I made a mistake. It was a kick in the guts sort of mistake. My intentions were honourable but I miscalculated the reaction. What can I say? Social media is a rock you lift up and sometimes there’s more than a few crabs that crawl out.

I was walking along the beach. My local beach. A road runs along a small section of it. The road is even closer to the beach after the last couple of bad storms. Each storm brought big swells, high tides and big waves. These waves sliced off large portions of the sand hills. These sandhills are mostly two stories tall, although, in a few places (by the road), they can be anywhere from knee to shoulder height. The sandhills and all of the land behind them is part of a large park called QE2 Park.

A cross section of the sandhill showing one of the shell middens.

The cross-sections of these sandhills tell an interesting story. At the top you have the plants: flax, grasses, small trees - (Coprosma repens), and weeds. The next big layer is sand and then, in some places, is a layer of white shells, which are middens from the time that early Māori occupied the area, then there’s a lot more sand, and almost at the bottom of the sandhill, but not quite, is a layer of white pumice stones (probably from the Lake Taupo eruption 1,800 years ago).

Layer of pumice stones, possibly from the Lake Taupo eruption.

Before I launch into the details leading up to my mistake you need to know two things.

The first thing you need to know is that the beach isn’t a shelly beach. Sure there are shells, but they’re scattered like a handful of seeds thrown far and wide, and most of them are flat. The recent storms have brought a lot of new shells to the beach. There are lots of grey cone shaped ones and silver dollars (which aren’t really shells) and long orangey curly ones. There are also a few deep piles of white shells up by the sand hills. I love these in particular. They glow in the early morning and in the evening when the sun touches them. There are quite a few piles, but to say they’re plentiful is a gross exaggeration. It’s also clear that these piles of white shells are from the middens in the sand hills, so this makes them a little bit more special, a little bit more mysterious. They are portals to the past.

The second thing you need to know is that the beach is suffering from serious coastal erosion. The land is getting washed away at a steady pace. Every rock, every shell and every grain of sand counts.

So back to the story. Last Thursday I was walking along the beach with my dog. It was a still sunny afternoon. I came across an older man. He was filling up several big white buckets with white shells. He was taking shells from one of the special piles. His station wagon was parked nearby. He’d carry the buckets up to his car and pour them into a large container in the back. Then he’d walk back to the beach and start the whole process again. I was horrified.

It’s one thing to take a handful of shells home, but it’s another thing, altogether, doing what he was doing. He was mining the damn beach. I stood and stared at him wondering what to do. Several people walked past, they didn’t so much as glance at him.

I loved those piles of crisp white shells. I knew they were there temporarily, that the next big storm would return them to the sea. I run along the beach most mornings and I look forward to seeing those piles of white shells. I marvel at their beauty.

You talk to anyone who runs or walks along a path or beach, day in day out, week in week out, month in month out, over the years. You talk to them and they’ll tell you about the small beautiful things they notice: a particular group of mossy stones, a wind battled tree, the way the light shines through the thin leaves on a shrub, the drops of rain on the ferns, a pile of white shells. This is poetry. Small beautiful moments that make each day special.

As far as I was concerned, the guy taking the shells was a thief. What he was doing was no different to someone digging up a tree in the park.

This is when I made a big mistake. I took a photo of him. He had his back to me. You couldn’t tell if he was a man or a woman or a transgender person or a non-binary person. You couldn’t even tell what he was doing. I posted the photo on the local Facebook page and all hell broke loose. My short caption accompanying the photo was along the lines of, ‘gutted to see someone filling up the back of their station wagon with shells from the beach.’ If a few more people did what he was doing then the the piles of white shells would disappear.

I wasn’t trying to name or shame this guy on facebook. I wanted to shine a light on the issue. The issue of people coming along and mining the local beach. I actually thought that the community would agree with me and we could come together in shared outrage. Wrong.

2 brave people did agree with me. The rest (and there were a lot of them) didn’t. Every shouty person in the village, every keyboard warrior, and troll, and zombie, all of them came for me. A lynch mob. They smelt blood and rushed at me, guns blazing, claws slashing, teeth gnashing, eyes popping, screaming that primal scream.

The general gist: who the fuck did I think I was? What the fuck was my problem? Taking shells for paths, courtyards, whatever was what villagers did. It wasn’t against the law. It didn't damage the beach or affect coastal erosion. It was a person’s basic right. So what if they were shells from an ancient midden, shells are shells. I was a hypocrite, a NIMBY. How dare I put someone’s unrecognisable photo on social media? What kind of person does that? I was a coward. Why didn’t I go and talk to the man anyway? It’s a person’s basic right to take shells from their local beach. We’ve always done it and we always will.

What can I say? I made a mistake. I mistakenly thought we could have a proper debate about a local issue on local social media. Maybe putting up a photo wasn’t the smartest move. And thinking I could raise an issue on social media, well, that was even dumber.

I learnt one thing. Beaches are the poor cousins in the conservation world. Most communities are getting on board with pest trapping and tree planting and forest saving. But beaches, those ephemeral places, where land and water, meet are grossly undervalued and under protected.

Yesterday I visited The Wellington Botanic Garden. I wanted to get some plant ideas. I wanted to see what plants look stunning in a winter garden. Here are some of them.

My tree of the week is the coral tree, Erythina crista-galli. It comes from South America and belongs to the Fabaceae family, the pea and bean family. It’s beautiful in summer and other-worldly in winter. It reminds me of ‘The Wumping Willow’ at Hogwarts.

See you next Sunday.