Rats! - the mower is back

I heard the tractor mower across the river at the golf course today: first day of freedom under ‘essential turf maintenance’ that golf courses and other significant sports grounds were allowed to undertake in a new extension of ‘essential services’ allowed under Level 4 Covid19 restrictions.

I was somewhat disappointed. The low hum of the tractor across the way is not disturbing, but it’s just a sign, a starter, an indicator of the resumption of normal activities - and noise - we can expect to see as the machinery of modern life gets underway again. I do not wish to see a return to our so-called ‘normality’ - at least, not the normality we had become accustomed to before the pandemic: the noise, the business, the increasing intensification of life.

This same morning, I had also read an excellent and challenging article by Julio Vincent Gambuto, "Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting". It warns of the onslaught from business, advertising and government which will urge us to spend our way back to ‘normal’. OK, he’s writing about the States, but similar aspects will apply here - that normal is seen to be a busy, productive economy producing ‘things’ that may not be necessary, or exploit people or the earth, or are only available to those who can afford it.

(How essential for life are golf courses by the way? Could they be better turned over into urban farms, or small native bush enclosures?) Don’t worry - I’m not going to get out there and start ploughing up golf courses, just wished to point out they are artificial ecosystems, whose concept has come from a foreign land, imposed on natural soils and ‘maintained’ in that artificiality through the constant intervention of people, machines and chemicals (yes - and much modern farming is the same). “This ’aint normal” - to borrow a phrase from the book of the same name  from another American commentator ‘farmer philosopher’ Joel Salatin, who is already carving out a new normal for a post-COVID19 United States.

Meanwhile, Gambuto, whom I read this morning advises:
take a deep breath, ignore the deafening noise, and think deeply about what you want to put back into your life. This is our chance to define a new version of normal, a rare and truly sacred (yes, sacred) opportunity to … only bring back what works for us, what makes our lives richer, what makes our kids happier, what makes us truly proud.

Back to Aotearoa, on my side of the river, we have a riverbank ecosystem which has been restored over the last decade through plantings of harakeke (flax), taupata, ti kouka (cabbage tree), toi-toi, etc - though blackberry, gorse, broom and lupins are also finding a footing. And native skinks are competing for rats for life.

So - you want to go back to the rat race again after all this?

Venturing out - life under COVID

Week Two under our COVID19 rahui (I prefer that to the inaccurate 'lockdown' - when we are free to stroll out locally and make shopping expeditions for 'essential' supplies). We ventured out to the shops today for the first time. It was our local Super Value, a smaller supermarket, limited to 10 customers at a time. But no queues at 3pm when I ventured in (compared to the lines all along the entire frontage of each of the larger Pak n Save and Countdowns I checked out. Unnerving and eerie to see checkout operators with masks on.

I know the impacts of this reaction to COVID19 are hitting unevenly, I know those families who are already under strain will feel it more, and I know there is expected to be a rise in domestic violence. But, in light of a world facing the long-term, intertwined challenges of climate change and ecosystem destruction, the impact of some of the human measures taken in response show what can happen when there are fewer cars, fewer planes, and more people experiencing, noticing and enjoying their local neighbourhood. Families are spending more time together, and having to come up with creative and enjoyable ways of doing that; as well as relating in innovative ways with their neighbours from a distance; and there are neighbours finding out for the first time who may be lonely or vulnerable ones n their midst.

People are finding out that life is not about rushing, and filling every available space and time in their lives. Globally, in many places, air pollution, traffic congestion, noise and energy consumption is down. And I've just heard while typing this that New Zealand weekday energy use is down 15 percent, and a potential electricity shortage this winter has been averted - thanks to that lower electricity demand.

Finance Minister Grant Robertson said we are in 'uncharted territory' when he announced the government's initial business support package on 25 March. But is there possibly a cloud with a silver lining on the horizon? 


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Marking the Hutt - past, present and future

This red-topped post on the Hutt River near Hutt City Centre is a graphic indicator to the changing course of human history - and the Hutt River - past, present and future.

The red line shows the gap in height between the present stopbank, and a proposed new one. Comfortingly, perhaps, the highest flood ever recorded is well below the height of even today’s bank. The marker for the biggest flood I’ve experienced in my 17 years here is even further below. Mind you, that storm was still enough to flood large parts of Waiwhetu, Seaview and Moera - due in part to an overloaded Waiwhetu stream further down the valley. It has since been ‘renovated’, and is now less of a threat.

However, what I find most interesting is that the marker for the 1858 and 1898 floods (equivalent heights) shows how quickly and easily human modification of the landscape can dramatically change things - and cost human lives. John Easther, in a history of the Hutt River written for the Wellington Regional Council, said within two years of European settlers arriving in the Hutt Valley in 1840, ‘stripping of the forest had allowed the Hutt to erode the land and change course as never before’.  In January 1858, the worst of a series of floods that affected the valley caused nine deaths and took out many bridges and roads, as the sign next to the riverbank marker testifies.

The Māori name for the river is Te Awa Kairangi - ‘the river of great value’, reflecting a different relationship with the river. It’s now more commonly used by others too.

 Reassuring as today’s marker and plans to raise the stopbank higher are, I
do wonder what impact climate change - whether 20, 50 or 100 years from now - will have on the level of safety offered. Land and people will be dealing with the double complexity of higher mean sea levels and more intense rain events. Perhaps the slow reforestation of the hills and better urban land and water management will also help - slowing down storm run-off and doing their bit to minimise, or soak up, carbon emissions. Only time will tell.

Poem - In flood
Its banks full
The river is a quiet fury
It must flow to the sea.
There is no argument.

Far from home - reflecting on Ihumātao - a 'thin place'

I am almost the farthest away I can be from home while remaining on this planet. If I travelled 170 km northwest from Madrid to El Capio, I would be the furthest way. Such movement - possible to be done within 30 hours today - prompts me to think of the human migration project, if we may call it that. Of course, "project" implies by design, orderly and planned. Many cases of human migration are far from that, especially in our times of huge disruption of people through war, poverty, environmental disasters.

Recent revisions of the history of Aotearoa New Zealand I grew up with point to the main migrations of Polynesians to Aotearoa as being intentional and planned, after Kupe's original, legendary discovery of this bold new land - the land of the long white cloud. The more I grow to understand my land's history, in the context of human history; and see that ongoing history unfolding now, the more I am proud and blessed to be sourced from Aotearoa. Maybe we come to appreciate our home the more we are distant from it.

In any case, that is not what I set out to write about today. I wanted to share a small fragment about Ihumātao in Auckland (New Zealand's largest city), where a small group of occupiers, led by local Maori, are seeking to protect a special place in New Zealand's history from a housing development. It is the place where the first arrivals to Aotearoa started growing the plants they had brought with them from elsewhere in Polynesia. It was the place where their descendants adapted European vegetables for growing in Aotearoa conditions, before land wars tore many of them from their homelands. What the Save Our Unique Landscape (SOUL) group seek is that the land (whenua) be returned to the indigenous people (mana whenua) of the area, "to be held for the benefit of all the people of Aotearoa to enjoy as an open, green, historic reserve." Elsewhere they say: "We want a liveable city. We need places to breathe, to dream, to connect to our ancestors, and engage with our history. At Ihumātao we can do this".

As Brendan Corbett testifies in the video below, Ihumātao was the end point of the 100,000 year "human project" of migration out of Africa. When I first heard these words, it blew my mind - that this land of my birth was indeed the last significant place of human settlement on earth. It is a young land: geologically, in human terms and in its integration into so-called 'modern life'. And it still gives me hope, when we, through greed and destructive environmental practices, threaten so much of our natural spaces, our wild spaces, and our life on this earth. Here is Brendan:

Festivals and fireworks - ending the old, finding the new

Wellington City Council set off fireworks last night (14 July) for the first time in its celebration of Matariki. It reflects the City Councils' new Te Tauihu policy, which promotes Wellington as a bicultural city and has a 2040 goal of becoming a te reo Māori city (whatever that means). I'm surprised - and pleased - it was a unanimous decision by the Council. It shows how far we've come in restoring the mana of te reo Māori as the first language of this land.

Fireworks make a nice spectacle, and better now than for outdated Guy Fawkes celebrations on 5 November. But I do hope as Matariki re-ascends in our nation's consciousness, that people will recognise it's not just another excuse for a party, but will get more down to earth in its honouring.

After all, in traditional Māori practice, it reflected a pattern of life in touch with natural rhythms, where food growing, harvest and preparation was linked to the seasons.

I was fortunate to be at Taranaki's Parihaka Community five weeks ago, for their equivalent of Matariki. Puanga, they call it: the Maori name for the star Rigel that sits above the Matariki (Pleiades) cluster. Matariki's first appearance in the eastern dawn sky in midwinter signals the beginning of the Māori New Year - in most places. But for Parihaka, the mountain of Taranaki comes between it and Matariki at the time, so Puanga is taken as the marker - and gives its name to their festival.

Modern-day Parihaka has been celebrating Puanga for about 10 years. This year was the first time Puanga was seen on the first day the community expected to see it. I felt blessed to be there, standing on a hill where colonial soldiers had watched over Parihaka for five years after its violent sacking and desecration in 1881.

But on this clear, still night in June 2018, about an hour before dawn, a visitor to Parihaka, a musician, played a slow melancholy tune on a taonga pūoro (traditional instrument) - a bone whistle. Then Puanga rose clear and brilliant just above the southern spur of Taranaki, rising to be just above the summit before it disappeared into the blue of the brightening morning sky.

Later that day, it was down to work in the maara (gardens) - shoulder to shoulder with people from Parihaka, from Taranaki, Wellington, Auckland, Germany, France, United States.... This was the last big harvest of the year, and the beginning of preparing the beds for winter planting, as well as a general tidy-up. All through the weekend, day and night, large logs burned in the fire-pit, symbolising te ahi kaa (the home fires) that the Parihaka Community is stoking up and burning brighter now, especially now that a Deed of Reconciliation and Settlement has been achieved with the Crown over wrongs committed against Parihaka. But the only fireworks at Parihaka for their "Matariki" were provided by a guy with a skill-saw trimming off surplus ends of corrugated iron on a shelter they built in the garden.

While I was weeding old plots myself, I ended up meeting 'cousins' from Auckland - cousins I'd never met before. They were from a Māori/Chinese family, market gardeners from round Pukekohe, one of whose sons had married a cousin of mine. I knew the family had Parihaka connections, but I didn't expect to find them there that day. Later, I met and spoke with Tihikura, whose family has had a long association with Parihaka, and whose mother and father taught him how to use harakeke (flax) on the garden, and for weaving. The colonisation of his lands still hurts, as intensive farming practices and drainage of land destroys the habitat for harakeke, tuna (eels) and piharau (lamprey fish). He wishes that "Māori farmers" of such native resources, receive as much recognition as dairy farmers.

As I worked in the garden, under blue skies with Taranaki gleaming brilliant white, I felt I was offering it up as a prayer for our land - for Aotearoa: that we would all find our place, our common ground here, and work the land sustainably so all may benefit from it. It's a long prayer, but the signs are looking good this year.

Signs of the times - or reading too much into it?

The thing about a personal blog is you can put 'way out ideas' out there, and then just leave them posed as questions.

I'm not usually one for getting gushy over other people's babies (I'm a guy after all), and all babies, all people, are 'special' in some way. But I have to say I sensed there was something nationally significant about our Prime Minister giving birth to a baby while in office - especially after all fuss cause by a question last year over any plans for parenthood while in office.

And I have to say, in quiet anticipation, it felt like a 'royal baby' underway as we waited during last week - though much of the media attention was over the top. On the day the child was born, there was a rainbow over the Beehive for what seemd like most of the day, from where I was working anyway. Then, 15 minutes after the child was born, right on 5pm, a small earthquake was felt in Wellington. It was the shortest day of the year, and on the following day, the first real frost of the year - not something we see a lot in these days of warmer climates. It felt like a real winter - something I welcome in this era of climate change.

For me, it was a sign that perhaps we can turn things around - globally and nationally, with this government more committed to a low-carbon future than any previous one; and our nation making another global first with the first national leader to take maternity leave.

I also hope that the joy over this baby may translate into a recognition of the specialness of every child,  including every child on its way; and the need to protect and cherish each and every child, and ensure each and every family can bring up their children in the best possible way. A nation and a people that truely cares. Is it too much to hope for?

Jacinda Ardern and Clark Gayford really capped it off (for me) by giving their child the middle name of 'Te Aroha', encompassing the love (aroha) they'd been shown, and reflecting the mountain overlooking where Ms Ardern grew up - it's my maunga too.

Out on the weekend ...

Often on a weekend, I'm out in our white station wagon gathering bush mulch which has flowed down the river, then washed up on our local beach. Mixed with seaweed, it's great on our garden (but I keep it from the young plants). With the CD selection in the car, it's usually Neil Young's Harvest album playing. The song 'Out on the Weekend' strikes the right tone (except gardening is not a money-making venture - yet):

See the lonely boy, out on the weekend
Trying to make it pay

Today, I had no car - someone had borrowed it. But I was still scavenging organic matter for our garden. Being autumn, this time it was fallen leaves in the gutters around our streets - some had composted to black. With wheelbarrow, spade and rake - it was three wheelbarrow-fulls for the compost.

Like any good permaculture principle, this is serving multiple purposes - well, two anyway. It gets some nourishment into the garden, while also clearing the gutters of debris that could clog the drains and increase surface flooding in heavy rain. It's not much, but in our (mostly) unsustainable cities, anything that increases the level of organic living must add to the mix in a healthy way.

This song and blog dedicated to my wife, who is usually out harvesting the internet:

The woman I'm thinking of, she loved me all up
But I'm so down today
She's so fine, she's in my mind
I hear her callin'

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