The healing power of summer
The 18th century brought teachings of the wonderful curative and calmative effects of the sea. People began making pilgrimages with promised cures in mind, told the sea air could ease melancholy and hysteria. By Kelly Dennett.
This week in the office elevator a woman inexplicably turned to me and said, ‘‘It’s so nice to finish work while it’s still sunny.’’ This was inexplicable because one, strangers talking to strangers in elevators is rarely acceptable and two, I’d privately declared summer over the week before.
The first breath I had that summer was over was somewhere between Hawke’s Bay and Wellington, on the section of State Highway 2 that takes you through Waipawa and Waipukurau, near where craggy ranges buffet the bends. The kind of rural scene where you’ll catch a glimpse of a life something other than yours, and picture yourself sitting by the fire while the chicken roasts. I felt autumn in my bones, and it was then I opened the door to orange and red days, and standing outside and breathing into the cool air and smelling someone else’s firepit.
At the end of that drive I walked in the front door of my Wellington unit, and immediately noticed my windows were open. They were always open. For nearly three years they’d been open. People would ask me why and I’d explain I liked the sounds of the tu¯ ı¯ and the kereru¯ , and the rain and the wind, and also I hate to be hemmed in by closed windows. But that day I thought, ‘‘the windows are open, and it’s cold’’. Summer was done.
A week earlier I’d flown, masked, to Auckland, and encouraged my mum to drive us an hour and a half away to Whangamata, on the Coromandel Peninsula, where, with thoughts in my mind of freckles and jandals, I’d booked us a room in a villa. That afternoon the water was so lovely and warm it could only signify that something was about to end. Lazing on the sand post-swim, sucking on blueberries and smashing brie and avocado into buttery croissants, I looked at that water while goosebumps trailed up my arm. I didn’t want a second dip, I realised. Somewhere, a door slammed shut.
At the same beach two months earlier, the low drone of a loud hailer had plucked three of us from our sleep. I woke, thought, ‘‘that’s the volunteer fire alarm’’ and returned to unconsciousness before the bombardment was over. In a neighbouring bedroom my two friends Googled tsunami alerts.
The next morning they confessed they’d thought about waking me to flee to safety. I apologised, for failing to tell them that the Whangamata fire brigade was called to fires and heart attacks through a grand community-wide siren that made no apologies for whirring into the night. Later I recounted the story to my father: ‘‘I don’t understand why they haven’t found a more efficient communication system,’’ I said stupidly. Of course they had, Dad replied. The siren was tradition.
Every time it went up I considered who they would be tending to. Whangamata’s pine-laden winding roads paid tribute to dead drivers; flowers and crosses farewelled the sunburned back to Auckland. A few hours after I rejected one last swim someone had died after getting into difficulty near the estuary. Mum and I walked along the beach at dusk, and she pointed out the tyre tracks of the four-wheelers that must have carried lifeguards to a tragic scene. I pointed out a dotterel. This was a town on the edge of the world, so far that volunteer firefighters and lifeguards were your first SOS. A place to ignore your own life. This wasn’t exactly how I described my loyalty to this coastline to my friend as we stood in the surf in December, but I think he understood, because he responded by recounting the philosophy behind ‘going to the beach’. The 18th century had brought teachings of the wonderful curative and calmative effects of the sea and general outdoor-ism. The cutgrass effect, I call it. People began making pilgrimages to once malevolent coastlands with promised cures in mind, for ailments ranging from period pain to impotence. They were told the sea air could ease melancholy and hysteria.
In my early teens, the mid-2000s, our family started our own pilgrimage to Whangamata’s beautiful white-sand beach spanning kilometres, less than an hour from bleak Thames, on the opposite side of the peninsula to the Coromandel township. Its streets were named mostly for women. My summer stage was rented camouflage-green caravans on a back section about 800m from the beach, with a kitchen and shower in two small outhouses and an outdoor dining table. Every morning for two weeks I’d wake up in a sweatdrenched haze, having layered up the night before, only to come to with no ventilation, the sun pouring in. The cure was a bikini and a swim before breakfast.
Those annual fortnights were a kaleidoscope of visiting friends, swimming on the east-facing beach one day and switching to the north the next. I’d roam the main street looking for the prettiest, floatiest dress, the shortest shorts and brightest polka dot bikinis. I dyed my mousy hair blonde, wrote resolutions; looked forward to a new year, new me. It was easy then, because summer seemed to stretch out endlessly, days with no real focus or commitment except for collecting freckles in a way I’d never feel comfortable doing again.
We returned to the caravans every year until the owners sold them, and we upgraded: a house on the beach with a spa one year, one with a lap pool the next. They sound fancy in retrospect, but it was our one family holiday of the year. Mum and Dad worked hard for them. I mostly recall their proximity to the ocean, their smell of sand and sunscreen. Once we stayed a block back from the surf club and a boyfriend and I accidentally set fire to a wicker table with a candle. The cost seems to increase with every retelling of the story.
Finally, Mum and Dad purchased a bach of our family’s own. Mum and I spent an afternoon with a real estate agent while Pink Floyd sang about smoke on the horizon. We found the two-bedroom on a shared driveway close to the beach, with a secret gate that led to the back of the main street. We filled it with second-hand furniture and kitschy art that said things like, ‘‘Life’s a beach’’. And indeed, life played out in the bach. Friends and I celebrated birthdays and holidays. I met a boyfriend in the living room, where many years later I wrote parts of my first book. Dad lived there, for a time, and then in 2017, he sold it.
At the end of 2020 a ringing in my ears that had plagued me for over a year suddenly fell silent approaching the summer. The otolaryngology department had confidently told me it would disappear one day and I hadn’t believed that. I’d searched for tinnitus cures online, to be told there was none. It was a needle in my brain; an unsolvable. In the preceding two years I had taken on a lot of work outside my day job. Wellington was cold all year and I desperately wanted a dog.
My remedy was a return to Whangamata, a week before Christmas. I wanted to see the pineladen bends, to catch a glimpse of a scene played out before. I swam most days (when I happily reminded a friend of how she’d once dragged me into the ocean first thing every morning she shuddered), walked the streets morning and night, and studied the bachs. I noted the caravans of yesteryear remained, still camouflage green. I bought a diary and wrote resolutions. I stood outside and studied sunsets like they were the last sunsets, and I breathed in the air and then slept in a sandy bed.
At the end of February work dried up, and I found myself, a non-tinnitus sufferer, with proper weekends laid out before me again. Wellington played a joke with unusually warm weather and I hung a duvet out for three days before the rain came. On February 28 summer would be over, said the weather authorities, though the jury was out on whether the true date was the end of March. In my mind though, a new season had already begun.
I’d searched for tinnitus cures online, to be told there was none. It was a needle in my brain; an unsolvable. In the preceding two years I had taken on a lot of work outside my day job. Wellington, right, was cold all year and I desperately wanted a dog.