The Willows is a recreational area, a few kilometres Northwest of Christchurch, on the banks of the Waimakariri river. It is open, a little boggy and covered in a scrappy forest of second growth poplars, willows and kowhai. The land has a bizarre contour:
It would seem that in many places a previous forest of regularly spaced trees have been felled and their stumps left in the ground to rot. The hollows left by the decaying roots have provided a place for nutrients and water to gather, and each forms a kind of pot for a self sown poplar or willow. It is a little eerie: it is all accidental, but looks purposeful because the previous use of the land has left its imprint, which could, I suppose, continue with an identifiable pattern for centuries to come.
There are patches of exotic conifer forest where the sombre, straight trees provide a canopy for a soft, ragged carpet of pine needles, blackberry and fern. A network of gravel paths winds through it, giving many kilometres of gently undulating avenues for walking and biking.
It isn't a classically beautiful place but it has a kind of desolate grandeur. The Waimakariri is an itinerant river. Swinging like a running hose left on a lawn, it has, over the course of many centuries, slowly shifted the path it takes from the Southern Alps to the sea in a fluctuating arc, with its current bed being the most Northerly extent, and Lake Ellesmere the most Southerly. Just when it reached its limit Northwards and was preparing to go back South again, Pakeha arrived in Aotearoa and built Christchurch in the area which the Waimakariri was sizing up as its next riverbed. The river's desire to continue its meanderings have been thwarted by the construction of stopbanks, and the land around these has been farmed by people who don't mind bog, thin soil and stony paddocks, and are prepared to have their fences washed away every so often. Great ugly blocks of pinus radiata have been planted, felled and abandoned. Willow and poplar have escaped from captivity and made a home here.
It's a spacious place to walk. I like that. The earth is making the best of the detritus left by human attempts to "improve" things. I like that even better. I walk and look for colour. There's not much.
Somebody has painted a dog on a rock.
For unknown reasons someone else has daubed a pine tree withgreen paint.
There is some gorse, which is fighting for a living in the dull light under the scrappy trees.
But underfoot there are these guys:
Amanita Muscaria. Fly Algaric. The mushrooms named for their ancient use as an insecticide.
Their spores were accidentally imported from the Northern Hemisphere on the seeds of the pine trees, and down here they are a weed species, much like the pines under which they make their homes. They contain hallucinogens, apparently, and are poisonous enough to cause illness, or, in extreme cases, death. Back where they belong, the Sami people used them in shamanistic rituals, and they can be eaten if they are prepared properly. There's two methods: either parboil them twice, discarding the water each time; or pass them through the digestive tract of a reindeer. I have some water but have neither stove nor reindeer with me, so I pass on trying it.
But weed or not, poisonous or not, containing shamanistic powers or not, they are beautiful, and they are here. People assault the land, unsuccessfully trying to tame it. And in this strangely beautiful place, here amongst the scars of their failed attempts, there is left this untameable river; these ingenious trees bursting from the ground; these bright fungi with the power of enlightenment and death. See what prevails. See what lies just beyond our perceptions.
