Kaitoke Kiss on Great Barrier Island What a strange time it’s been! We celebrated the loosening of restrictions with a kiss on our favourite dune-top! How glad I was that people could once again call in for a visit! That’s what I missed the most. For many people, the past seven weeks haven’t been easy on the emotions, mind, spirit, heart and soul, and I hope your experience has been as gentle as possible. The confused energies may have affected animals as well. Something in the air one April day caused them to go a bit wacky! The flapping pig, lifeguard dog, curious horse and squawking oystercatchers Every now and again the wild pig problem returns to Medlands. They wreak havoc on gardens and make a mess of recycling. This day, two pigs were across the road as we pulled up to our favourite spot to park and walk over the dune. One behaved like a normal pig, but the other was lying on its side, its two in-air legs flapping up and down like a calisthenic clamshell. Alas no photo, but here they are the next day. (We believe they are no more. A few days later Johnny was there with his rifle and pig dog.) Down to the beach and into the sea for our cold but blissful frolic. Along the beach came Greg, his wife, Mandy, and their dog, Koda. We’d been introduced to Koda, a long-haired black shepherd, the largest dog we’ve ever known. Though massive, he’s well-behaved, so he’s off lead when away from people. As they all came near, Mandy put him back on the lead, but to our surprise, next thing we knew he was in the water and heading full speed towards me! I admit to being terrified! Just centimetres away, he heeded Mandy’s calls and turned back. Koda acted from concern, wanting to help or rescue me – as Greg put it, his intentions were honourable! Sand sometimes gets into the clip, said he, and Koda slips off the lead. They tell me his name means “friend” in Native American languages, a good description of a life-saving dog. What next?! As we sat on the dune enjoying the beautiful scene, along the shore came Dale leading three horses. One took it into his head to trot right across the beach to us. Ro got up to greet the horse (and stand in front of me lest I get trampled!), look him in the eyes and stroke his face. Ro thought he was curious about us! Telltale hoof prints Dale and one of her horses on another day Adding to the oddity of our usually uneventful afternoon at the beach, a resident oystercatcher pair, Rigg and Maggie, normally silent as they go about their shoreline foraging, kept bursting into intermittent episodes of raucous squawking racket! STAY WELL That’s the solution to last month’s acrostic. Many of the clues and answers seem a bit dated by now! Self-isolate Enjoy quiet days and evenings at home Travel Out of the question these days Air A invisible medium for disaster Yay ! What everyone will say in celebration when this is all over Wash your hands Do this often as you sing Happy Birthday twice Elderberry Small, round, blue prevention that grows in bunches on trees Laughter Happy release that’s wonderful for stress reduction Love What the world needs now more than ever Forget your troubles and fly a kite! The first event on the island since the 22nd of March! Aotea FM A few of the trustees rotated days to keep our community radio station on air two or three hours a day. Our lovely station manager, Feli, put out a request to the community for two-hour Spotify playlists. I made a few as well as six classical playlists, one for each Sunday afternoon. Choko time at the Community Gardens In late autumn and early winter a choko megavine covers the fence along one side of the Gardens, producing prolifically! To quote from the acclaimed new Wholefoods Handbook 2020 (contact me if you’d like a copy – single copies are $6 plus postage): Choko (chayote or Mexican marrow) is an edible gourd that originated in southern Mexico and Central America, where it was long cultivated by the Aztecs. After the Spanish conquest, chokos became widely grown all over the tropics. Chokos are vigorous climbers, growing as much as 15 metres in one season! To cultivate, the whole fruit is sprouted and planted, the top protruding a little. Many consider choko to be bland, but a wide range of options can enliven this prolific and useful vegetable. Raw choko can be grated and used in salads. It can be sliced or chunked, lightly steamed and seasoned with herbs or tamari, or eaten with salt, pepper, butter and cheese. Don’t overcook. It can be halved, stuffed with mushrooms and cheese, and steamed. It can also be baked; sliced and fried; diced and mixed with eggplant or other vegetables for a stir-fry; and added to soups and casseroles. Cooked choko can also be mashed and used as a thickener in soups and baked dishes. It can be used in place of avocado for pseudo-guacamole, or mashed with avocado to increase the volume. And it makes excellent jams and pickles and can even be used like pumpkin in desserts. That’s it on news from the island! Once again I’m reaching into the archives and bringing out bits I wrote a while back. This month: the birth and death of stars, and a wondrous trek up a mountain called Ruahine. Private lives of the stars, concluded We’ve already learned about the temperature of stars, their size and speed, and their distance from our pale blue dot. Here are the last of the questions asked and answered by visiting astronomer John Hearnshaw at a talk on the Barrier a few years ago. How are stars born and how do they die? Stars begin life as increasingly dense molecular clouds of dark dust between existing stars in a galaxy’s spiral arms. With the continuous gravitational collapse of gas and dust, the evolving mass becomes hot, and the increase in mass leads to gravitational collapse, which gives rise to subcentres and subsubcentres, until eventually 1000 stars can come into existence from one cloud. The star cluster Matariki (Pleiades) contains 400 stars. About 100 million years old, it’s considered a young star cluster. As stars evolve, nuclear reactions at their centres convert hydrogen to helium, which gives out energy and causes changes to the stars’ temperature and pressure. Only the outer 25 percent of stars isn’t involved in these fusion reactions. This is why stars have a finite life. Over time – a very, very, very, very long time, the hydrogen is used up. Most stars are between 1 billion and 100 billion years old. Our dear sun is about halfway through its expected lifespan of 10 billion years. Stars with high mass burn out more quickly and may only live for 10 million years, and those with low mass hold on longer. Stars reach the ends of their lives in different ways. Some throw off their outer layers and become what’s called “planetary nebulae” (misnamed over 200 years ago because when viewed through older telescopes they resembled the rounded shape of a planet), such as the Hourglass, the Helix, the Ring and the Crab. The Crab of the Southern Sky Stars of higher mass explode as supernovae. Most of the stars’ mass is ejected and the cycle continues. Supernova 1987A was the brightest supernova seen from Earth in the four centuries since the telescope was invented. The explosion occurred 160,000 years ago on the outskirts of a “nearby" dwarf galaxy. The light of the explosion, traveling at 300 million meters per second, finally reached Earth in 1987. The star stuff is reused thousands of times, though some dying stars become black holes, neutron stars or dwarfs. And finally, what are stars made of? The technique needed is stellar spectroscopy, which measures the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation emerging from stars to determine which elements are present. It’s been known since the 1860s that all stars contain the same elements, though this theory had its detractors over the years and has only recently been confirmed. The consensus now is that stars are about 90 percent hydrogen and 10 percent helium, with trace amounts of other elements. Oxygen, for example, is only 1/40,000 of a star’s make-up. There John concluded his talk. I can’t say what all this fascinating information does for us in our daily lives, but as Mark Twain wrote in his delightful 1869 travelogue, The Innocents Abroad, “I sincerely wish to learn” just the same! ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ Night sky over Great Barrier Island In the forest primeval Way back in the innocent pre-virus days of early summer, the intrepid triad of Lucia, Santi and Santi’s mum, Marina, tackled a little-used track at the very south of the island. The track starts at the end of Cape Barrier Road (at the bottom right in the satellite image), drops down to a bay and then winds up the mountain Ruahine, a prominent feature of the landscape around Tryphena. Before the real climb begins, a break for mate (of course!) at Whalers Lookout. From here the Coromandel Peninsula is to the southwest, 19 km over the Hauraki Gulf. Dolphin at Whalers Point DOC advises 1.5 hours each way, but that seems outdated. The track is marked but not maintained so trailblazing and bushwhacking were needed, slowing the walk to 2.5 hours. They soon lost themselves in a magical world and became one with it. Watching a livestream Mini cascade Vines and roots twined everywhere in weird and wonderful bush like they’d never seen before At last they emerged on a clearing – the summit! Closing with a few more photos A Navy ship at Blind Bay after a rainy swim Rocket, chives, guavas Misty view from our deck I think that in the past seven weeks people have been more reflective and having conversations about deeper questions than perhaps they did before, and really connecting with and appreciating each other more explicitly than before. As a friend wrote to me, “It's a time when we’re all keeping each other healthy and happy. I'm looking forward to a better future when we can be fearless and free.”
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