Yesterday, we went for a walk up Mount Pirongia in the Waikato region of New Zealand. The New Zealand forest is a myriad of greens, primordial and ancient. Mosses and lichens drape the rocks, glistening liverworts grow over ochre soils and the canopy of grey-green kahikatea casts shadows and sun-dapples down through treeferns and onto the red-green tongues of the parataniwha. New Zealand forest has a mythic feel to it, and yesterday did not disappoint. Besides the tangles of supplejack vines and strange little gullies and hollows, the tangles of roots form themselves into strange magic tunnels along the trackway. Gloomy little holes, where it’s easy to imagine old things of the earth might lie sleeping. I took a photo of one of these little elemental lairs so you can see what I mean. Quite the suitable home for some charmed flax-fairy, tipua or patupaiarehe.