Ari's Planet

There is a small remnant of the forest that once covered the north of NZ. There are some 300 plant species, the most massive being the giant New Zealand kauri trees that were mined nearly out of existence in the 18th and first half of the 20th centuries. Tane Mahuta, the largest known surviving NZ kauri, is enormous. Its girth is astonishing, its height impressive. It is estimated at 2000 years old, but I have heard people say it may be 4000 years old. Kauri grow very slowly, a tree planted 12 years ago looks like a seedling of any other tree, a tree is not worth harvesting until it is 200 or more years old. Kauri shed their lower branches, so only the crown is filled with branches and leaves. There, maybe 50 meters up, another more than 30 species of plants make their homes, mosses, epiphytes, flowers, roots streaming in the air. On a rainy day water drips through the forest. Kauri and other trees climb up, ferns and all sorts of things cover the wet ground. The Kauri Museum is misnamed: it should be called the Kauri Logging Museum. Only a living kauri forest can convey what the forest is like. In the museum are impressive logs, ancient wood tens of thousands, even tens of millions, of years old. There is translucent gold kauri gum. There are manequins and displays, machines and gadgets, a wall of love for chainsaws, a light that breaks in the sky (ceiling) above the revolutionary Caterpillar tractor. People fish in NZ. The waters here are not yet depleted, men are so happy to gather food from the seas. Where is the yonder light that breaks over the sonar equipped fishing fleet that so changed the oceans? The fish do not jump into the nets in American waters. Lambs skip across the rolling waves of land that were forested. The museum does not convey the living kauri, it conveys the denuded ocean, by hook and by barb of sharpened steel, the rotating blade of a saw. Tane split his parents and let light into the world, Tane Mahuta lets the light of understanding into the dim heart.