Lake Sarah - Canterbury
Caffeine is a hell of a drug! I tried a coffee once but it didn’t take. I think my taste buds weren’t mature enough at 18 years old. I had just crashed the boss’ work van on The Terrace in Wellington (sorry Bill). Parked cars are usually safe when I’m driving but not on this day. A coffee was ordered, maybe to make me feel better, a coffee was sipped, a coffee was never had again. My parents drink coffee, it’s a drink for old people I surmised. Don’t get me started on cups of tea: slightly dirt-flavoured water. Never touched a cigarette either. I avoided the many pitfalls of ‘maturity’ but fell victim to the energy drink marketing of the early 2000’s. Red Bull, V, Top Secret, Lift Plus, Dirty Dog, Blue Jeans, Monster, Hemp. The list goes on and I tried and loved them all. Top Secret came in 1.5L bottles!
I was listening to a classic New Zealand tune on the way out to the lake, Glorafilia by Zed. She says that it’s just another Sunday afternoon but I was listening on a Saturday afternoon. The impact of the song was slightly lower because of this but the excitement was still high. I hadn’t photographed here before.
As many of you will know, it’s dangerous to have too much caffeine when far from a toilet but I live life on the edge. I necked the final 200mls as I arrived at the lake and began my sprint into the hills to find a good photo spot. Lake Sarah was getting hammered with harsh light and I remember asking out loud if it was worth the 90 minute trip, “Was this really worth the trip?”. Nobody replied because I was there by myself.
I half rolled my ankle in a rabbit hole and thought, internally this time, “geez, that was lucky, be more careful Nick!”. About 10 minutes later I had forgotten that I was being careful and my foot found another warren. This one got me good. A rabbit, Doug, popped his head out of the warren to see what all the commotion was about. I had fallen, I had tossed my camera in an effort of self-preservation, I had squealed just a little bit in anticipation of a broken ankle. It might have been nice for Doug to bring me a carrot of comfort but I didn’t get too flustered by his lack of care, I had bigger fish to fry. Salmon is expensive and I had bought a fillet the day before, I really couldn’t afford to get things wrong on the frying pan later that evening. Funny where the mind goes in times of trouble.
It turns out my ankle was fine but the camera was not. It was broken. I had already taken a bunch of photos and if you look below this sentence you will see what I captured before Doug, his warren, and my lack of attention to the perils of the NZ back country claimed my camera for the next two months!
To get to Lake Sarah from Christchurch you head out towards Castle Hill, then continue on towards Arthur’s Pass on the main highway 73. From there you turn right onto Craigieburn Road. It’s a long gravel road which has several photo-worthy lakes further on from Lake Sarah.
X marks the rabbit warrens I saw that day
