Around midnight I get up and put the folding camping chair out in the middle of our paddock,
I wrap myself in a sleeping bag and tilt the chair back.
The first thing I notice is that I am surrounded by the gentle singing of a million insects, whistling from cracks in the dry earth.
A chill breeze rattles the leaves of the Poplar tree I planted in the chicken run while from far to the west comes the distant lonely sound of a truck rumbling down the highway.
A Ruru whistles from the row of Totara growing along the banks of the Waionehu Stream and then unexpectedly from the farmer's parched field, a Plover's abrasive call cuts through the night.
And the summer night sky hangs over it all, a silent vastness that stretches into the depths of space and time. Where looking up is to look into an infinity defined by the distant, receding stars.
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