A story from the trees

A walk in the forest is never just a walk in the forest (10 minute read)

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I’m going to dive right in here, to use a water-based metaphor. I’ve been wanting to try something a bit different, to do some writing which is less about science and more about nature. I’m going to write some pieces about what I’m seeing and observing around me, and what that makes me think and feel. I’ll still be writing my other articles, but will be including a few more like this as well. Let me know what you think (well, if you like it, anyway).

Figurately speaking, I’ve spent the last few weeks wading through excrement. I’ve been looking at how New Zealand manages, or doesn’t manage, its human and animal waste. I find the topic fascinating, but it’s also depressing. There’s a lot of waste pouring into our waterways, a lot more than I thought. In cities, the biggest problem is our disintegrating infrastructure – leaking pipes and overwhelmed treatment plants. In rural areas, it’s livestock, with most of their waste pouring directly onto the land and then being washed into our waterways during heavy rain.

We’ve made a miserable job of caring for our water over the last 180 years. I suppose I knew this already, but it’s become clearer to me over last few months of writing about water quality. It’s also something I’ve become aware of as I research the history of Wellington. Why am I researching the history of Wellington, you may ask? In my spare time, I’m writing a historical mystery novel set in 1870s Wellington. It’s great fun, but that’s not why I’ve mentioned it here. As I’ve been researching for my novel, I’ve learned that after less than 40 years of European occupation, this rather small city was a malodorous, polluted, pestilential swamp. It’s understandable that a densely-crowded and ancient city like London could end up in such a state. But it’s hard to fathom how so few people could despoil Wellington so rapidly.

With my mind on what was going wrong with our water, I need to get some perspective. I need to see what the water was supposed to be like. So, I head to the place in Wellington where I think I have the best chance of seeing healthy water, Zealandia. This valley, tucked between the suburbs of Kelburn and Karori, is the subject of an ambitious and long-term restoration programme. While the focus has been on bringing back the birds, the forest is recovering too, and healthy forest means healthy water, or so I reasoned.

Once inside Zealandia’s fence, there’s a long walk beside a reservoir, which was once Wellington’s water supply, before reaching the forest. I normally hurry by, heading for the trees, but today I keep my eyes on the water. It’s a deep, opaque green, so still that I can see every tree on the ridgeline reflected in its depths. But something tells me it isn’t quite right.

Image credit: Melanie Newfield

Near the end of the reservoir track, there’s a set of steps down to a series of pontoons, which allow me to walk across the corner of the lake and into a wetland. From the pontoon, the water is so close I could touch it. I’m not tempted, because now that I’m right beside the water, all I can see is dark green, thick and murky. Lakes aren’t supposed to look like this.

And then I see it. There’s a chain and a sign: closed due to algal bloom. It’s pushed to one side, not blocking my way, so the track isn’t closed right now, but it must have been at some stage. Because I’ve looked at algal blooms before, I know that they are a sign of polluted water, but I’m not sure why the reservoir is polluted. It used to supply Wellington’s drinking water, but it’s certainly not a safe water source now. I file the knowledge away in the back of my mind. When I get a chance, I’m going to do some research and find out why.

I step off the pontoon and onto dry land, following the track. Even if I closed my eyes, I would know I’d entered the forest. I can smell it. It’s the smell of damp, decaying leaves, of tree fern trunks, of rotten logs, and yet it’s a smell of freshness. I draw it deep into my lungs. I love this smell.

This is what I was looking for when I came in search of healthy water. I can hear it now. I follow the sound and see clear water, with gravel and sand on the stream bed. This is what New Zealand’s streams are supposed to be like. There’s no layer of mud washed down from the headwaters because the land above has been stripped of its protective cloak. There’s no bloom of slime triggered by pollutants in the water. The forest canopy shelters the water from the sun and the sky, so the water never gets too hot or too cold. There are no sewage plants or farms or factories polluting the stream with their waste.

I head along the track, the stream singing beside me. I love the music of water as it runs over the rocks. In the shallows, there’s a soft hiss, but as the stream tumbles into deeper water there’s a more hollow, resonant sound. Calmness washes over me.

Water is everywhere in this landscape, not just confined to the stream bed. I can feel it hanging in the air around me, chill and humid. Although the sky is clear, every now and again a large drop of water falls on me from the canopy above. Everything I touch is damp. I brush my fingers over the rusty trunks of kōtukutuku, the native Fuchsia, its bark peeling away in layers. I stroke the black trunks of mamaku ferns, coated in layers of velvety liverwort. I touch the heart-shaped leaves of kawakawa, which thrives in damp and shade, the suede-textured supplejack shoots, the clammy growths of the wood ear fungus. I’m warm and dry in my thick coat, but I’m surrounded by water.

As good as it feels to be in the forest, I know that what I’m seeing is far from pristine. I’ve been privileged to spend a lot of time in New Zealand’s native forests, with some knowledgable people. A walk in the forest is never just a walk in the forest. The trees are telling me a story.

I piece the tale together in my mind. First, there are the trees themselves. There’s a uniformity to their trunks – all are about the same age, thin and spindly. There are no forest giants here, not as there would be in old-growth forest. Above me, I can see the sky through a sparse canopy, when the blue should be blocked out by layer after layer of foliage. The trees making up the canopy are among our toughest survivors, the kinds of trees that claim back the land when it’s smothered in gorse. But there are a few clues, here and there, that this land is being cared for. One of these clues is the kōtukutuku, because possums love its soft leaves. Zealandia’s fence is doing its job.

Image credit: Melanie Newfield

Beneath my feet, there’s a similar story. Yes, there are abundant seedlings, including species that are tasty to possums and deer. But the ground contains only a shallow cover of dead leaves, when it should be thickly blanketed in ferns, mosses and a deep layer of organic matter. There are some mighty tree ferns, but in a healthy forest, there would be dozens of different ferns growing on their trunks, and there are none of these.

All these clues add up. At some point, not long ago, the original forest which stood here was obliterated. Logged, burned, put into grass, grazed. The little stream beside me would have been trickling through pasture, picking up sediment as it ate away at the banks and microbes as cows and sheep waded through it. Everything I see has regrown, and recently too. This forest is only decades old.

That’s one thing about Wellington. With its abundant rainfall, forest will reclaim the land quickly, given the chance. It won’t be the same as before, but it will protect the land and the water, as long as the introduced mammals are controlled.

That’s the sting, though. If we walk away from our forests, to let nature heal itself, it will struggle. Possums will munch on the canopy, while deer, pigs and goats will eat the forest from below. The forest at Zealandia has recovered because it’s been fenced and all the introduced mammals have been removed. There are some great examples of recovering forest around Wellington, but that’s only because the council is conducting intensive pest control.

I keep walking, enjoying the water and the smell of the forest, but I can’t escape the reality of what has happened to this land. The scale of the destruction is impossible to comprehend. My mind cannot visualise it nor my words convey it. From one end of the country to the other, forests which had stood for thousands of years were wiped out. This land of rainforest became a conflagration.

I think about the destruction of the Amazon or the rainforests of south-east Asia – destruction which is happening now and making a big contribution to climate change. We need these forests for the health of the planet, and ourselves. But when those of us in wealthy countries call for the destruction to stop, I know we look like hypocrites. I could rationalise to myself, saying that they didn’t understand back then, and to some extent that is true. They didn’t know about climate change. But I know that not everybody in New Zealand thought it was a good idea to destroy the forests to create pasture. That is something that has become increasingly obvious to me the more I learn about Wellington’s history.

When I think about the destruction of the forest and the contamination of the water, I can’t escape the knowledge that when settlers arrived in New Zealand, they were settling a land which was already occupied. Wellington already had a name – Te Whanganui-a-Tara. On the hill near where I live in Khandallah, the local Māori used to snare the forest parrot, the kākā. On the gently sloping land where I shop at the supermarket, they grew kūmara. Where the bus station is, sitting on reclaimed land, is an area known as Pipitea, meaning “abundant pipi”, a type of shellfish. In the streams of Zealandia, there would have been many kōura, the freshwater crayfish, and kākahi, the freshwater mussel, both valued foods.

There were rules governing the cutting of trees and the management of water, developed by trial and error over hundreds of years living in Aotearoa. But the settlers followed their own rules, which largely said you could do what you wanted to your own land and the water which ran through it. It took 50 years, and many deaths from typhoid, for Wellington’s new residents to stop pouring raw sewage into local streams. Around the same time, they protected the area which became Zealandia as a water supply catchment, but it would take much longer before it was allowed to revert to native forest.

We are learning, but looking at the state of our waterways and eroding hills, it seems like we aren’t learning fast enough.

Both my research on Wellington’s history and my writing about New Zealand’s water have led me to an unsettling conclusion. I knew it before, but I don’t think I understood it. I don’t think I felt it. But I do, here in the forest. The country we have now was built on the destruction of forest, the pollution of water, and the dispossession of those who were here first. In the same way that I can’t avoid seeing the history of the forest when I look at the plants in Zealandia, I can’t avoid seeing the history of Wellington, Te-Whanganui-a-Tara, when I look at my city.

A chill settles over me. There’s no sun reaching the bottom of this valley. I check the time, tuck my hands in my pockets and head back down the track. The sound of the stream, of the recovering water, follows me as I go.

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