We all have a different slant of the meaning behind the equinox. The scientific mind may well rave on

that it represents the points where the direction of the poles are at a right angle to the sun. The pivot time for the sun to return its journey back across our sky. The period of equal hours of day and night.

The romantic might hark back to stories of festivals and ceremonies in honour of the sun. Man has followed the cycle of the sun for millennia. Stonehenge and such like circles are aligned to the equinoxes and the solstices.

How wonderful though, that here in Auckland we have a simple exercise to view what the ‘ancients’ who dwelt in this land worked into the landscape for all to see. This year the equinox falls on the 20th of this month. A stroll to the top of Mt Wellington and walk around the top rim of the mountain, a very obvious ‘V’ is cut into the rim. Some kind person has put a wooden walkway over it for the ease of the walker. How much deeper the ‘V’ would appear without the build up of grass below the walkway. This very ‘V’ is obvious from two vantage points in the city. At sun up, standing on Mt Albert at the summit, if it were not for the overgrown trees, the sun clearly rises in the sky right on this Mt Wellington ‘V’. There is still the ancient standing stone left on Mt Albert, though shifted from its original true position. Traverse across town to see the setting sun go down again through the ‘V’ of Mt Wellington while standing on Stockade Hill at Howick.

Such precision in the landscape. I recommend the setting sun experience for giving you a new found respect for those who defined our land in this way.

Alison Ellett

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