iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jamie Stewart @pareraho.bsky.social · 13/04/2025

Our walk to the corner store occasionally amazes.

Jamie Stewart @pareraho.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

We made this bench in a rush one afternoon when our youngest could only sit and watch and perhaps crawl. It was constructed from a pile of fencing debris left sometime previously. We just stood it up. We make benches as invitations to linger. We passed by today and it’s holding up.

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Jamie Stewart @pareraho.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

Long autumn walks on the tops. Gentle sun. Retreating grass revealing stock trails and surviving seedlings. Views up to the Tararua, across to Pauatahanui and back to Te Awa Kairangi. Eyeing up efficient and beautiful routes for traplines for the boy and I to wander while my legs hold up.

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Jamie Stewart @pareraho.bsky.social · 30/03/2025

Sharp calls greeted us as we crested the Pa ridge, and two falcons launched into space, one dramatically returning to land just metres from us.

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Jamie Stewart @pareraho.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

Yesterday evening, looking down on a grazed forest remnant in the headwaters of Speedys stream. We explored there previously and found gnarled, characterful trees, survivors some of 150 years of farming, perhaps next year this valley will be grazed for the final time. #rewild

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Jamie Stewart @pareraho.bsky.social · 22/03/2025

We stumbled today onto a worn but characterful old giant in an obscure valley of the eastern hills. Pukatea. Laurelia novae- zelandiae.

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Jamie Stewart @pareraho.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

A stream-side glade cleared of blackberry, montbretia and honeysuckle. A spot I have eyed up for years catching sun in the middle of winter. We will weed further, grass, fashion a bench seat and plant-up further this winter.

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Jamie Stewart @pareraho.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

Monday evening running group. Parents from the street briefly escaping domesticity to touch the sublime.

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Jamie Stewart @pareraho.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

Just lately, tradescantia, a weed which infests shady and disturbed niches in our stream, has dramatically yellowed, potentially the result of a new fungal biocontrol. I feel both excited and nervous. There is something primal and powerful about fungal outbreaks and how they overcome space.

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Jamie Stewart @pareraho.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

Above the forest the public land is grazed, but this is planned to be phased out from 2026. Today we walked a trapline, imagining forest recloaking these bare hills.

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Jamie Stewart @pareraho.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

Kiekie and kiokio drape over our local swimming hole, and our boy tests its waters. The season is turning and one extended southerly system could freeze our favourite nature immersion until next summer, but so far the extended forecast looks settled.

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Jamie Stewart @pareraho.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

Memories of last weekends adventure up an obscure Tararua stream, the Panatewaewae. Easter orchid, nertera depressa and toropapa fruiting. Fresh water, cascades to work our way around as a team, old logging tracks to test the boy’s endurance heading home.

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Jamie Stewart @pareraho.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

The nitty gritty of community conservation, clearing weeds from a new space to be cared for.

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Jamie Stewart @pareraho.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

Ripe tākawa (kawakawa fruit). Zingy forest treats through summer.

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Jamie Stewart @pareraho.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

If you take the correct turn off the Forgotten Highway and persevere down the steep track, you will, as long as you don’t mistakenly stay on the steep ridge leading to the Lost World find yourself eventually at the stream. Head upstream to the Tiny, then Mighty, Kelson Waterfalls. Wild in suburbia.

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Jamie Stewart @pareraho.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

Kapokapowai. NZ Bush Giant Dragonfly. Perhaps in its last hours. Damaged or old. Able to throttle wings, but not achieve flight. Scaring only our four year old from the edge of the pool.

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Jamie Stewart @pareraho.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

Cloudy day. Family walk around the coastline of Whitirea. Lovely feeling of remoteness. More seagulls nesting than I remembered from climbing days. Just one week of the summer school holidays left.

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Jamie Stewart @pareraho.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

Summer has finally arrived in Huttvana/ Te Awakairangi. From ridgeline suburbia we can descend to the forests and streams of the canyons to hide from the worst heat. Trees and freshwater, the best air-conditioner.

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Jamie Stewart @pareraho.bsky.social · 21/01/2025

Kererū, our wood pigeon, lurking quietly near the Confluence. An arms length from the track. More concerned about the local kārearea, bush falcons, than passing people.

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Jamie Stewart @pareraho.bsky.social · 21/01/2025

Family camping. Off the beaten track in the hills behind Days Bay. A known spot, but not well-known We left it as we found it, sharing it with those that have passed through before and those that will.

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Jamie Stewart @pareraho.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

The un-seasonal southerly continues to chill our summer. Our boy and I climbed Belmont Trig high above Te Whanganui-a-Tara.

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Jamie Stewart @pareraho.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

Ecological restoration is hard. Walking today up Titoki Spur, the sharp rise at the foot of the arete-like ridge of Pareraho Pa. Over the years as we have removed invasive weeds such as Darwin’s Barberry and Gorse natives such as kowaowao (bottom) and turutu (top) have spread. Persistence crucial.

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Jamie Stewart @pareraho.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

Gollans Stream. Wander off the back of many front-country ridges in Te Upoko-o-te-ika-a-Maui and you enter nature primeval. What struck me today was the moss at stream level. An intact catchment soaking up precipitation preventing the flooding that scours most streams. Centuries of intricacy.

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Jamie Stewart @pareraho.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

Near Rusty Forks the side stream was discoloured through pollutants in the stormwater coming from the suburb above. Some places have “drains to sea” plaques on footpaths, we are trying to arrange “drains to swimming holes”. So much carelessness, so many substances sold that require care.

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Jamie Stewart @pareraho.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

Our boy led me off a familiar path into a hidden flood-course of the creek. I was pleased to find a putaputāwētā riddled with holes. The name translates as “to emerge, wētā (a native insect)”. In a young recovering forest there are many less spaces for invertebrates, and hole-nesting birds etc.

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Jamie Stewart @pareraho.bsky.social · 07/01/2025

Turutu on Pareraho Pa. Some call it NZ Blueberry, but it’s inedible. A small plant of the dry forest floor. Seed is in theory spread by birds, but in bush formerly farmland recovery is slow and weeds fill the niche. We spread by dividing existing plants, but I’m eyeing up seed to propagate.

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Jamie Stewart @pareraho.bsky.social · 05/01/2025

Home. Pareraho. The little, previously neglected, public forest that for the last seven years we have walked in, created tracks and picnic spots, cared for and shared. Exploring the idea of ‘What if we put the forest at the centre of our community

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Jamie Stewart @pareraho.bsky.social · 04/01/2025

On a forest track, it is habit to clear fallen tree-fern fronds. Also, where I once wouldn’t pull a leaf, I will snap encroaching branches of species I know to break cleanly and feed them piece by piece to the hungry forest floor. Our boy has earned a gps belt, a technological “cry for help”.

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Jamie Stewart @pareraho.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

Between my in-laws and the wide expanse of Waikanae Beach is a previously farmed dune-land being actively re-wilded by the local council. Shimmering stands of raupo and harakeke growing more bountiful each year.

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Jamie Stewart @pareraho.bsky.social · 02/01/2025

Today. Karapoti Rata with Mahi. The best guess is 1000 years ago the rata sprouted in the fork of an old podocarp, eventually sending down roots and squeezing its host to death over centuries. But why pin-point the age of a single tree when this forest in this place is so ancient and wondrous.

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Jamie Stewart @pareraho.bsky.social · 01/01/2025

Kelly Stream December 2024. The route led us above the river to old forest of tōtara and rata. First Miromiro with his puffy white chest inspected us, and Kakaruai came to coyly follow. Then the call of kaka and the cagey descent through the canopy of its mate. Felt thoroughly vetted.

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