A few weeks ago, Caroline Warfield and I, and our husbands, revisited the Buried Village, the location of Forged in Fire, my story in last year’s Bluestocking Belles’ anthology. Long ago, it was Te Wairoa, a thriving farming community set up by an enthusiastic

missionary. When Spencer set up his ideal community in 1852, he divided each allotment by fencing, and he used poplar poles, as his posts, pounded into the ground.

Later, after European farming methods depleted the soil, the Maori inhabitants found a more lucrative crop than wheat: tourists. Te Wairoa was the starting point for a visit to the Pink and White Terraces, acres of thermal ponds cascading down hillsides above a lake that could be reached only by a boat journey across Lake Tarawera.

That all ended on the night of the Tarawera eruption. By the end of the four-hour eruption, the Pink and White terraces were gone, and six villages around Lake Tarawera were wiped off the face of the earth with all their inhabitants. Te Wairoa, slightly sheltered behind a hill,  was still buried 1.5 metres deep in volcanic ash, and survivors needed to dig themselves, or be dug, out.

Over the next 126 years, those buried fence posts grew into magnificent 40 foot poplar trees. In 2010, however, they began to fall. The owners decided they were a health risk, and removed them all.

When we visited last year, we were impressed to see the mighty trunks sprouting again, and this year, we asked if we could take cuttings.

They’re on the shady side of our house: nine small cuttings in pots we are keeping damp, as poplars prefer. I hope one or more grows, a clone of the tree that was initially cut to make fence posts, that survived a volcanic eruption, that grew to shelter an archaeological dig, that was cut down when its size and age made it unsafe, and that grew again. Life is resilient.