In early 2020 Sharland was nearing the end of a 17-year adventure in Aotearoa. A desire to return to family and the familiar was pulling her back to her homeland, England. When Covid put an end to her travel plans, she found herself facing isolation in Manawatu instead. Despite her initial unhappiness, Sharland came to see this strange and unexpected time as a gift - an opportunity to explore the natural beauty of the home she'd known for many years but had not fully seen or appreciated. Her explorations were grounding, and she began to examine what it means to truly 'belong.'

Heart Stood Still is a record of Sharland's journey towards finding healing in the world's natural beauty, a beauty that we must fight to protect in the current climate crisis. It is both a memoir and a lyrical portrait of Manawatu. Through a series of personal essays that follow the pattern of the seasons, Sharland skilfully weaves reflections on her life and family history with observations on the native and introduced plants and animals about her; all tinged with her experience as 'an unsettled settler' in Aotearoa.

Extracted from Heart Stood Still by Miriam Sharland. Published by Otago University Press. RRP $35.00. Out 22 April.

Good Friday. I wake at 6.30 and pull the curtains. Even though it’s light, this week’s
full supermoon is still clear. I want to get outside and look at it.

A woman is power walking round the field. I’ve seen her before, in the neighbourhood fruit and veg market that used to run on Saturday mornings, before lockdown.

‘Good morning!’ I call to her.

‘Good morning! Nice day. So quiet!’ she replies.

‘Beautiful,’ I say. ‘Look at the moon!’

I’m not sure the woman hears or understands me: although she nods, she doesn’t look up. I look down. I’ve become obsessed with fungi. I scour the ground on my circuit round the field but find only a couple of field mushrooms. As I pass the woman again, she calls out, ‘Hey, hey!’ and points to the ground. On the edge of the track, a little puffball is breaking through the soil. It looks like a tiny brain. I laugh and thank her. It’s too small to pick, so absurdly I cover it with a leaf when she’s passed so as not to hurt her feelings.

I fry the mushrooms for breakfast; they’re dark and rich and intensely flavoured. I’ve been missing out on these treasures, and now I have a taste for the hunt. I decide to widen my search. I go out on my bike at lunchtime. At the old gasworks drain that runs from the road onto the cycle path, a mountain bike lies on the ground and a stocky man is bent over in the ditch. I glance over and see it’s a friend. He’s gathering watercress – great green clouds of it fill the drain. I tell him I’m off to find mushrooms, and he stands up quickly.

‘Where?’

‘Wherever I can find them!’

Small puffballs punch through the tarmac in the edgeland between road and berm. On the river path I get off my bike and walk with my eyes downcast. I find a big cluster of shaggy ink caps in the grass. I’ve brought a paper bag especially for collecting – I’ve learnt that fungi don’t liquefy in paper as they do in plastic bags – and pick some younger ones. A jogger I’ve seen here a few times runs past, moving to the other side of the track as she says hello. I hold up a shaggy ink cap.

‘Oh, that’s what you’re looking for!’ she says. ‘But are they mushrooms or toadstools?’

I tell her they’re edible mushrooms.

‘The worst that can happen is you get a happy mushroom,’ she says, widening her eyes as she jogs off. Then she calls over her shoulder, ‘There’s some by the bin.’

I ride up to the car-park bin to have a look, but there are only two mushrooms and one has been nibbled by bugs. I continue through the village and slog up the hill, gasping for breath. I stop at the top to cough, blow my nose and get my breath back, and am rewarded for my effort by a berm covered with mushrooms in various stages of development. It doesn’t look as if anyone has been picking them, so I fill two carrier bags with the bounty.

Back on the main road, I scan the roadside as I ride slowly, looking for more. There’s one! But no, it’s a coffee cup lid. Others turn out to be stones and a scrap of white fabric shredded by a lawnmower. But then, bingo – another patch. My ride home takes twice as long as usual, but by the time I get back I have mushrooms to share. I ride round to my watercress-gathering friend’s place, leave a bag outside his door and text to let him know it’s there. It feels odd, this distancing. Normally I would go in and chat, be engulfed in a warm hug, get some kai. He never lets me leave empty-handed. The first time I visited, I took homemade plum jam. I left with fruit mince tarts.

On the way home along the river I stop by a large conifer, check that no one is looking, then give the tree a hug, laying my cheek against the rough bark, inhaling its spicy scent, feeling its life force, happy to touch something that’s alive.

Jelly ear fungus (edible, but chewy and tasteless, not recommended for dinner by mycologists) has sprouted in the mulch in the new garden bed. Self-seeded spinach, mustard greens and coriander pop up in the other vegetable patches, descendants of plants that lived here in the past. I like this riotous tangle of growth and free food, so I decide to leave it, even though my newly sown vegetable seedlings will have to compete.

I get out of bed when I hear the birds start to sing, and slowly ride down to the river. Slug trails sparkle in the morning sun. At the end of the path a man kicks a broken Corona bottle off the tarmac. The car park is graffitied with black rubber tyre marks from burnouts and donuts. I stop to help, and we discuss vandalism, spite, boy racers, and the council’s plans to develop the fields here for housing as a ‘solution’ to the problem of anti-social behaviour. Then we talk about the ugliness of the developments of large houses creeping across Manawatū.

‘So many people live alone now. Why don’t they build nice, small houses?’ I say, and he agrees.

There’s something communal about my first human interaction of the day, despite our despair at the region’s problems.

Talk in the media is of isolation, lockdown, distancing. But outside, people are opening up, coming out of their houses, walking the streets, smiling at each other and asking after the health of strangers. I meet neighbours I didn’t know I had, talk to people who live on my street whom I’ve never seen before. New connections are forged. People are walking, running and cycling. In Manawatū we’re lucky to have space, most of us, and low Covid rates. People across the country have put teddy bears in their windows so children can follow a bear hunt when they go out. The bears make me feel less alone. People care. We are a community.

This morning the same woman is walking on the field. We stop to chat as we pass each other, one on either side of the path. She doesn’t speak much English, but she tells me she’s from China, and I tell her I’m from England. She lives in the white house on the other side of the school. I ask her if she works at the market, and she says she goes there to buy vegetables. I think she says she looks after her grandchildren, but then she tells me they’ve gone to Auckland. I get the impression she’s lonely. We move on, in opposite directions, and when I reach my gate again I wave goodbye and go back inside to work.

Anzac Day. The Dawn Service at the war memorial is cancelled, so I stand outside my house at 6am. As my eyes grow accustomed to the darkness, I see people standing all the way down the street.

After breakfast I put a teddy in my bike panniers, his head poking out the top, and go for a ride round the neighbourhood. Poppies, crosses, wreaths and ‘Lest we forget’ signs are everywhere, alongside or even adorning the teddies.

On through the market gardens outside the city, where orderly rows of cabbages are marked with white plastic sticks. No weeds here. An elderly man walking at the side of the road looks around when he hears my bike.

‘Good morning!’ I call out.

‘Hello! Isn’t it lovely?’

‘It’s gorgeous.’

I’m one of the lucky ones, I know. The pandemic has been terrible, fatal, for many people, especially overseas. The casualty numbers continue to mount in the UK. But here, autumn has been glorious, and although I’ve missed my friends and workmates, I’ve loved the traffic-free roads, peace, clean air, and feeling part of a community that cares. I’m optimistic things are going to get better.

Anzac Day is a reminder to enjoy life while you can because you never know what’s coming.

Heart Stood Still by Miriam Sharland is out now and can be found in all good bookstores.

About the author

Miriam Sharland is a writer and editor focusing on creative non-fiction, travel, biography/memoir and natural history. Based in England and Aotearoa New Zealand, her essays, reviews and features have appeared in numerous books, journals, magazines and newspapers, and online. These include Reader's Digest (UK), Dark Mountain (UK), The Dominion Post, Headland and Adventure Travel. In 2021 she was awarded a writing grant from the Earle Creativity Trust and in 2022 she was runner-up in the New Zealand Society of Authors Central Districts summer essay competition. Heart Stood Still is her first book.