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Peace Tree Walk 2008 - Riwaka Source to Mountain Valley - May 10 - 18
The Peace Tree walk was probably the best week I've ever spent. So good, in fact, that I'm not leaving town! It was eight days of blissful good will and positive vibrations. At the end of every day we all felt so good, riding a huge euphoric high together from spending whole days making music and playing with kids, painting faces and planting trees. Our group was quite a large one, on our busiest day we were 24 strong from all six inhabited continents. The international flavour of the group was really special, too. At every school or place we stopped to plant trees and talk about peace we would introduce ourselves, say where we were from and a little bit about why we thought trees and peace were important. You could see the kids faces light up when they heard people say they were from Mexico, or Sweden, or Hawaii, or Japan. It was just magic.
We had a core group of about 14 who walked for the entire time, including 4 kids aged 9 and 10, and others who joined here and
there for a few days or just an afternoon. The really wonderful thing about it was that even with a group so large everyone got on so well. There really were no personality clashes at all which is remarkable. They are all beautiful beautiful people and I've made some life-long friends in a really short time.
List of characters:
the main group:
Paul Taxi : one of our organisers, from Motueka
Alan : another organiser, originally from Belgium, now a local via Ireland where he took part in 4 tree walks.
Tomash : our giant from the Czech Republic, now living in Marahau
Uisce : Alan's daughter, aged 10
Guenivere : from England, now living in Southland
Cleopatra and China : Guen's twins, aged 9
Jarvis : Guen's son, aged 10
Disa : from Sweden, plays the hung - a beautiful melodic percussion instrument from Switzerland
Lugh : from Mexico, very zen and beautiful
John : from Hawaii, amazing guitarist
Dana : from Australia, also very talented at strumming
Ken: from Japan, rastafarian, plays digereedoo and drums beautifully
Hone and Jessica : along with Barney, the horse, and a cart which carried many trees
me : you
know me, i need no introduction.
people who joined us on and off:
Vanessa : Paul's parnter who joined us when her pregnancy and two sons allowed.
Orinoko and Rowan : Vanessa's boys
Brooklyn : from Canada, a constant source of positivity
Ian : usually goes for the whole trip but was sadly too fluey to do it all
Cameron : from Christchurch
Magnus and Sana : from Sweden
Moema : from Germany
Jan : from Poland
Sabrina : from Brazil
Stephanos : from South Africa
Sol : from France
Gen : from Japan - the Chai master!
Rachel and Andrew : from Australia, now locals who let us stay at their place one night
Tara : joined us for the last night, had housing crises that prevented her coming on the whole thing.
I hope I haven't left anyone out! Everyone was amazing.
Our walk began at the source of the Riwaka river which is a sacred place to local Maori. It's full of magic where the river comes up from under the mountain. It's incredibly pure, too. It tastes like it has honey added to it. We spent our first night
camped near the source getting to meet eachother. There were visitors who came just for the evening and some fantastic drumming went on around the fire while the kids ran about on the grass. In the morning we packed up slowly, getting used to our prams (which were carrying what gear wasn't on our backs and also the trees we had to plant for the day) and gearing up to begin the week. We walked 13kms that day which is the longest distance we did in a day all week. It was an easy one for me, having gotten used to walking twice that on the Walk the Walk mission but it was still a good walk.
We camped the next night in Brooklyn Reserve and in the morning we were joined by the local Nature Kindy. That's a kindy that operates outside in native bush. Such a great idea. We went on to Brooklyn School where we experienced our first group of kids. We introduced ourselves, made some music for them and then got them into a big circle and held hands, singing "we are a circle, we are a circle, with no beginning and never ending.." It
was beautiful. We walked on into town that afternoon and visited a centre for people with mental handicaps. That was one of the highlights for me, with such honest and enthusiastic reactions to us. It was beautiful. They all completely adore Alan, who already visits them every fortnight to play music and sing with them.
The next few days were spent in Motueka itself, visiting local schools as well as the hospice and a rest home. Every day we seemed to get more and more effective as a unit, the music got better and the euphoria got higher. By the time we walked out of town again we were a very tight unit. We visited an outdoor pursuits centre called Whenua Iti near the Riverside Community where we were treated to a 'little tree walk' under the guidance of a local botanical expert. It was really valuable to learn more about the trees we were planting everywhere. I think the international people especially enjoyed it. We spent that night at Riverside Community where we sat up late in a talking circle and then slept very cosily in a tipi (my second tipi this year - i love them!).
The next day was our last school visit. We walked out to Ngatimoti, another 13km day, and arrived at 2pm to be greeted by the entire school. Ngatimoti school is incredibly on to it in terms of conservation and educating the kids to care for their world. They have devoted the entire top field to become a garden with trees and quiet places to sit and think. We planted a lot of trees there. It was a different vibe from the other schools; we played our music sitting down and were much quieter. The kids were completely enchanted. The bell rang just after we'd finished planting the trees and having our circle and the kids let up a bit "awwww". They wanted to stay at school and plant more trees. It was amazing. We spent that night on the top of a hill at a property containing lots of house trucks and caravans so we didn't all have to freeze in our tents. We had a pizza party at the house for Vanessa's birthday.
We were all a bit sad to leave the next day, knowing it was going to be our last day of walking on the tree
walk. Alan left early to play a game of football and was planning to catch us up in the evening. The rest of us set off at a pretty easy pace; we only had 6kms to cover to get to Mountain Valley so we weren't in any rush. We arrived there at around 4pm and set up our camp and started a fire. We had loads of visitors join us that night to celebrate the success of the tree walk and just have a bit of a party. As with every night, out came the drums and guitars and the beautiful hungs and the music was amazing. By about seven thirty a bit of worry was beginning to creep in, as we hadn't seen any sign of Alan yet. We organised a bit of a search party including bikes, cars, walkers and walkie-talkies and set off to look for him, hopefully not in a ditch. He'd been spotted leaving the camp at 5 but we thought he might have missed the swing bridge turn off. Getting more and more twitchy as we didn't see hide nor hair of him those of us on the search finally turned back to the
camp. Alan was there, much to our collective relief. He had missed the swing bridge but had continued on to the next one rather than turning back. The reason we hadn't seen him on either road was that he had walked a lot faster than any of us had considered possible. Actually, he'd walked a total of 20kms in less than 3 hours. That's fast walkin'. But there was much relief and the party really kicked off after that.
In the morning we swanned around the camp. There was yoga and music and amazing porridge a la Tomash to partake of. We planted one last tree in a stand of native bush and then drifted off in twos and threes back to town to finish the weekend at Hot Mama's cafe where Alan has a permanent reggae gig on Sunday afternoons. No one wanted the tree walk to end and there is talk among us of the next ones, both here and away. People will be taking the idea away to their own countries when they go and hopefully making peace tree walks all around the world, which is the idea.
So, to everyone - peace out. (may
peace be with you, feel bliss and joy, just be generally awesome in a natural way)
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nikki
non-member comment
well child looks like youve found a space to suit full of like minded folk how nice for you and them flute coming -do you want some more clothes or anything ?? hi to all the peace walkers xxxmum