The Lakes of the South Island

 I love water. I do. Big bits of water. And some are more gorgeous than others.

 there are purposes for them all.

The English Channel is dark and choppy and 21 miles wide.

The straits of Gibraltar are blue and strategic.

The Irish Sea is turbulent and political.

The Lakes of the South Island of New Zealand are just there. Left over from some volcanic something. You drive over a mountain and there they lie, lie some haphazard reminder that we may wear cashmere but they need nothing other to have a shaft of light to wake them up.

Lake Pukaki. Let’s start there. Under the Southern Alps. Looked over by Mount Cook.

Lake Tekapo. let’s pause there. Same Southern Alps. 

They take the turquoise I have never seen in nature and coat themselves in it, like it is easy.

So on a totally colorless note; I went on a dark sky experience whilst I was staying in Lake Tekapo. Wearing an arctic jacket loaned to me because it was very late and very cold.

 It was conducted by an astronomer from France who had made New Zealand his home. Lake Tekapo is a dark sky reserve. One of a few in the world. There is almost no ambient light. The French guy says that the Southern Hemisphere is far better than the North for access to the dark skies. 

I have no photos of Jupiter or Saturn. Or the Southern Cross. or the Milky Way. or Billions of star constellations that are billions of light years away that I looked at through a telescope.

But if I close my eyes now, I can still see them. And maybe that is how it should be.