Everywhere I look I see colour.
I cannot keep it … as soon as the sun moves, as we move, it changes.
Shadows crawl over the landscape, adding profile to the bluffs, and blue, deep blue, shadows to the mountain sides. Where the cliffs were roasting in the brazen hues of sunlit rock , mauves and blues and greys now crouch inside the shadow.
Through the heat of a spring day, the summit of Mount Cook glitters with molten ice.  With a bright sky behind it Aoraki seems to float.
The cool spectre of the guardian of the mountain looks down upon us,  to make us wonder about the gravity of what we do. Is that why climbers do defy her?

Many miles away, and launching itself down into the depths of an aqua lake, is the much smaller mountain of Ben Ohau.
The sides of this simple peak are scoured with angel shaped shingle slides. They have been described in local mythology, as the claw marks of a dragon wrestling with the rock.
Ben Ohau rises up over the MacKenzie basin as the sentinel of the lake, shouldering the sky over the miles of tussock plains all around.

The painting tutor in my head whispers to me …” It is magnificent, paint what you see .”