Hāwea's place to pause and reconnect

Amanda and Randall shared their story with Jo Elwin

Mountain Spirit’s Randall and Amanda Richards are quick to point out that they are not in any way “woo-woo” when it comes to spirituality, but there is clearly something divine about this couple and their story.

Mountain Spirit is a secluded sanctuary set in the foothills of Hāwea’s Grandview Mountain where the Richards live an off-the-grid life with nine-year-old son Dexter. The family share their eight-acre paradise with people who come to practice yoga and meditation; people wanting to reconnect and strengthen their connection with themselves and with nature; and bed and breakfast guests staying in the cottage, yurt and teepee.

“We have to begin with how Randy and I met because it’s very romantic,” Amanda laughs infectiously, “and it leads in to why we’re doing what we’re doing here.”

Randall begins the narration: “I asked a friend if she had any friends that I might be interested in. There was one, but because I lived in the States and her friend lived in New Zealand there probably wasn’t much point, but said she’d pass on my details if she was interested.” Amanda laughs and adds, “She had always thought Randy and I would be perfect for each other and had mentioned him to me over the years, but he was always engaged … to different people, he was a serial engager!” Randall guffaws. “I did dodge a few bullets.” Amanda continues: “That friend and I were supposed to go hiking in Peru but didn’t go because we both had signs telling us to go to India. When I met up with her in India, one of the first things I said was ‘is he still engaged,’ she said he was, and I forgot about it. I fell in love with India, staying on longer than her, and towards the end of my time there she sent a message with his email address saying, ‘this is cupid’s arrow, do with it what you want, but he’s now single’. I was in an ashram meditating and I was kind of excited but not really. I had found all these incredible women living amazing lives without having to be married with children and that really inspired me. I was over that feeling of needing to find someone. I sent Randy a couple of lines and he sent a couple back, then it became a paragraph … this was over a number of weeks because I kept going back to the ashram and Randy was away mountain guiding, but the emails got longer and longer. Eventually we Skyped and the moment I laid eyes on him I completely recognised him. I’ve never had that experience, I was like ‘oh my goodness there you are’. I was 40, he was 50 and I just knew he was the one!”

Randy says it was love at first sight, but the moment he knew she was the one came a little later when Amanda came to see him in the States. Amanda explains that from India she had organised a job with DOC and went back to New Zealand three weeks before starting. Randall had suggested that she come to New Hampshire so that they could get to know each other. “I arrived in New Zealand on the Friday. On a run with my sister and a friend on the Saturday we discussed this proposition and decided that I should go, but pay half of the fare. We came up with this figure of two thousand dollars, which I didn’t really have but decided that I could use some rainy-day funds. I phoned Randy and we booked a flight for Monday. The only loose end was my taxes. My sister had done my tax return on my behalf and, when I phoned Inland Revenue to find out if it was okay, they told me that I was getting a refund and it would be in my bank in the next few days … the refund was two thousand dollars! It was insane, it had been like that the whole time, it was so clear, and I had this feeling in my body.”

“People thought I’d gone crazy – quitting a good job at Auckland University and going to India for eight months then leaving three days after arriving back to meet a man in America that I had never met. I was telling the story to a group of little old ladies seated next to me on the plane into Boston and they were horrified that I had never met this man.”

“They interrogated me,” says Randall. “They came down the ramp in triangle formation with Amanda in the middle, and one of them comes over saying, ‘what’s your intention with this young lady, where do you live, what do you do for a job, what kind of car do you drive?’. Somehow I passed,” he laughs.

“I had pointed out to Amanda in advance that I had an educational programme going on with three musicians from Peru. They didn’t know anything about the States and didn’t speak much English and I would be looking after them for the time she was there, so it wasn’t going to be the two of us going on a date.”

“And that was perfect,” says Amanda. “It took all the pressure off. I carried their bags around for them for three weeks and got to see New England, we had a ball. I fell in love with Randy and the Peruvians.”

That moment of knowing she was the one came when Randy put a book out on the table one day called Conscious Loving. “How to be in a relationship without losing yourself was the subtitle,” says Randall. “I was determined to have a healthy relationship and Amanda came to me and said ‘thank you so much for showing me this book, I didn’t realise these tools existed,’ and that’s when I knew she was willing to put some work into it.” Amanda adds “Here was someone giving me the opportunity to be in a really honest and truthful relationship from day one. I thought I’d hit the jackpot, and I did hit the jackpot!”

Amanda returned to her DOC job as the French Ridge hut warden in Mt Aspiring National Park and says she was in heaven. “I was being paid to walk around in the mountains and we had a beautiful time writing letters to each other. Three months later Randy came and stayed in my mountain hut and this time it was just the two of us.” Randall had packed a ring and proposed on Valentine’s Day.

The couple had shortlisted four countries where they thought they might live – Southern France, Northern India, Peru and New Zealand which won out in part because Amanda’s family were here. Amanda grew up in South Africa and had her own business selling computer peripherals before she packed it in and went travelling for a few years in Europe before settling in Sydney where her parents had relocated. There she studied and practiced homeopathy before going back to Uni as a mature student and getting a degree in genetics. She had only lived in New Zealand a short time before meeting Randall. So, it was a fairly new home for both of them. “I convinced Randy to go to Christchurch because I was pregnant with Dexter and, as an older mother I thought it would be good to be near friends there. The minute we had unpacked our bags the second earthquake happened, so we headed south because Randy really wanted to be down here anyway.

“God works in mysterious ways,” says Randall. “We lived in Kingston before buying this place in 2013.

“When we came to see the land the first time Randy could see it had potential, and all I could see were dollars to fix it up. The second time we came I got it. I still had the dollar thing going on, not sure how we were going to do it, but we did …,” she laughs. “… well have we? We’ve worked hard on it for eight years, living off savings.” Randall is enthusiastic about it. “The cool thing is I am always asking my students or participants to step out of their comfort zone and here there is something new every day that I have to try. Whether it’s using the digger or laying pipe. We had to replace the whole septic system last year.” “We laugh because a lot of the money we put in here you can’t see – solar panels, hydro system ... the money is all underground or in a box. I’m not wearing expensive clothes or driving a fancy car,” stresses Amanda.

“It’s complicated living simply,” Randall laughs. “I’ve lived off the grid before, but this is another level, technology is changing. Dean Dunning from Wānaka Solar did our solar and he’s great, highly recommend him. He’s helped us to upgrade to lithium batteries and to install our micro hydro and now we have more power than we know what to do with so we’re considering getting an electric car to make use of it. We use LPG to heat the outbuildings, but we could use electric now.” “I actually blow-dried my hair this morning!” adds Amanda. “With the batteries these days you really don’t know that you’re off the grid anymore.”

The history of the property highlights more free-spiritedness. “There have only been two other owners,” explains Amanda. “Jeremy, a fascinating character who established the property and planted the 111 fruit and nut trees with the help of some local kids who sang as they planted. And Annie who was part of Wānaka Wastebusters in the early days, so the windows and a lot of the house is recycled. The place has had very special people doing things in unusual ways and they’ve both been back. Annie was quite emotional, she’s a very special lady. I love Annie. I love Jeremy too.”

To help explain the property the couple give me a tour, starting with the shed that houses a grand piano. “If we’re lucky enough Randy might play for us,” smiles Amanda. And he does, exquisitely. Moving from a relaxing melody that on some days the yogis in the adjacent yurt benefit from, to something more up-beat, singing:

"You got to sing like you don't need the money
Love like nobody broke your heart
You got to dance like nobody's watchin …”

The old shed, which they found down the road and dropped in by crane, is a stop-gap measure. “One of our goals is to have it in a room with sliding doors so that we can have outdoor concerts.” Randall says wistfully. “If the B&B guests are musicians I bring them up here on arrival and play a bit. One day Dexter beat me to it and was up here playing and the woman checking in thought it was a recording. All of this has been great for Dexter. He’s an only child but he’s had a lot of influence from all sorts of people.”

The yurt came with Randall from New Hampshire where he lived in it for six years. “I had it on a piece of land that I rented from an old hippy friend for $200 a year. I was a mountain guide and was all over the place, so I didn’t want to be paying a mortgage or too much in rent.

From the yurt, through a track in the long grass is Amanda’s art studio. “I’ve only recently moved in here” says Amanda. “Wwoofers would stay in here or we’d rent it out, but I needed a space that I could retreat to.” “Escape the male energy in the house,” laughs Randall.

The back of the toilet door provides a captive audience for the Mountain Spirit Sustainability Tree.

The next building is the guest bathroom and a toilet that features the Mountain Spirit Sustainability Tree - a graphic representation of Mountain Spirit’s eco aspects, created for them by wwoofers (who happened to be professional sustainability consultants in France), who spent a lot of time observing their sustainability processes. The couple laugh about the captive audience the toilet provides. “The tree helps guests understand how things work around here and what their role is as a tourist too.” Amanda quotes from the tree: “Because you come to enjoy the amazing and outstanding nature of New Zealand, as a major economy sector, tourism has to be kept developing in a sustainable way.”

Sitting peacefully further down the property is the tipi, which also came over in the container from the States. Randall shows me the intricacies of how the traditional Lakota Sioux tipi functions as we talk about his early years. “My parents had a ski lodge in New Hampshire in the 40s right after the Second World War just as skiing was taking off in the States, so I was indoctrinated into the ski business there. I was skiing when I was two. I studied recreational business at University, and as a young adult I worked in Austria making ski boots, but I used to look out the window and think there was something wrong – I wanted to be out there in the mountains. So, I quit and learnt how to mountaineer and ski guide. I thought Outward Bound would be a nice side-line to that, but it turned out that that’s where it’s at and I came back to OB after a stint of high altitude guiding and ended up with them for 15 years, working my way up to running corporate development programmes and training staff. Then I started a non-profit called Mountain Spirit Institute where I ran a variety programmes, some to South America, and had Peruvian musicians come to the States. We put on a regional solar festival for sustainable living … a lot of different programmes and sponsored authors’ speaking tours. We decided to keep the same name and logo for the sister company here in New Zealand but this one is for profit. We didn’t have a base for Mountain Spirit in the States, having to rent venues and the like but here we have this place and have been building that infrastructure. Outward Bound is mostly focused on team building and instilling compassion, which is important, but we wanted to add more of a spiritual aspect to it – and I use that term carefully.”

“Spiritual without waving feathers around,” explains Amanda. “Yoga, meditation and well-grounded practices. That’s what we are doing at the moment, but we’d like to run programmes for families as well. I think there is a need for families to have a place to come and be off devices and doing things together like rock climbing and sailing, which subtly remind them who is supporting who. This is where Randy’s Outward Bound background comes in. We bought Lake Wanaka Yacht Charters with this in mind – using the boats for team building and experiential education, to get people out of their comfort zone.” It’s funny how that happened too,” Amanda says of the yacht charter acquisition. “The guy who was installing the solar system on the house mentioned he was selling his sailing business and Randy and I both went, ‘yes’.”

Randall’s Lakota Sioux tipi is one of the Mountain Spirit accommodation options.

Randall says, “It’s kind of fun, it’s evolving. After one of our Sunday meditation sessions a couple of us went into the music studio and took it in turns to play meditative music on the piano and now we’ve made that a regular thing. We host an Eckhart Tolle meetup – we are really passionate about couples work and have done some lay counselling and facilitating, getting couples to open their hearts to each other - and I am thinking of getting my masters in counselling because it would free me up to do some deeper work. We’d also like to do conscious grieving.”

“We don’t want to be a retreat where you lie around with cucumber on your eyes,” adds Amanda. “We did a fantastic yin yoga retreat, but we really want people to dig a little deeper, that’s all part of the experiential process. It puts bumps in the road that you have to handle. That’s why we call ourselves a secluded sanctuary. A retreat centre gives the wrong idea.”

“We had been doing Airbnb for cashflow. The guests were not coming for the yoga or meditation but invariably they end up doing it.” Says Amanda. “People always wish they’d stayed longer so we gave a discount for three nights to encourage them. One of the greatest experiences in my life was at a place I had booked for a weekend when I just wanted to get away, I was not looking for a retreat. When I arrived, the woman said to me this can either be a bed and breakfast or a place of healing, you choose. I quickly said, ‘I’m just here for the bed and breakfast thank you, I don’t want any of your healing’. By the end of it my whole life had turned around. So, for me it’s always been about a place that people will come and feel something - a natural shift. Nature does it, the place does it, we don’t have to be waving it around, it’s just going to happen for the right people. Without tooting our own horn, our Airbnb reviews are so good that you read them and think ‘really’? People have a great time. We make them homemade bread and do lots of little things. Randy’s Lake Wanaka Yacht Charter reviews are similar.” [Mountain Spirit accommodation can now be booked through the Mountain Spirit website rather than Airbnb.]

The couple have lots of plans but say it’s a challenge balancing it all with raising Dexter so they’re not forcing anything right now. “As we’re ready and Dexter gets older, we will offer more retreats and it will dovetail.” Amanda applies the same philosophy to the garden that she says is “the worst it’s ever been but sometimes you’ve just got to let go … just let things go.” As we walk around the garden, she remarks at how interesting it is in this state. “It’s a garden for bees this year. Look at these carrot flowers, who knew they were so pretty, I wouldn’t see that if I hadn’t let them go. “Usually, I would be in here for hours and hours, but I am on a real go slow and am meditating more and more.”

[Since writing this story, two young Wwoofers, Conner and Jessica, who work full time on a veggie farm in the USA, have since brought the garden up to a new level and added new planting areas.]

Amanda and Dexter take a moment outside Amanda’s art studio.

From the garden we walk through trees to a stream which is flowing freely thanks to early summer rain. Amanda smiles, “Being near flowing water has its own feeling of calm. It quietens the mind and I love the saying ‘when my mind is quiet my intuition speaks louder than my fear’.” It is a magical place.

There is a swimming hole that needs attention to make it useable. “50 per cent of the area will be lily pads and other plants that will clean the water naturally – another project. This would have been a good time to do it with all the rainwater … I’ll do it one day,” Randall shrugs. “Oh well,” says Amanda, asking him about a song he used to sing, and he breaks into it:

“To get the essence of Buddhism, practice this well.
When you get up in the morning say ‘whatever’.
When you go to bed at night say oh well.”

“That’s a good song,” Amanda smiles. “So, we’re yet to make this whole thing work,” they laugh. “But we trust timing. No one is going to want to come here if we’re running around like crazy people. We can be busy but not hectic. We need to be calm about it and just get out of the way and let the Universe help us.”

Mountain Spirit
250 Hawea Back Road
Wanaka
Phone 03-443 5669

mtnspirit.nz