"Son, take a good look around"

Me and Miss M joining some locals for the second-ever
Motueka Beach Reserve parkrun to kickstart Saturday morning

Craig every second Tuesday

Kia ora and gidday everyone,

Greetings from New Zealand! For the first time in far too long (a shade over three years), I'm back in the home country, sending you all best wishes and bookish goodness from the Tasman District in the Top of the South Island. 

I've lived and travelled around many places in the world, but for me this place will always be 'home'. 

I wasn't born here, but moved to Richmond in the Tasman District as a four-year-old, and did all of my schooling locally before moving away for university. My love for books and mystery fiction began here, at my primary school and local public library, along with the bookshelves full of fascinating tales at our home. Since then (yikes, coming towards 30 years ago), I've returned almost every year, often multiple times a year, and sometimes for weeks or months at a time, until fairly recently when things got disrupted by COVID then other life events. 

Without meaning to, I've only been back three times in the past six plus years; that's after having never in memory (since I was pre-4) had any calendar year without some time in the Top of the South, until 2020. 

So, yeah, it's great to be back. Miss M and I have been loving catching up with family and old friends and enjoying autumn weather that's been far sunnier/warmer than London's Spring. In a a few days we've managed to visit parts of the Abel Tasman, Nelson Lakes, and Kahurangi National Parks, along with The Brook Waimarama Sanctuary, the famous 'Pupu Springs' (for much of my life considered the clearest waters in the world),  artisans and creatives like the world-famous Höglund Art Glass and Jens Hansen jewellers (creators of 'the One Ring' from the Lord of the Rings films), and much more, without feeling like we're tearing around or trying to pack too much into our days. 

Here's a wee bit of a photo essay, for those who aren't so familiar with the Top of the South: 

Miss M holding one of the oversized 'One Ring
to Rule them All' crafted for the LOTR films

The sacred Te Waikoropupū Springs (Pupu Springs) in Golden Bay, the largest 
freshwater spring in the Southern Hemisphere, among clearest waters in the world

A tuatara at Brook Sanctuary: an ancient reptile that predates
dinosaurs, and has been around for 200 million years

The shipwreck of the Janie Seddon, which served during both 
world wars, before being abandoned in the Motueka mudflats 

The underside of the Kaponga plant, aka 'Silver Fern', on an Abel Tasman
National Park track - rather familiar for many sports-lovers out there... 

Enjoying an autumnal swim at Tata Beach in Golden Bay

Rainbows and waterfalls (Wainui Falls)
in Abel Tasman National Park

Witnessing the expert artisans craft beautiful
pieces at world-famous Höglund Art Glass 

No Nelson visit would be complete without some medal-winning
Penguino gelato; since 1996, a rotating array of 350+ flavours

Riuwaka Resurgence, or 'source of the Riwaka' where a river emerges from 
a clear spring, filtered for years through marble/limestone of Takaka Hill

That's just a wee snapshot, and we only had a few days in the Top of the South so far. 

Tomorrow we'll visit Mapua, and I've also got a crime fiction author event at the renovated Motueka Library; for the first time since the very first Mystery in the Library event in Takapuna in 2015, I'll be involved onstage for part of our annual series, which now numbers more than 125 events at 50 different libraries in New Zealand (as well as a few overseas). I'm chairing a panel with past Ngaios Best Firast Novel winner Chris Stuart, actor, writer, and director Douglas Brooks (who went to Waimea College with me back in the day), and Motueka policeman, filmmaker, and thriller writer Stef Harris, for a discussion on how they craft or perform gripping tales full of memorable characters and events.

It should be lots of fun, and it's a cool treat for me to be involved in person, after having organised more than 125 free/koha library events in New Zealand over the past decade without getting to attend them. It was really nice too to spy a fair bit of in-library publicity for tomorrow night's panel, when Miss M and I popped in on Saturday after completing the second-ever Motueka Beach Reserve parkrun nearby. 

As much as I appreciate all we can do nowadays from afar, for work or leisure, thanks to technological advances, there's still something special about in-person events and tangible media, I believe. For instance, I've seen plenty of pics or online comments from people about our Dark Deeds Down Under anthologies, but it was still pretty cool to see the first edition in the Motueka Library the other day, part of the same regional library system (Tasman District Libraries) where I did lots of my early crime and thriller reading/borrowing, from Agatha Christie's Poirot tales to the thrillers of Alistair Maclean, etc. 

Full circle moment? Not sure, but fun and feels cool, nonetheless. I'm grateful for this weird and wonderful life, despite all its tough times, twists, and challenges. 

Until next time. Ka kite anō.

Whakataukī of the fortnight: 

Inspired by Zoe and her 'word of the week', I'm ending all my MIE posts by sharing a whakataukī (Māori proverb), a pithy and poetic thought to mull on as we go through life.

"Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari he toa takitini"

(My success should not be bestowed onto me alone, as it was not individual success but success of a collective)

Our 2026 Mystery in the Library season kicked off on Thursday night in Karori,
with 2x Ngaios winner Jennifer Lane, NZ Booklovers Awards shortlistee Rodney Strong,
2025 Ngaios winner James Hollings, and past finalist Helen Vivienne Fletcher

Aliens in the Desert

Wendall -- every other Thursday

James and I headed to the California desert last week to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary, revisiting one of our favorite places, the Integratron.

 

Me on our first trip to the Integratron in 2011.

You have to love a place with a sign like this.

Although we’ve spent several anniversaries in Palm Springs over the years, this time we headed to the other side of the 10 Freeway to Joshua Tree, on the edge of the Mojave Desert, to stay at the historic Joshua Tree Inn. 

 

Biggest pool in Joshua Tree. . .

One view of the courtyard.

The Inn, which dates back to the late 1940s, is now best known for Room 8, where Alt-country rock legend, Gram Parsons, who played with the Byrds and formed the Flying Burrito Brothers before a promising solo career, died on September 19, 1973 at the age of 26.

 

 

After his death at the Inn, his manager managed to steal his body from an LA Mortuary and tried to cremate it at Parsons’s favorite place in the National Park, Cap Rock. If you want to know more about the singer’s life, death, and connection to Joshua Tree, you can find an excellent LA Times article here: https://www.latimes.com/lifestyle/story/2023-04-10/legacy-of-gram-parsons-joshua-tree

 

We didn’t stay in Room 8, but Parsons’s spirit is everywhere on the property. The walls of the lobby and lounge feature memorabilia and a stack of guest books, where fans have written messages to the late rock star over the years. 

 

Shrine to the singer in the courtyard.

Pictures and articles about the singer hang on most of the walls.

The Inn is built like a horseshoe around the gardens and pool area, and we were lucky to have quiet guests and lots of privacy during our stay, not to mention the chance to drink

coffee while we watched the sunrise over the Mojave.

 

Room 8 is at the end of this walkway.

Looking over the valley towards Joshua Tree National Park.

The purpose of our trip, though, was to revisit the Integratron, which was placed on the National Park Services Register of Historic Places in 2019. James has written several articles about this unique place, we’ve visited it twice before, once with family on New Year’s Day, and since it promises spiritual and physical rejuvenation, we thought it would be a good place to start our next twenty years. . .

 

With cousins on a chilly New Year's Day.

It's not near anywhere! And GPS doesn't quite work. . .

 

The property is located deep in the desert, 20 miles north of the Joshua Tree National Forest, and built at the intersection of five ley lines, which some believe are lines to guide alien spacecraft.  According to the website: “The location of the Integratron is an essential part of its functioning. It was built on an intersection of powerful geomagnetic forces that, when focused by the unique geometry of the building, concentrate and amplify the earth’s magnetic field. Magnetometers read a significant spike in the earth’s magnetic field in the center of the Integratron.”

 

The building was conceived of and built by George Van Tassel, an aeronautical engineer who worked for Lockheed Douglas Aircraft and as a test pilot for Howard Hughes. He also helped lead the “UFO Movement” and hosted their annual convention for 25 years. He spent 18 years constructing the building, and credited the design to “Moses’ Tabernacle, the writings of Nikola Tesla and telepathic directions from extraterrestrials.” He claimed the building was “capable of rejuvenation, anti-gravity and time travel.”  It also has extraordinary acoustics, which is why the building is now used for Sound Baths, which include a talk about the history and healing properties of the building and a 45 minute performance on 22 Tibetan sound bowls. 

 

The "sound bowls" are gorgeous.

 

Regardless of your feelings about magnometers or extraterrestrials, it’s hard to resist the pull of the building itself, or its setting. The property includes sculptures and shrines, not to mention a “Hammock Village” where you can rest before or after your Sound Bath. 

 

Hammock Village!

The sculpture garden.

It's a beautiful structure, built entirely of wood—no metal or nails of any kind—with a central column for support in the middle of the first floor. A pull down ladder leads upstairs, where the roof centers on a skylight. 

 

View from the entrance.

 

The central column downstairs.

The ceiling and skylight on the second floor. where the sound baths happen.

The mats are laid out around the room.

All participants lie on covered mats, with their heads pointed towards the center. I’m sure the experience is different for everyone so I won’t try to explain it, except to say that as soon as we had finished, we decided it’s something we should do once a year from now on.

 

We'll be back.

We figure Gram Parsons would approve.

 

---Wendall