This book is for the bone diggers and the song carriers - those interested in the roots, the old connections, and for those who have listening ears. It explores the relationships that unfold on the West Coast of Te Wai Pounamu New Zealand, in the mid-19th century as isolated, difficult to access parts of the country are entered by European explorers guided by local Māori.

David Abram writes in The Spell of The Sensuous - "For the largest part of our species' existence, humans have negotiated relationships with every aspect of our sensuous surroundings, exchanging possibilities with every flapping form, every textured surface and shivering entity that we happened to focus on ... every sound was a voice every scrape or blunder was a meeting - with thunder, oak, dragonfly."

What happens here in Te Wai Pounamu, when folk from worlds which recognise and read the sensuous, talk with birds, memorise land routes in their bodies in chant and song, encounter folk who do not even observe the changing position of the moon in the sky each day, and who are concerned primarily with "getting somewhere and accumulating something".

This birthing of a new way of being happens when folk from opposite ends of the earth with differing geographies, holding vastly different values, languages and world views walk with each other across the Southern Alps, tramp through thick forest, cross wild rivers, negotiate mountainous seas, and live together in Te Tai Poutini - the West Coast of Aotearoa.