Ravines and Trees

There’s a section for sale near my home. I walk past it most days. Contractors park on it. Sometimes a pair of paradise ducks stand in the grass, the auburn tones of their feathers in contrast with the green.

‘I don’t think it will ever sell,’ a neighbour says to me one day as I walk past. She has lived a lifetime near this ground.

‘Oh?’ I say. The section for sale is flat and springy with lawn, it has a view of the sea and looks perfect.

‘There used to be a gully in the middle of it,’ my neighbour says, ‘I remember horses walking around and around the ravine.’

I stand still while mentally rocking back. A ravine? Horses? A chasm under flat perfection, animal tracks around the edge.

‘They filled it in,’ my neighbour repeats, ‘I don’t think it will ever sell.’

*

During a meditation I see myself in the centre of a circle of trust, a ravine, a shadow-land breaks along the ground towards me. I touch the edge of the void and inch back.

*

At the road edge, under an oak tree near Olveston House in Dunedin there is a rock with a plaque on it. The plaque reads:

The trees in this vicinity, also

those in Duchess Avenue and many

in Jubilee Park were planted by

William Thomson

a great lover of trees and an

enthusiastic committee

member of

the Dunedin Amenities Society

from 1888 to 1923

I attempt to find William Thomson in Papers Past. His name is there, I can’t find more, mainly because I lack the energy to search. Instead I read through stories of Dunedin people planting trees to commemorate the many young men killed in the First World War. I read the notes of a meeting where the Amenities Society is concerned about a mass of weedy sycamores taking over the native bush in the green-belt, and their decision, a hundred years ago, to cut the sycamores down for firewood.

I rest on the bench near William Thomson’s plaque. Behind me is a thick holly hedge, in front of me are two enormous lombardy poplars, and a huge oak. On the other side of the road I count three elms. An ash towers behind them, its leaves tinged in the rusts of autumn. No sycamores mar the lush native bush which stretches beyond.

William Thomson crouches over freshly turned soil, his shirtsleeves are rolled, his wool trousers are hitched tight and tucked into boots. There’s a smell of earth, leaves and sweat. An oak sapling quivers in his hands. So many have died. There is nothing he can do. There’s something. William plants trees.

Live.

I breathe the rich oxygen of this place alongside the daisies and dahlias nodding quietly at the feet of hundred year old trees.

Later in the dune tracks, I take a photo of the one seed-head of a young toetoe planted by my friend Angelina, who loves trees, and who has participated wholeheartedly the generative native planting of the dune edge-lands near my home. I hope the toetoe will scatter seed, and soon there will be thick shelter, and goldfinches bobbing on supple stalks as they feed.

Toetoe, planted and growing in the dunes tracks thanks to Angelina and the many people alongside her.

William Thomson and Angelina have planted hope in me, and oxygen.

Sap is gold, photograph by Kirstie McKinnon.

I settle down and paint the encroaching ravine. In the painting I see that maybe some gullies are paths. And perhaps a ravine is a place where water flows, and where tallest trees can drink deep.

The original person, watercolour on paper, by Kirstie McKinnon.

The small being in the painting reminds me of Pam Morrison’s beautiful flash-poem Songlines, and I ask and receive Pam’s permission to share Songlines with you:

Songlines 
by Pam Morrison

You might think she was praying, the wee girl, the way she’s bent over like that, soles of her feet pointing to the sky all covered in mud, small thighs pressing on bare calves, back curled over like a baby animal, not hunting, not playing, not resting, something else. See her hands, how they’re overflowing with small clods and loose dirt, black and brown, both, and her mouth, look, her mouth is there in her hands, in the dirt, her lips open and grubby. Listen now. She’s singing. She knows the story. The one about songlines in the earth. How they sung up creation. 

Songlines by Pam Morrison is part of the string mountain installation What if the Gold needs to Stay in the Ground? On at 125 George street (next to the Lollie Shop) until 2nd April 2026, open 11am-2pm, [closed on Wednesdays and Sundays].

For more information about the proposed mine in the Dunstan Ranges, and to add your voice to the no-mine mailing list, here is a link to the Sustainable Tarras Website.

Fail with your heart open, a journal painting by Kirstie McKinnon of a quote by Matt Licata.

Thank you for reading.

Kirstie