{"id":3778,"date":"2025-03-11T07:47:04","date_gmt":"2025-03-11T07:47:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graceffa.com\/?p=3778"},"modified":"2025-03-11T08:36:53","modified_gmt":"2025-03-11T08:36:53","slug":"jade-treetops-and-glaciers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/graceffa.com\/?p=3778","title":{"rendered":"Jade, Treetops, and Glaciers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The old public library in Hokitika was donated by Andrew Carnegie. It’s now the town museum.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We left Greymouth this morning for a long bus ride to Fox Glacier. The stops along the way were different from each other, and interesting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First was a jade carver, in the small town of Hokitika. The New Zealand jade is called pounamu by the M\u0101ori, and was prized for its extreme hardness. It is also called greenstone, and is a nephrite jade. The M\u0101ori worked it into tools, and those in the warmer north had to trade for the stone as it is only found in rivers in the south. All pounamu belongs to M\u0101ori; it is no longer possible to collect it unless you are M\u0101ori. We learned that most stones are found as a byproduct of gold mining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What the pounamu might look like when found<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Giant blade for initial cuts<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Cutting the stone is a lengthy process. If a larger piece is presented to a carver, they first have to cut it to see the inside. It’s not possible to assess the quality from the outside. The carver we met used a very large, diamond edge blade that can run for 8-12 hours to make a single cut. That’s a good definition of hard! Our carver said he’d had a large blade that was made in the US for many years; they aren’t being made anymore. He’s bought a new one from China for $1000 and he expects to only get a couple of years from it. The stone on the bench pictured above is not worth anything because the color is not rich enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Light will shine through fine pounamu <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Cut pieces in process<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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A ceremonial M\u0101ori adze<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

M\u0101ori did not have diamond blades until recently. Sharpening a tool like the one pictured above could have taken years of work in the past. Even with modern tools, the carving is very time consuming and jewelry is small, so I am especially in awe of the dexterity and risk involved in holding the smooth stone piece near the tools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After we left the charming town of Hokitika, we stopped at Treetops for a canopy walk on a set of bridges. It was fun, and had some nice views.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After lunch we had a long bus ride, away from the coast, to reach Franz Josef and Fox glaciers. On the way we had a rest stop in a town with a delightful mosaic park, Hari Hari. The basis of the park is an intricate labyrinth, and many people contributed tiles. Other parts of the mosaic are broken ceramics and tiles. It was colorful and fun to stretch by walking a labyrinth and reading the messages. Hari Hari is also famous for being the landing site of the first solo aviation crossing of the Tasman Sea. The pilot was Guy Menzies and he landed upside down in a swamp after 11 hours, 45 minutes in the air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Once we arrived to the glacier area, the weather was good enough for a hike in, as far as was possible, to see Franz Josef. The mountain range is called the Southern Alps, and these glaciers, amazingly, end in temperate rainforest forest with the melt running to the sea. The rivers were silty with glacial “flour,” just as we’ve seen in Alaska, Iceland, and Greenland. But the temperate forest with subtropical elements such as tree ferns around the glacier is the big surprise. It was abundantly clear that Franz Josef is receding. It is nevertheless, still impressive. I only hope that it will be around for generations of New Zealand children to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After dinner those willing to stay on their feet and be out in the drizzle took a night walk to see glow worms in the bush. New Zealand is famous for these little critters that are the larvae (usually called a maggot) of a fungus gnat. The adult fly lives only a few days after the larvae pupate, but the larval stage can last up to a year, gaining body mass through its brutal predation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The larvae live in the nooks and crannies of moss covered rocks and tree trunks. They spin a sticky web, and after dark, their abdomens light up to lure prey to their nets. Once a juicy prey item is trapped, the larvae reel it in and suck it dry. Meanwhile, giant human night walkers like us enjoy the “thousand points of light,” that the larvae display while hunting. The pictures don’t come close to doing it justice; peering in the night and seeing all the glows was really enchanting. In the photo on the right, the “strings of pearls,” running vertically, are the nets. I couldn’t photograph the actual larvae.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Each point is a larva<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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What the habitat looks like illuminated by a flashlight<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One short night at Fox glacier and we’re off again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We left Greymouth this morning for a long bus ride to Fox Glacier. The stops along the way were different from each other, and interesting. First was a jade carver, in the small town of Hokitika. The New Zealand jade is called pounamu by the M\u0101ori, and was prized for its extreme hardness. It is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":836,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[55,56,51],"class_list":["post-3778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-47","tag-fox-glacier","tag-glow-worms","tag-new-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceffa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceffa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceffa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceffa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceffa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3778"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/graceffa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3839,"href":"https:\/\/graceffa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3778\/revisions\/3839"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceffa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceffa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceffa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceffa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}