at Clyde, but in early ’69 it charged through the gorge like a wild animal—seething,…
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Argonaut of the ice
Adventures at the ends of the earth are just another day at the office for Ben Comeskey. It was -25℃ outside, possibly even colder. And that was before factoring in wind chill, which Ben Comeskey says was considerable: sustained and roughly 60 knots, or more than 110 kilometres per hour. It was a never-ending roar.…
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Under the stars at the McIntosh Hut
A 5-to-9 adventure. We sweated up the last few metres and reached Long Gully Saddle, where we passed a sign telling us it was only another 30 minutes to our destination for the night. My calves burned, my bag felt heavy, the path felt steeper than any previous bit of the trail, and I kept…
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On a wing and a plank
Happy snow landings. High above New Zealand’s knife-edge Southern Alps, a single engine Pilatus Porter is aiming to achieve the outlandish. Aiding in its aerial quest are 600 horses of raw power, nearly 800 kilometres of range and velocity enough to make a bullet train sweat; this turboprop aircraft is a workhorse. But where it…
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The legend of Mrs H
“Enjoy yourself, that’s my advice.” Helen Hillary settles into her Lazyboy chair with her beloved Ragdoll cat Mandy on her lap. I’m visiting her at her home in Frankton, a suburb of Queenstown. She promises to tell “some higglety pigglety stories from my life at the top of the lake”. But where to start when…
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It’s only natural: The 1964 guide to nude tramping in New Zealand
If you’re wearing boots, are you really naked? It started with an Instagram post. A tramper on Mount Taranaki posted a photo of a fellow hiker. Taken, thankfully, from afar, and, also thankfully, from behind, it showed a man descending the mountain wearing nothing but a backpack, socks and boots. You could almost hear the…