Uncle Dick was up at 4:30 a.m.

When I peeked into his room at 7:00 a.m., wondering if I’d need to wake him, his bags were lined up on the bed, packed. He’d already eaten breakfast and was “ready to rock-n-roll,” as he says. Any day that starts with that kind of enthusiasm is bound to be a good day.

To say we had “a good day,” would actually be the understatement of the century. Dick and I had a fantastic day. 

High Peak Station is a family farm and game estate located in the high country west of Christchurch, in the shadow of Mt. Hutt. With 25 square miles of range, it’s a spectacular property, but the real treasure here is not the land, or the animals, it’s the Guild family, who curates the property and shares their little slice of heaven with a select few likeminded outdoor enthusiasts. Dick and I are here to discover their stories and help to tell them in new ways.

I could tell you about how much fun it was to take pictures from every angle as Dick and Simon talked guns, adjusted the sight and Dick dropped two shots in a row into exactly the same hole on the target (he’s just that good!) Or I could tell you about perching myself on a little outcropping of rock in the late afternoon sun while the guys peered through binoculars, picking out deer on the facing hillsides. I could wax poetic about the wonder of watching clouds coalesce and creep like a living thing through valleys, over saddles, and snake between cracks in the hills to settle like the fleece on sheep over a winter landscape. I might even brag to you that it was me (me!) who sighted the first three really big stags in a grouping. I could run down the list of beautiful animals we saw: red stag, fallow deer, turkeys, rabbits, 5 arapawa sheep, with big curly horns, standing in perfect relief on the ridge line against an impossibly blue sky. Perhaps you’d laugh as much as we giggled at the wild boar, a black razor back, chugging his way up the hill, right into us almost, oblivious to our position as the wind was in our favor, or the delight the guys took in chucking rocks down the hill once he was trotting away so that I could see him break into an all out run.

That’s what I’m here to do, after all: tell stories. 

But it’s late, and I’m tired, so perhaps I’d better let the pictures be worth a thousand words each and pull you around the planet to the tip top of the land of the long white cloud with images instead of words.

Day One: High Peak Station