Nickie Muir: Precious places are priceless

Its up to us to keep to keep our land as beautiful as it is.

Precious places. The ones you go to in your mind when life is conspiring against all forms of happiness. The places you cherish, tell your children about and take them to so that they will "get it" when they're older. The places that feed us enough psychically, to get through another year in the rat race. Where good ideas just come easier.

Jane Campion goes to Glenorchy - to Paradise. Or that's the name of the farm near there at least. Margaret Mahy had a host of precious places some of which she gifted to us all. She knew that imagination and wondering happen when wandering, and need room to breathe. Richard Branson gets his best ideas fishing off unspoilt coasts.

Everyone I know has a place where "they feel good in their skin" that somehow reassures and nourishes when it remains essentially untouched, in a constantly changing world.

I am there now. The pohutukawa tree on the point that might have witnessed Cook and Tupaia, heading out to sea having charted the Transit of Venus. The creek where I used to find native fish - and this year, worryingly, couldn't. A random tribe of kids (mine included - I did the same with their mothers nearly half a century past) have colonised the tree, which was probably a sapling 600 years ago. I hope their offspring will do the same in another 100. Stick insects stalk the washing line - gold skinks sneak inside.

The coast is a sweep of Santa's treasures dumped fresh on the sand every morning. A dead blue penguin. A heart-shaped rock. Dotterel chicks - the second hatching, buzz over sand like beige bumblebees.

Bliss without bling. A vast resource of nothing human and space to think and be instead of the constant pressure to do. It is the one highly valued commodity that is quickly becoming more precious internationally that this country still has quite a lot of and that, as a people, we retain access to.

But is what is precious truly valued? Canal developments cut small towns in half with huge environmental, economic and social impacts. Land, taken "for public works" changes hands and is suddenly destined for residential development in marginal coastal zones on which migratory birds and estuary systems are dependent. The survival of the very things that make it precious becomes precarious.

It is easy to forget that there is no DoC land or "public land". There is only our land, and the guardianship for "the common green" is entrusted to us all. Development doesn't have to be dumb, ugly and expensive to locals - but that has often been the case. Councils may be over-influenced by big-pocketed developers and hear their tale over the voice of the community. But it is up to us to inform and guide councils on what is true value.

If you own a bach, it's not just up to small, economically challenged coastal community groups to keep an eye on the types of development that may eventually ruin your precious place. It's an election year - and some of those groups could do with a well-connected, well-educated and well-informed hand right now, to keep what is precious, priceless forever.