Clearing the Trap Line: A Walk in the Bush of Ohakune September 28, 2026 10:56

Not every part of this life is glass.
Once a week, I trade the studio for the bush — walking a trap line, checking and clearing traps set to protect the native birds that share this part of the country with us.

It's a strange contrast to the rest of my week. Most days are spent hunched over a cutting table or a kiln, working on composition and design, controlled detail. The trap line is the opposite — boots on, out in the weather, walking a track that doesn't care what the temperature is or whether it’s raining or sunny.
Ohakune's bush is beautiful and occasionally tough in equal measure, and for me, walking a trap line walk is as much about being out in that as it is about the traps themselves.

The reason for the traps?  Introduced predators — stoats, rats, possums — have taken an enormous toll on New Zealand's native bird populations over the years, and left unchecked, that damage only compounds. A trap line is a small, practical way of pushing back against that, one section of bush at a time. It's not glamorous work, and it's not always pleasant, but it matters in a way that's easy to lose sight of when you're in your busy comfortable life, mostly thinking about glass and firing schedules.

There's something I find genuinely restorative about it, too. It's physical in a way the studio isn't — walking, checking, resetting, moving on to the next one. I get out of my own head and into the wonder of the natural environment.  No waiting on a kiln, no wondering if a colour is going to strike the way you want it to. Just the bush, the track, and a job that has a clear, immediate purpose.

I’m blessed to have good friends who accompany me walking the trap line. It’s a time I value with them - just us and Mother Nature.  

I don't think of my time out on the trap lines as separate from the glass work, even though it sounds a million miles away from the studio.  Both come from the same place, really — paying attention to this landscape, caring about what happens to it, and doing something that has a result I can actually see. The Maunga and the bush show up in my glass work constantly, whether I'm naming it directly or not. Walking the trap line is maybe the most literal way I have of giving something back to the place that gives me so much.
It's a small weekly ritual, but it's one I genuinely miss when I can’t be there.

Made by hand. Made to keep.