Profound changes for the big pohutukawa

A few weeks ago the big pohutukawa near the bach on Ōtata lost its two massive northern limbs. Well, they’re not exactly lost, more cracked, bent, and bowed and it happened in completely still and hot conditions. Why then?

Rod was nearby and heard an almighty groan and huge crack. Upon investigation, he realised it was the big tree.

It wasn’t until I returned to Ōtata that I felt the full impact that change has had on our lifelong friend – and on me. As kids we spent hours of happiness aloft, building tree huts, climbing, and playing imaginary games. It’s devastating. His limbs are still attached and one of them has a point of contact on the ground where we hold hope it may take root and live on.

The bush smells of sap weeping from the trees he brought down with those limbs. His tangle of aerial roots seems to be there to somehow weave a support network around the tree, like complex, living, scaffolding. It’s really hard to conceive the enormous weight the tree must be carrying in any one of its limbs. Seeing one lying broken along the ground, I realise it must extend at least 50m.

With each limb’s enormous girth, even a tiny section must weigh much more than a person. If the integrity of the tree has been compromised as we suspect and more limbs crack – or even all of them – he would end up looking like some gigantic terrestrial octopus.

And all we can do is stand by and watch this change which has been perhaps 600-800 years in the making. Over that time he must have witnessed amazing and unimaginable change. We must observe and document this latest one the best we can. We hold onto hope that this most precious of trees knows what he needs to do to survive – and in the process, he’ll teach us something. Perhaps it’s simply accepting that this tree, such a constant throughout my lifetime, is also subject to change.

Some days have passed now and I’ve found a new way to consider this event. I’d prefer to think of it as less of a break and more of a bridge to the future… perhaps he’s reaching out and connecting, or reconnecting to something?