Thanks, Bill. and Doug,
Yes, ‘sometimes' - several slack moments thereabouts.
I wonder where in the world besides NZ those surveyors’ marks still show up.
Not easy to find on google images - but ‘trig station New Zealand’ comes up with a couple.
The NZ poet John Allison has just emailed me his boyhood memories -
going bush with his father the surveyor,
who had designed a folding portable wooden trig rig and humped them up hills…in the South Island too.
And another old NZ friend recalled his surveyor uncle nearing retirement
trying to conscript the lad into a profession
which he could see was very hard at any time of year.
Max
On Sep 17, 2015, at 7:55, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> The first part reminds me of my bus trips, admittedly south from Christchurch in the late 80s, Max. But I didn’t recognize the trig sites. Drove a good part of the North island too: both having that elder beauty….
>
> This meanwhile catching the remembrance… in action in the young mind recalled…
>
> Doug
> On Sep 16, 2015, at 8:57 AM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Trig
>>
>> Through the side windows of Dad’s car
>> the North Island rolled by in colour -
>>
>> greens mostly, easy on the eye.
>> Rain would pass over, dulling it all,
>>
>> also keeping it green.
>> Sun again - glinting cabbage trees -
>>
>> rail tracks - isolated farm houses -
>> dark front hedges, sometimes
>>
>> hydrangeas - petrol stations -
>> not much in the way of towns.
>>
>> Sheep - dairy herds - some stud bull
>> alone with its dark bulk.
>>
>> Pine forests, cut through rawly
>> by tough loggers. Fire warnings.
>>
>> Recurring, on bare hilltops,
>> structures of wood shaped
>>
>> to a point - Dad said: just
>> another trig station.
>>
>> Trig, intriguing word.
>> What for? Oh, surveying.
>>
>> Might I become a surveyor?
>> They worked with tripods -
>>
>> theodolites, squinting.
>> The country rested on them.
>>
>> I mapped in mind a long walk
>> up every hill, touching each
>>
>> trig station, taking in views,
>> down and up to the next one.
>>
>> Why not carry a tent? - cloth shaped
>> to fit the trig shape; sleeping bag...
>>
>> but when a storm passed over,
>> lightning might strike the top.
>>
>> Stars every clear night, sun-up,
>> breakfast, and onward. The length
>>
>> of the whole island, and then?
>> He never took us past Wellington.
>>
>> Waiting for me much later, unrolled
>> the slow cruise along the Sound
>>
>> to Picton - and even lonelier,
>> far-flung trig stations of the South.
>
> Douglas Barbour
> [log in to unmask]
>
> Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuation 2 (UofAPress).
> Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
>
> Done in by creation itself.
>
> I mean the gods. Not us. Well us too.
> The gods moved into books. Who wrote the books?
> We wrote the books. In whose dream, then are we dreaming?
>
> Robert Kroetsch.
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