New Zealand -1500 miles on foot through- The Land Of The Long White Cloud

New Zealand

-1500 miles on foot through- The Land Of The Long White Cloud

Colin Skinner

(e-mail skinnem@aol.com)

This story is dedicated to Wendy Lake: author, writer, a wife, a mother, a friend, and all round wonderful person, without whom this story would not be here in print ... so, here's to Wendy, thank you for being there and thank you for just being you.

The blue goddess spins her delicate dance in the dark... Breathing life unto our dreams... Her soft breath feeding the spark....

Foreword by Andy Blick:

I am fortunate to live in the village of Minginui, in the heart of the Whirinaki Forest of New Zealand.  Living in Minginui provides the opportunity to look at the rest of the world from a geographical, as well as an ideological distance.  I am also fortunate in that I can spend time each day to travel into the forest... and just appreciate what's there.

Back in 1998, I met Colin Skinner, whilst working on a project to protect the kaka parrots that live in the Whirinaki.  After 1998 I spent another 9 years on contract 'pest control operations.'  This work involved trapping and killing introduced 'pests' such as; possums, stoats, hedgehogs and rats in the Whirinaki Forest Park.  Early in 2010 I stopped this work, after coming to the realisation that battling pests is a 'war' that cannot be won.

For conservation to work it has to be incorporated into every person's everyday life... and thinking.  The key to protecting the world around us is to change your thinking and view point.  Change your thoughts and the world around you changes.  It is as simple, and as difficult, as that.

In Minginui we are trying to head towards greater self-sufficiency and independence.  We have started a community garden, based on Bio-intensive/ Biodynamic principles and are looking at ways we can function better as a community.

I read somewhere that around 55,000 species are becoming extinct every year: although 99% of all species that have ever existed have already gone, this rate of decline is abnormally high.  This world-wide phenomenon is caused by what?  Us? Perhaps... and also, just perhaps, by our attitude to the Earth and our fellow companions.

We have to learn to trust Nature and not continue to ignore it.  In the end we have to simply appreciate what is around us.

Andy Blick (former Conservation Officer for the Whirinaki Forest)

Another Day in Paradise

Looking in the mirrored glass, my eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot.  My hair was prematurely grey.  Lines marked my face and my gums were starting to recede.  My stomach was out of shape.  I'd been given the gift of life and I'd abused it to the hilt.  I'd burnt the candle at both ends and put a flamethrower to what was left.  My body was poisoned... but how had this come to be?

It was 1991, morning, and I woke.  I was cold.  Around me were bushes and the sun glinted off the glass of a sky rise tower that rose up above.  I sat up and wished I hadn't.  My head ached, I felt sick and my nose began to bleed.  Red stains blossomed on my white tee-shirt.  I stood up and leant forward to let the blood drop to the ground.  I fished out a handkerchief from my pocket to wipe the blood from my face.  The heady taste of iron flowed down my throat.  I closed my eyes and tried to remember.

The night before, I had been drinking in The King and Queen, across the road from Middlesex Hospital Medical School, on Cleveland Street.  It had been a good night.  Too good.  My throat was sore from the night of singing along with Rich, Rory, Peter, Barry, Eugene and other friends from Chemical Pathology.  As the beers flowed on a Friday night, we became the entertainment: singing 'The Wild Rover,'  'Bohemian Rhapsody,' and any other song we could remember.  After the pub closed, we had gone on to a Mexican restaurant called Break for the Borders.  Tequila slammers and endless bottles of beer had followed.  I remembered being stopped by the police as I staggered through Whitehall and then walking through the fountain at Trafalgar Square.  What I couldn't remember was how I came to be in bushes the other side of Vauxhall Bridge.  My homing instincts had pointed me in the right direction for Kingston, but I hadn't quite made it home.