Dialogue: Tree hysteria just poor excuse for a white backlash

I decided it was probably time that I dragged myself off at the weekend to pay my final respects to the lately felled One Tree. But, alas, in the end I decided I couldn't be fagged.

I found myself engaging in a slightly less vigorous programme of grieving for old One Tree. I drank a nice, big glass of wine, and another, and then pronounced myself out of mourning. And that was it. My healing was done.

My only wish now is that the rest of white Auckland would follow suit. I would like the hysteria over the passing of One Tree to settle.

I'm getting a bit tired of falling over drama queens who claim that they hardly care to go on without One Tree, that One Tree was the only real friend they ever knew, that their (annual) walks (well, drives) up to One Tree filled the void in a way that even therapy couldn't, that if they could turn back the clock, they would tie themselves to the tree and take the chainsaw themselves, right in the guts.

I cannot help feeling that the mourning for One Tree got a little out of proportion somewhere along the line. I cannot help feeling that there is something else behind it.

And there is. It's backlash, surely. Backlash has motivated this regional temper tantrum over the passing of One Tree. It, or the manner of its passing, perhaps, has given whites a big, fat pass to rage against Maori.

This has been white Auckland's chance to act the injured party, for once, and white Auckland has done itself proud. Which is fine except that it perhaps lends the mourning a tinny note.

I do quietly wonder how important One Tree really is (was) to the great unwashed. Those of us who take our evening constitutional around Cornwall Park, and then up One Tree Hill, have certainly had reason to doubt the pull of the tree on the typical citizen over the past few years.

I noticed that a lot of people avoided it. I noted that people tended to walk around the track at the base of the hill, rather than up the hill to the tree.

At least five people I took to see the tree looked up that hill and said something to the tune of "Bugger your hill and your tree, lady," and abandoned all romantic feelings on the subject.

People who climbed the hill did so for the view, not the tree. The tendency here was to give the tree a cursory glance, say "Hey, that's the tree Mike Smith stuffed," and then turn to look out at Auckland, at the depth of the place, the way it sprawled to the horizon.

People stood for ages in the wind staring at that view, and that depth.

The chainsaw scars did, however, make the tree interesting in some respects. The scars said something about race relations in this country (much in the way the pointed mourning of it does), and suggested, at least to tourists, that life in New Zealand was slightly more complex than imagined.

At the very least, the scars suggested there was some sort of narrative here, with chapters and twists being added. Which is not to condone chainsaw-hits on trees. It is merely to concede that life is dynamic. The tree was more interesting with its scars. It was not pleasant and it was not comforting, but it told a tale.

Before that, it told no tale. Well, it told us that trees grow on an angle if you stick them on hills and expose them to howling winds. Anyone who has been to Wellington knows that, so it's probably not much of a story.

I recently read a witty article in the Guardian about the modern English tendency to prefer symbols to substance. The line was that the British are happy to hand the substantive aspects of themselves over to other countries ( they were happy to sell Rolls-Royce to BMW) but reluctant to part with symbolic ones (for example, surrender the British passport for a European Union one).

In preferring symbols to substance, they are akin to One Tree's most raucous mourners. One Tree had little historical substance. It was a wind-break. And a pine.

How is it possible to feel desperate about the death of a pine? One can only conclude that that is not the point. One can only conclude that the point is that mourners want to behave in an injured fashion and show their numbers.