The Pōhutukawa Journal is the third and final book in Juliet Batten’s Seasons of Life trilogy. In the first, The Pomegranate Journal she wrote how she dealt with the challenges of ageing and living in an older body.
The second, The Persimmon Journal, was about dealing with the isolation imposed on her as a single woman during Covid lockdowns. It was also the year when she had to sell her bach, which had been hers for 53 years, as she could no longer maintain it.
At the beginning of The Pōhutukawa Journal she was still grieving its loss, but she had been able to retain ownership of the section next door so her grandchildren can inherit the land, and continue to be its guardians.
But the only way to gain access to her land is to cut a parking bay into it off the driveway. A pōhutukawa tree is blocking the way and a way around this has to be found.
The real estate agent who sold her bach had told her, ‘It will be easy. It just requires tree consent and will go through in about 3 weeks.’ Juliet soon discovered that was just a sales pitch ! It turned into a nightmare! Over the months the council came up with multiple obstacles to the tree consent application causing endless delays, and they kept on demanding more money.
It was so frustrating. But when she stood close to the pōhutukawa she felt a sense of kinship, and drew strength from the fact that it too had weathered many storms in life but remained resilient.
‘Yes the pōhutukawa tree knows all about living in precarious places. They have adapted to crashing in storms, recovering, and growing again. They know how to rally, conserve energy, and anchor new roots into the earth, just as I did over time as I recovered from multiple losses.
She recognised that the pōhutukawa tree was in charge of the land, not her, and that it would decide what happened there.
Throughout this difficult year Juliet found solace in nature, spending time on her own land and in other parks and reserves and beaches. She has woven many lyrical descriptions into her narrative as she contemplates the changes over the seasons .
On a brief visit to her land she wrote:
‘I spent some time listening to the birds. The tree showed itself in new ways as the sun caught its branches from different angles. It was beautiful today with its folded surfaces and gnarled limbs. A slender nikau was flowering with a small pink spray, caught by the sun.’
Towards the end of the year the council put yet another obstacle in her way. To gain resource consent she now had to pay a further $20.000 dollars to take it to a different level, an impossible hurdle to cross. Then there is an unexpected twist in her story.
This was also the year that Juliet turned 80. The upside to a year of battling bureaucracy was that it reawakened in her a desire to once again be an active environmental activist as she had been in her younger days. She discovered the power of eldership.
On her 80th birthday, she stood in front of friends and family and renewed her vows to the earth. She writes:
'I declared myself a re-activated activist, committed to doing all I could to help this ailing planet till the end of my day.'
Juliet finishes her journal with an invitation to her readers to write a nature journal of their own because:
‘It can open up your faculties of observation, give you an incentive for regular walks ( even without a dog!), and energise your senses.’
Her beautifully crafted journal will undoubtedly inspire others to reconnect with nature in a mindful way and to start their own journal.
As an older person, I also found her renewed vow to be a climate activist truly inspiring, showing that you are never too old to stand up for nature.
Reviewer: Lyn Potter
Ishtar Books
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