In the valley

In the valley
a small heart beats,
a forested hand
plunged deep 
below the surface.
Not that there isn’t life elsewhere, 
not that we aren’t all living,
but not this way,
not for this long,
and, simply 
not this well.

Mangaroa Valley, NZ Aerial Mapping, 7 May 1951

This is the valley where I live, and the photo was taken in 1951. Our house would have only just been built. An aerial photo today would look quite different. Although it is still a rural valley, it is not dominated by farms anymore. Today there are are a lot of smaller lifestyle properties, with the minimum holding on the valley floor being 4 hectares (10 acres). 

As well as more houses, you would see a lot more trees. Mostly shelter belts. Long rows of cypress leylandii, eucalyptus, macrocarpa and pine. All of them introduced, exotic trees. 

Like nearly all flat land in the region, the valley was cleared by settlers for farming. The valley floor was once covered entirely in beech forest. It would have been like a thick carpet or a generous bedspread, textured and alive. It would have been full of native birds. The huia with its extraordinarily long, hooked orange beak, extinct since the early 1900's, was known to live here and would have swooped and hopped through the valley.

There is a small stand of original native forest still here. It is right in the centre of the valley, fenced to protect it from grazing animals. I haven’t been there, but can see it from the road when I go past. 

I want to ask the owner if I can visit it. I’m scared they might say no, and that I won’t get a chance to stand inside a forest that has stood here for hundreds of years. I’m scared they might say yes, because I might get in there and evaporate or melt or disappear into the trees like a mist. 

I’ll ask. Eventually. For now, I drive by as as slowly as I can, peering into the dark gaps between trees, and studying the contours of the canopy. 

Sometimes when I lay in bed at night, I think I hear the trees talking.