Writer Kirsty Gunn meditates upon her childhood in New Zealand, revisiting in writing the landscapes she once explored by sight, sound and touch. In the process she uncovers what it is about these wild places in particular the part known as the bush that so moved, challenged, and disturbed her. Interweaving essay, memoir and narrative, she evokes the ways in which this landscape s very foreignness could also provide refuge to a child, and an escape from the suffocating cultural norms of colonial society. Accompanying the text is a series of images by artist Merran Gunn.
