Time flies like an arrow on GBI And fruit flies like a banana! Holiday in hell One rainy morning, off I flew with my friend Jeanne in the 12-seater to “town” for a little medical procedure. Just after takeoff – Oceanview Road, Kaitoke Beach and a smudged window. Our house is at the end of the road on the right. Visibility soon dropped to zero. We were booked for a 2 pm return, oblivious to the reality that by then visibility on the island was also nil and our morning flight would be the last for 24 hours. This is common for flights, ferry and freight. Locals say, “Don’t expect anything on the Barrier. You just gotta go with it.” At the airport in the afternoon, the Barrierites were in a cluster waiting and wishing. We chatted and laughed for hours as the likelihood of getting home inexorably evaporated. When we got the final “no go”, everyone took it so well, the staff said they never saw such a happy bunch of people with cancelled flights! “The worst weather day this year,” they said. It was beautiful to turn our lemon into sweet lemonade, our unwanted night in hell into a party! Jeanne, Lou and I went to a motel and spent the evening having fun and getting to know each other. I never would have expected to write that I’m really glad it happened! Auckland really is like hell. EVERYTHING is toxic, the traffic’s as bad as everyone says, and if you didn’t know better you’d think humans lack any sense of aesthetics. We certainly made the best of it, but we couldn’t wait to return to our peaceful green island of sanity. It sometimes happens that flights between Auckland and the Barrier take off but can’t land. The pilots bide their time making lazy circles in the sky until dropping fuel levels force them to turn back. That was almost our fate the next morning. Before takeoff the pilot said he was giving it a go, with plenty of fuel if we needed to hang out and wait, and a good chance we’d have to return. After a rather alarming landing, all was well, and Jeanne and I were delivered safely into the loving arms of our waiting husbands! What is time? We spent hours trying to find out at the fourth annual “No Barriers – Small Island Big Ideas” fesitval of the brain, but all the experts could conclude is that it’s “a big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey … stuff” or even worse, “a big invisible thing that will kill you”. Luckily there was a lot more to the day. The presenters were a philosopher, a poet, a sleep scientist and a geologist, and the moderator of the afternoon panel discussion was none other than Kim Hill! Kiwis are familiar with Kim, but for those offshore – she’s been a feisty presenter on Radio NZ for 25 years and, at least one person believes, “unquestionably one of New Zealand's finest current affairs interviewers”. She’s spoken with thousands of people – among them the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandala and Monica Lewinsky (who New Zealanders may not have heard of, which is probably just as well!). Here’s our celebrity icon (centre) at the l’il old Claris Club! In the morning session, the guests spoke individually about their fields. Bryan Walpert is a professor of English and Media Studies at Massey University. He’s won awards for his poetry and short stories. His special interest is in science and its links to literature. His topic, not one you encounter every day, was “Mindfulness, Poetry and Ecology”. Fascinating fresh ideas I never before considered presented enthusiastically to an appreciative audience are yummy nourishment for the mind. “The study of poetry needs defending,” said he, referring to its relevance beyond pleasure, because poems offer the same benefits as mindfuiness. Among these benefits are a focus on the journey rather than the destination, a focus on what is rather than what’s wanted, a rethinking of the self, and the Buddhist insight of Pratītyasamutpāda – “dependent origination” or “dependent arising” – in contrast to the one-way linear causation of Western thought. A fundamental reality is that the world isn’t a collection of things, but a collection of events and relationships. As Alan Watts put it, “The sun, the earth, and the forests are just as much features of your own body as your brain….” Thus poetry – and Buddhism – have relevance to the environment as well. As you learn about poetry you cultivate mindfulness thinking, which is about relationships, including relationships in nature. Bryan went so far as to say that a poem is an ecosystem – a web of recursive multiple systems. Emily Dickinson advised poets: “Tell all the truth but tell it slant – Success in circuit lies.” Poetry is writing and thinking in ways that don’t come naturally. It’s a process of discovery that offers training in systems thinking. Bryan illustrated with the familiar line “I took the road less traveled by.” We were all taught that Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” is an easy, straightforward celebration of individualism. Bryan opened a lot of eyes through his detailed unpacking of the poem to reveal its theme is actually self-deception! A whole book has been written about this misunderstanding. The “slant” nature of poetry, when met with patience and thoughtfulness, can cultivate mindful thinking. Like ecology, poetry is needed to save the Earth and ourselves. William Carlos Williams wrote: It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there. You may have noticed that Bryan never once mentioned time! His topic was meant to be “Time in Literature” but – it wasn’t! GBI’s geological claim to fame Hamish Campbell is a senior scientist at GNS Science, a NZ Crown Research Institute. His brain is saturated with the epochs of the Earth’s history, their geology, and the ancient and modern geological evolution of the land New Zealanders and Barrierites call home. He took us on a fast-forward journey through New Zealand’s and the Barrier’s geology, geography, volcanism and climate. It all began over 70 million years ago, when the nearly five million square kilometre land mass (about half the size of Australia) named Zealandia separated from Australia and Antarctica. New Zealand, more or less as we know it today, rose from the ocean about 25 million years ago. Fittingly, Dutch cartographers gave Aotearoa its English name in 1645 from the province of Zeeland in the Netherlands, whose Latin motto is Luctor et Emergo – “I struggle and emerge.” (Three years earlier Abel Tasman had named it Staten Landt, supposing it was connected to a landmass of the same name at the southern tip of South America!). Never mind that, with some prominent exceptions, most of Zealandia is submerged more than a kilometre beneath the sea, last year it was confirmed as the seventh continent (under the new way of counting continents, in which Europe and Asia are combined as one). Its continental status was granted according to geologists’ definition of continents – by their continental shelves. The Earth and the solar system remain the same, but humans are free to add and delete continents and planets as they wish! New Zealand is traveling north. 140 million years ago its latitude was 80°S. Today it’s about 41°S and still dropping. Maybe someday wewillbe in the tropics, and even cross the equator! Not only that, New Zealand is being ripped open from the middle of the North Island and stretched from east to west – 92 mm a year at Rotorua.The Bay of Plenty is widening, so the Coromandel Peninsula and East Cape are moving further apart. New Zealand’s most common rock type is greywacke, a variety of sandstone. It forms the backbone of New Zealand’s main alps and connects them geologically to Kapiti Island, Dunedin and Great Barrier Island! Greywacke had its origin 510-105 million years ago in Gondwanaland, the long-since fragmented supercontinent of the southern hemisphere. Great Barrier Island is on an old volcanic arc, active from 18 to 8 million years ago, which has since moved to the east. A volcano’s molten rock buries everything in its path and eventually erodes off. Pumice from these ancient eruptions is still circulating in the ocean and can be found on Barrier beaches. Eruptions burst forth in various places on the Barrier as well, and as the millennia of vulcanism wound down, a volcano created Great Barrier’s little brother, Hauturu, or Little Barrier Island. 20,000 years ago, when more of the ocean was locked up as ice, the Earth’s sea level was 125 metres below where it is now. 100,000 years before that, during the world’s last interglacial period, the Barrier was enjoying its most recent pleasant climate, until now. At that time plants were completely different and sea level was 6 metres higher than now. Hamish saved a surprise for last. He and his team surveyed Great Barrier Island eight years ago, and discovered the best preserved bit of interglacial geology in New Zealand! The last interglacial foredune and interglacial swamp is just over the road from us, at the back of Winnie and Charlie’s farm! Along the way we learned other fascinating tidbits. Did you know that the average rock is 90 perent oxygen by volume and 50 percent oxygen by weight, or that the most common elements in the Earth’s crust are oxygen, silicon and aluminium? The Nature of Time – TO BE CONCLUDED…. ElderRing I’ve been loving the monthly ElderRing – Kai and Korero (food and conversation), a time to share what’s in our hearts about the Aotea (Great Barrier Island) community and our aspirations for the community and ourselves within it. Talking pieces are in reach for anyone who feels moved to speak. Despite its name, ElderRing is open to all whose hearts are open, and perspectives from those at a range of life stages brings vital richness to the gathering. The woman who hosts the events wrote: “I have felt a real need for this kind of community sharing for a long time and was introduced to the idea of an elders circle in the UK last year at a nature connection community building camp. I came home determined to offer this here and Aotea ElderRing has evolved as a result. I am so happy that there are many others also discovering this desire to be in community in this grateful and uplifting way. I am excited about and love the way it is growing organically – it obviously fills a need many of us share. My hope is that this type of sharing will start to impact upon the wider community eventually and we may see an uplifting shift in consciousness as a result.” :-) 36 and counting Tree planting on our wee section is going strong, and all in 12’s! To the 12 fruit trees – citrus, guava and feijoa – and the 12-karo windbreak were recently added 12 “trees for bees” donated and planted by local beekeepers Blue and Ronan. These guys offered trees to anyone who wanted them. Much of the Barrier is wooded with manuka, a pioneer species regenerating previously cleared land. As we all know, this special honey gets premium prices. Beekeepers and hives on the Barrier have been steadily increasing and it’s acknowledged there aren’t enough flowers to keep all the bees happy. The trees on offer were mainly not native, but those with abundant flowers loved by bees. We chose smaller trees – four cabbage trees and one each of buckeye, willow, sweet chestnut, sweet cherry, maple and rowan. Dear Jordan helped us enrich the soil and mulch the precious new trees. May the rain cooperate! Beachwalk physics Ever notice that smooth wet sand just beyond the line of the waves goes dry when you step on if? Instead of water flooding in as your foot presses down, a circle of lighter coloured dry sand spreads out around it and then shrinks back as your foot lifts off. Up close you can see that sand is made up of tiny fragments of rock and shell in infinite shapes and colours. They don’t pack tightly, so amazingly the spaces between them – that are filled with air or water – are 40-50 percent of the sand’s volume! One of zillions of types of sand, up close. When your foot presses down, creating a slight depression, the displaced sand slides diagonally and up around your foot. As hundreds of thousands of sand grains roll outward and farther apart, the water between them drains down and the top layer becomes drier. Lift your foot, the sand rotates back and the water returns to the surface. Check it out next time! Circuit International We’re trying to help a wonderful couple we met at a talk here. Ruth and Stu are "light workers” (my term, not theirs) devoting their lives to helping people in Myanmar/Burma by supporting communities to solve their own very serious problems – problems that are not of their own making but the result of brutal political and economic realities. In a nutshell, Circuit International connects local social entrepreneurs to resources, technology and know-how from global experts. Their partner communities are encouraged to look at poverty issues through an entrepreneurial lens and come up with sustainable solutions themselves. Circuit International provides start-up funding to businesses and initiatives that will have maximum impact for the whole community. Their talk was powerful and they and their teams are doing a lot of good. You can see examples and details at https://www.circuitinternational.org Local leaders The NZ team: Stu is second from left and Ruth is in the middle. They know that their work is rescuing merely a few of countless stranded starfish from a large and unjust sea, but the difference is enormous to the group they reach. NZ Herald article on Barrier Chitchat: Large group of stingrays surprise paddleboarder off Great Barrier Island The post prompted a flurry of comments, including: * “Good stuff, Wendy. If you had sunblock on, you'd be safe – it protects you from harmful rays.” * From Shanti, the local ecologist: “So cool to see. Rays are really important species in these ecosystems. Through feeding they pump water through modified gills, which creates a feeding pit to uncover prey. The pits (almost invisible to us) create disturbance to bottom sediments. This elevates food availability, attracting invertebrates and modifies the benthic community. It’s likely rays are keystone species and are key to maintaining ecological health and function of intertidal zones. Yay for stingrays.” Ro and I, of course, have mixed feelings. Who sees the rainbow? When conditions are right, a rainbow could be just out of sight! Everyone knows rainbows form when sunlight splits into the colour spectrum as it enters raindrops and emerges at different angles. The trick to seeing one is to be at just the right spot relative to the sun and the rainbow. When a rainbow forms in the sky and no one’s there to see it, is it really there? Ro and Sam carry on, two hours Monday mornings, making bamboo panels for a windbreaking fence. The first day Ben helped, too. Note Sam’s FunCargo, one of four on the island. The others are yellow (ours), white and grey. Louise powers along on the annual Wharf-to-Wharf marathon run / walk / cycle from Port Fitzroy in the north to Tryphena in the south. Springtime means heather on the Barrier. Beekeeper Blue says it makes tasty honey. Jayden with Ollie at Blind Bay. “Just a bundle of cuteness,” he said with a smile. Pohutukawa swing at Blind Bay
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