"Friendship is a supremely beautiful gift that God blessingfully gives to His fond seeker-children." – Sri Chinmoy.

I burnt all my photo albums thirty years ago, a renunciation that left more than a little tinge of lingering regret, but odds and ends still turn up in unexpected places, in the bric-a-brac of a family member's basement or a solitary snap falling out of an old book, falling out of the past. This morning I chanced upon a crumpled old photo of an acquaintance from a long time ago, mythologised in sepia-brown and a whole flood of memories came flying, seeing again, like the light from a far-off star those events from a far-off past.

To say that we remember implies that we might have forgotten, but I have not forgotten Lonnie Gray. Although not in our conscious awareness there is some reality in which everything we have ever seen, done, known, is still there in what we are, a simultaneity in which everything perpetually co-exists. For this reason it's nice to surrender to an impulse of the heart and write a few sentences about Lonnie, who passed away three decades ago, for in this simultaneity we share he too might be touched by this affection from someone from literally another life.

Lonnie was born in 1940, the same year his father perished from machine-gun fire, a rough earth grave in a Polish meadow of war, he the first and last son, misfit scion of the family. His mother, relieved it was all over, marriage and kids, held the wrinkled, bawling pink concoction of flesh and wrappings up at the window, watched the brown flood of the river charging through willows, and this was the first thing he ever saw.

Lonnie might easily have become an alcoholic - through childhood maladies his mother gave him a generous dose of gin as a cure-all – or perhaps too a misfit and introvert, spending a long time as a child wandering alone in the hills enjoying the unconcern of a careless family. But neither came true.

Smart and adaptable he could do many things, fixed cars, felled bush, cut timber from fallen trees and built log post fences over the scalped hills of New Zealand's back country farms, he black as a witch cat from all the fire charred, holocaust wreckage of forests. His sisters went into law and real estate, but the irresistible currents of another destiny tugged him along and he would not beach as his mother would sometimes lament on those lesser humdrum shores of custom and sobriety, drown his free spirit there worse than gin or river water. Instead, a drifter, fell in love, fostered a no-good, sour wedlock boy-child of his own though Lonnie the father would never see his son outside of that first failed year of bickering, dismal marriage. In the little finally left of love, feeling the burden of his own despondency and not wishing to infect a lamenting spouse with his own cloying melancholy, a hopelessness too deep to shift by her or anyone's endearments, he left abruptly, the last of his good times in an envelope by her bed, plus goodbye note in spidery hand.

Lonnie went north, drawn by instinct and memory to the big empty mountains in the central North Island for solace, lick his wounds, hibernate through this deep winter of his life and some sadness as though at something of himself wrenched away and lost, then at a junction of gravel roads that would each lead to unknown and different experiences, indeed to entirely different endings, low on gas and confronted by certain necessities, sat in his station-wagon for all of ten minutes - east, west, north? – tasted the unbearableness of his freedom and the utter randomness of life that would later seem so liberating, then ducked east until he reached the Whangaehu River, stopping at a country pub and meeting there in the public bar my own erstwhile boss who liked what he saw and right there offered Lonnie work.

So I first met him there at Mangamahu Station, a rough country farm at roads end where we shared a cabin, a bunkhouse lit by candlelight and moonlight, Lonnie telling yarns over billy tea into the long nights, polishing the bolt on his Lee Enfield and linseed oil into the weathered stock, one reliable thing in his makeshift life at least, so he said.

Once, just a kid, mother at the wheel of a rattletrap car, they confronted on a single lane bridge a runaway truck, 1,000 gallons of churning fresh farm milk sloshing in the steel tank, brakes gone on a long down haul of twisting hill roads – the Maori driver made it on to the bridge, needle over ninety, and then had to choose. Just before impact and the certain end of Lonnie's entire family the driver chose the brave hard way, swung fiercely and sent himself and the trailer of milk down 200ft into a rocky creek bed. The water ran pure white for a whole day, a river of milk, before they hauled the wreck out. He remembered it for a long time afterwards, the intensity of a near death, the runaway truck hurtling onto the narrow wood railing bridge with it's steel trailer swinging wildly, the sacrificial face staring at them through the windshield of the huge cab then shouting something, death cry of resolve, decided, swinging away at the last moment and the unbelievable roar of 10 tons of steel and machinery smashing through the bridge sidings and down into the gorge. Then the shattering impact below and the howling truck engine, going on and on as though boring into the earth, relentless and amplified in the rock walls of the ravine, the dying crescendo roar of a giant beast – then sudden silence.

Lonnie's mother went to church for a full month after to praise a God she hadn't found too much time for before, gave a big chunk of the weekly welfare cheque to the driver's grieving family, three fatherless kids, trapped in a part-share state house.

How can you ever repay that said Lonnie. But life's ledger balance didn't work like that, a quid pro quo of reckonings, nor his own later sufferings fit into any tidy cosmic scheme of compensation.

Big gaps here open up in what I remember but years later, a husky phone call, remember me?, a late night rendezvous and re-acquaintance with this man I liked. And even more years later I heard of his end, a felon sought by country police half-hearted in pursuit of a character they secretly admired, car conversion, his own station-wagon long gone and Lonnie back to country work in a stolen rig, scrub covering the number plate, far up on a hillside felling trees and a farmhand rides up, cops looking for you Lon, saddles up a horse and puts the Lee Enfield into a scabbard, saddle bag of food and heads up to the back boundary and beyond into history. Rides way back where no one goes. A survey team finds him months later, long dead on the floor of his hut God only knows of what. Under the wool bale sacking of his bunk bed a manuscript, handwritten, story of his life, but no chance of recovering it from the police back then. What ever happened to it? All those stories from a life disappeared. I wish you all happiness and a safe passage on your journey.

"The vine that binds two friends together is adorned with gratitude-heart-blossoms." – Sri Chinmoy.

– Jogyata.

Memories from my childhood are generously sprinkled with larger than life characters, heroes who touched and shaped my life in quite enduring ways.

My first hero was a quietly spoken farmhand and horseman who spent his short life in back country New Zealand and I was just a young kid. Alistair took a shine to me and taught me things about horses and how to survive in the hills and how to read animal signs and how to place a bullet from his rifle into a tin can 200 metres away every time you pulled the trigger.

When the first lambs were born every spring, Alistair took me hunting the wild boars that came out of the dark wet forest at night in search of easy prey, and we would ride quietly through the pre-dawn darkness out to his favourite spots. I would hold the reins of the nervous horses and when Alistair's big calibre rifle boomed out you could smell the cordite in the air and I remember being frightened because I had seen the rows of tusks nailed to the shearing shed wall and knew Alistair's stories about every one of these and his numerous brushes with death.

Some times Alistair would yell get up a tree, boy! and I would turn the horses loose and shinny ten feet up a manuka tree while Alistair waded through chest-high fern towards a wounded boar and you could hear the animal snarling and charging the dogs, defiant even in the wretchedness, bloodiness and brutality of it's death. And then the boom from the rifle and I would go down and he would tell me I was a brave kid.

One day Alistair went out without me and that was the last time I saw him alive – when he didn't return a team of silent riders went out looking for him and found him dead under his horse. His mare had slipped and rolled down a steep hillside and he had died during the night. Now, a lifetime later, I can't remember his face but I remember his rough kindness and the tears I shed that day and the smell of his grey wool coat when I sometimes rode behind him, before he trusted me with my own horse.

Later Colin came into my life, a big bear of a man who had recklessly married my sister. Colin was an incurable romantic who loved the wild ways and for a couple of years I followed him around while he looked for precious gemstones in remote mountain places and trapped opossums for their furs and hunted deer for restaurant venison. Colin’s blue eyes held a faraway look – he was always peering into the future and dreaming new dreams, cajoling my sister and I to share his many adventures.

Colin loved the outdoors – we were the first long ago to float down the Rangitikei River from it's earliest navigable waters to the nearest road, six days of white water travel down a series of beautiful valleys filled with deer and beech forest, the river tumbling down into vertical walled canyons where great columns of eroded stone – eerie as gargoyles poised to explode from their frozen sleep – towered over dangerous chutes and steep falls where you thought you were going to die.

One winter we climbed onto the tops of the Kaimanawa Mountains, years before an alpine track was pushed through, and the hike from the valley up to the bushline was sixteen hours of hard ascent through dense forest filled with snow. I can still see Colin, draped in heavy pack and rifle, pushing on through the dark trees as night fell, huge bombs of dislodged snow pelting down from the overhead canopy of trees and him shouting encouragement as the cold bit into our bones, his blue eyes blazing with the light of battle and the intensity of his will.

It was on one such expedition, this time in summer, with our outfit camped on the edge of a wilderness an eight hour hike from the nearest road-end, that Wild Bill Cornelius rode into our lives. Bill was 6ft 4 with unkempt hair down to his waist and a nut-brown face tanned from a lifetime living outdoors. He was almost permanently on board a tall, rangy bay horse and he swept into camp that day with fourteen wild cattle dogs streaming out behind him, the stuff of legends written all over him.

Bill hunted the wild cattle that roamed in the vast, densely forest catchment of the Whanganui River and would drive his quarry down river valleys and ridges to holding pens on the edge of this wilderness. His dogs lived exciting and often short lives hounding these angry and very dangerous beasts and most bore scars of battle – his horse too was covered from chest to tail with old silver-grey welts and red new wounds, many from charging through dense vegetation to escape a charging bull.

How Bill rode a horse through those steep and slippery and trackless wastes I could never figure out, but at work at our own grim trade we would sometimes hear Bill's dogs furiously barking miles off in the hazy blue mountains and we would stop to listen to the unfolding saga of the hunt as the sounds of pursuit moved down the valley, and we would marvel at his courage and the hardship of his chosen life.

On the rare occasions Bill shared our lonely camp, we would sit around the fire and I would be silent with wonder at the colourful escapades shared by my older companions.

When I was eleven or twelve, another childhood hero we called Uncle Archie played a big part in our youthful lives. Archie lived in a small village called Turangi, under the shadow of volcanic mountains and alongside the beautiful green Tongariro River and we often were sent there, a long winding day trip by bus from our saner family home to the south. Archie was outrageously colourful and eccentric, a World War II veteran whose views on life were filled with extraordinary assertions and prejudices.

Archie revelled in adversity and loved to find issues and aggravations to rebel against – like the traffic roundabout that one day was unwisely installed on his, Archie's, street! With us shouting encouragement from the back seat Archie would sometimes drive at the roundabout, foot pressed hard to the pedal, and we would fly directly over this latest affront to Archie's sensibilities, almost airborn, shredding the cosmetic shrubbery placed in the middle and landing on the other side with a bone jarring crunch, every rivet and bolt in the old car groaning as we returned to earth. And us triumphantly whooping and Archie shouting his war-cry expletives.

Archie had smuggled a handy relic from his war years back home in his duffel bag, a huge .45 calibre military handgun, and this treasured piece of antediluvian artillery lay concealed under his bed, appearing only on occasions of drunkenness, provocation or maudlin bouts of World War II reminiscences. On these latter occasions, Archie would lovingly caress the grey barrel of the old colt before a riveted, wide-eyed audience of neighbourhood kids and recount harrowing tales of endless near brushes with death. More was yet to come. The climax of these wondrous occasions was a glimpse of Archie's right leg – two rounds from a German machine gun had left a couple of neat indentations in one side of his calf and larger, jagged exit wounds on the other side. We would crowd around him, gazing at the long ago wounds while Archie for the hundredth time relived those chilling days in a voice dramatic with tension.

As a child I remember him snatching his beloved .45 from it's place of concealment beneath his mattress and discharging five thunderous and randomly placed rounds into the night when a prowler was heard, his voice roaring in the darkness long after the reverberations had died down – "prowl around my house you heathen savages and I'll blast every one of you to Hell!" In my memory I can still hear the boom boom boom cannonade of the heavy colt and Archie's voice, laced with profanity, echoing in the night. And we kids, giggling nervously in the sanctuary of the house while dogs yelped and raced for home, tails between their legs, and lights came on all over the village as Uncle Archie purged the darkness of heathens and savages.

Archie often tested our child's composure with fearful and fictitious challenges, like the time he invited us to join him in paddling over the nearby Huka Falls in his small fishing dingy. This raging, high velocity cataract of green water tumbled down through a steep and terrifying gorge before plunging over a vertical drop into the mesmerisingly beautiful and deadly falls, powerful enough to turn Archie’s dingy into kindling and crush the air out of our lungs like a burst balloon. "By God," he cried, "we'll ride that wild river at dawn tomorrow and we’ll conquer it together. Who'll join me?" and he glared at us in challenge. I would stare at him, eyes wide and shocked in silent disbelief – my sister who adored Archie would gulp and stare at him then blurt out "I'll come with you Uncle Archie." Archie would gaze at her with pride and pleasure, his delight shining in his eyes, "You'll do," he would say, "You'll do."

This was Archie's highest accolade. How I longed to hear him say these words to me. A year would pass before I earned this cherished affirmation of my own courage from Archie's lips. One evening, out fishing on Lake Taupo, a sudden squall blew across the great expanse of water. Archie decided to call it quits and pulled lustily on the old Seagull motor to begin the mile ride home across the rising waters. It wouldn't start. Archie gave a mighty heave on the rope, enough to hoist the small motor from its mountings, and unsecured by a safety chain it dropped into the lake and sank 200 feet to the bottom. "Start rowing son," he roared, "or we'll drown tonight or freeze solid in the wind."

For two hours, through frigid winds and rising waves I battled towards the shore, a boy against the storm, my hands blistered and running with blood and shoulders aching from the strain. Watchful and silent, Archie was a dim shape in the rear of the boat as waves smashed over the bow and spray soaked us to our skin. At last in the darkness the keel grated through the surf and onto the shore. Archie stepped triumphantly ashore and tussled my hair and grinned at me. And then he uttered those wonderful words: "You'll do," he said, "You'll do." My face flushed with pride. I had won Archie's approval and in that moment knew I had crossed some mysterious threshold into manhood.

Archie deeply loved his wife and she him, enough to overlook his many bizarre mannerisms. Sometimes when we were away they would sit on the couch together and Archie's head would lie on her shoulder and would sleep. If we returned, Archie's wife would go "sssshhhh" silently, her finger to her lips, for Archie would not want us to see him this way, the fiction he presented of himself to us betrayed in this most vulnerable and trusting and childlike abandonment. When his wife suddenly and mysteriously died, Archie was never the same and often fell into long bouts of inconsolable melancholy, shuffling through their old snaps and albums of their life together and weeping. When Archie cried like that, if my sister was there she would sit on his lap and cry too, and pull all the fingers on his scarred hands, one by one, as though exorcising his sad demons.

These times of sweet affection were the most treasured and happiest of his entire life and the dying and death of his wife the most excruciating, more awful than all of his years on the battlefields of Europe and the pathos and remorse of everything he had seen, been, done. "Never love," he said to us, "never love, the bitterness of loss is too much for the heart to bear."

Where have they gone now, these larger than life characters who populated my childhood? Eventually our lives took a different road, and we would never see them again. But I still remember and often smile. Sometimes even now, caught out in the night forest very late on a wayward run at Muriwai far from anyone, I can feel their spirit with me and Colin saying to me, "You cannot have courage without first having fear. Courage without fear has no meaning." And I can push on through the dark forest on the way back to my car, smiling in my fear.

– Jogyata.