On Thursday September 25 we celebrated our 24^th anniversary of arriving on the Range for the first time. We went down to the gully where the old shack stood, poured our wine into picnic glasses, cooked ourselves sausages on an old plough disk barbecue made by my father, and gave treats to the dogs. We tried to remember how different the place must have looked then. The trees must have grown even though they look the same, and we have worked so slowly over the years, gradually turning our hidden valley into a place to live, that I have to look back at old photographs and diaries to remember how much has changed around us, and we have changed the place – and ourselves - in that time. In a later blog I’ll search out some of my old (pre-digital) photos.

It was nearly dark and we were just packing up to go back to the house when an eagle sailed overhead. It was so close I either felt or imagined I felt the pulse and movement of the air beneath its wings.

When I came here it was not only to escape the city, or find an eagle. I didn’t know exactly what it was I was looking for, but I knew I needed to spend time in a place where I might see an eagle and some other wild creature, a place where the weather and topography made a real difference to the way I spent my days and nights.

The next day there was a poetry reading at Collected Works sponsored by The Association for the Study of Literature & the Environment [see http://www.asle-anz.asn.au/ for lots more info about this organisation]. The poets reading were Anne Elvey, Peter Hay, Susan Hawthorne, John Jenkins, Miriel Lenore and Mark Tredinnick.

Hay and Tredinnick are writers who often investigate their relationship with the environment in their work. (I have deliberately avoided using the terms ‘nature writing’ or ‘eco- poetry’ to label their work although I do like the cross-disciplinary approach these terms imply, and applaud writing that blends the humanities and the natural sciences, but -  to my way of thinking, the terms have still not quite settled comfortably into their identities. Good literature speaks for itself.

I was reassured by how accessible and direct the poets were in their engagement with their surroundings. There were moments of grieving for the decline of the natural world but more poems about moments of joy and detailed, enlightened observations.

In spite of my misgivings about labels, these poets shared with each other and their audience their compelling need to speak their minds and make known their concerns. Their poems did not retreat into any impossible Eden or suggest where we might find answers to the problems that beset us in our dealings with our planet. By revealing their vulnerability and by speaking of their personal responses, they encouraged us to look more closely at our surroundings and become more mindful of the implications of our relationship with the earth and the environment.

Back at home again I went through my old copies of Island magazine and found Peter Hay’s poem, Old Man’s Beard. The poem does a lot more than capture the experience of a moment on a mountain. It goes to the heart of his  - and our – being:

Lichen is the forest’s ancient enlightenment,

and the planet’s –

and it reaches through the very fields of space

to infuse the cosmic winds,

a swirl of principle

to spark a universe.

Island Magazine 105, Winter 2006

Living in retreat, my engagement with my natural surroundings and the question of my responsibility for my actions confront me daily and I know I can’t always find the words to describe my feelings. I had almost given up worrying about how many readings I miss but keeping in touch with what’s around, reading well and occasionally listening to readings supports my endeavours and adds many dimensions to my experience.

…

I came out of the bookshop into the noisy bustle of the Friday night city crowd thinking about how isolated I have become from the literary and the urban scenes. Then, remembering the eagle I began to wonder -- are people held within their academic frameworks or their cities isolated, or am I?

Twenty four years ago, driving up the escarpment road, then along a bush track,  then dragging aside the cocky’s gate of bush poles and crumpled chicken wire we had effectively arrived in the middle of nowhere.  In the gully below stood an old hut with rusted out wood stove and a leaking rusting water tank. we knew immediately that it was the idyll and the wilderness we were looking for – and could afford

In those early years we were challenged just keeping sheltered, fed and watered here. We went for long walks along overgrown loggers tracks or sat over warm fires through foggy winters, and we made plans about what we would do when we were no longer so busy working full time, raising children and keeping in touch with the world. Over the years and bit by bit we’ve built a house and that has been a saga in itself. Eventually we came to live here five years ago.

Most days it’s easy to listen to the birds, watch the sun go down and drift into complacency because peace prevails for so much of the time. But there are always questions  - the quiet, persistent music of complacency, the satisfying rhythms of shifting seasons and yes, the questions

Some of those questions are contained in making choices about the very fact of living here and the responsibilities that it brings

we have had to make many choices and compromises and the implications of some of these choices are far from ideal.

The longer I’m here, and the more I write, the more I have to question how I live and how I deal with problems both large and small for which there are no easy answers. Perversely, the more we know, the less certainty there seems to be about the best way to act, and the more we’re challenged and forced to ask why we subject ourselves to the rigours of remoteness and independence – the more I think I know why I do it, the more committed I become. At any moment another eagle will appear in the skies or the sunset will be spectacular. The water tastes good. Even when disaster hovers at the edge of my vision or smoke rather than haze fills the valley, the kookaburras laugh in the mornings and the rosellas fly in to find water.

Heat: Art and Climate Change

 I read Robert Nelson’s review of the show Heat: Art and Climate Change (see www.rmit.edu.au/rmitgallery for more information) in The Age September 24 with great interest.  In the words of its the curator, Linda Williams, Heat is a show more about shifts in awareness than climate change itself, and what the changes in our world represent for us. It concentrates on the feelings of the artists.

Nelson writes of the need to move beyond being helpless in the face of global warming, but like the rest of us he remains at the edge. He does not  - nor should we expect him to - provide us with answers: “Confronting the new world of ecological sin” Nelson writes, “ means deconstructing nature, seeing wilderness as a garden that we now have no choice but to manage scientifically. Ironically the heat is turned back on artists, who now need science as well as moral philosophy.”

I’d like to add that poets like visual artists will need science, and that all of us will need as well as the scientists, poets and artists.

By way of illustration of an example of why we all need scientists, and the way living in close connection with the natural environment-, here’s a story about my recent encounter with Mole, Badger and some swamp wallabies

Wallabies are a prevalent and visible part of the wooded landscapes of the Black Range. They are solitary, territorial animals which move about during the day and so various individuals become familiar – often a little too familiar. Now our garden is established, I don’t mind them visiting because we are the interlopers, and the territory is really theirs. One hot night we were woken by the splashing noise of one that had fallen into the swimming pool. Luckily for the wallaby and us, we were able to lift it out with a rake before much harm had been done to the wallaby or the pool.

Staying in Canberra on a family visit recently, I read a copy of the Bulletin of the Australian Network for Plant Conservation (Vol.15 No.4 March – May 2007) reporting on a conference with the theme, What lies Beneath?

What lies beneath or, put more technically, The role of soil biota in the health and rehabilitation of native vegetation was the theme of a recent ANPC conference, at which scientists considered interactions between animals both vertebrate and invertebrate and native vegetation.

Andrew Claridge gave a presentation in which argued for linking what happens above the ground in revegetation programs to what happens in the soil below, to restore processes as well as species in our revegetation efforts.

Recent research suggests that many mammals are mycophagous (fungus eating) and play an important role in dispersing fungal spores and as they forage for their fungus, they aerate the soil and make entry points for nutrients and water, thus leading scientists to the conclusion that when restoring native vegetation, we should work from the soil up, not the trees down.

Briefly, here are the main points from the conference:

·      Ectomycorrhizal fungi (these include truffles, and we do have some native varieties) are vital components of Australia’s biodiversity.

·      Diverse mammal communities are important for maintaining plant-fungal associations and ecosystem health. The swamp wallaby, for instance is one mycophagous (fungus eating) mammal, and thirty-seven others have been identified in recent research.

·      Soil and litter invertebrates play an important role in plant growth in revegetated systems.

And here’s the conversation between Mole and Badger in Wind in the Willows and quoted at the beginning Claridge’s article:

‘Presently they all sat down to luncheon together. The mole found himself placed next to Mr Badger, and, as the other two were deep in river gossip from which nothing could divert them, he took the opportunity to tell Badger how comfortable and homelike it all felt to him. “Once well underground,’ he said, “you know exactly where you are, nothing can happen to you, and nothing can get at you. You’re entirely your own master, and you don’t have to consult anybody or mind what they say. Things go on all the same overhead, and you let ‘em, and don’t bother about ‘em. When you want to, up you go, and there the things are, waiting for you.” The Badger simply beamed at him. ‘that’s exactly what I say” he replied. ‘There’s no security, or peace or tranquillity, except underground.’

I have since reread the wonderful Wind in the Willows, and next time a wallaby comes into the garden for a green pick during a long hot summer, I’ll treat it and the ground we share with much more respect.

Sari,

October 3rd 2008