Is this trash? Does it mar the landscape?

After having each served a nine month stint as a cover for the Peace Fire during the six years from 2002 till 2008 these ten galvanized, circular lids now lay with their backs to the ground for a final sleep until their slow dissolve back into the earth.

Rust — a reddish iron oxide formed by the reaction of iron and oxygen in the presence of water or air moisture and helped along at Windgrove by a sprinkle of sea salt.

Lovely patina. Rather “rustic”.

The fire pit that these lids both protected from rain and wind as well slowing down the combustion rate of the burning logs now sits empty. However, there is something in the remnant fiery afterglow of today’s dormant lids that never fails to rekindle in my mind the many months of daily tending to the Peace Fire and nurturing it along with some 60 tons of firewood.

Instruction from Bly

…….I consider
The Smirnoff bottle on the coffee table; a fly
Lands on it. And then it all happens: the life
Of that bottle flashes before me. Little by little.
Or quickly, it is used up; empty, as clear as it was
Full, it journeys to the dump: it rests upon the mounds of
Beautiful excess where what we are –
Sunflowers, grass, sand –
Is joined to what we make –
Cans, tires and it itself in every form of bottle.
I put on my s.s. coveralls, a saffron robe, knowing I have found
What I was sent to find. The sky speaks to me; the sound
Of the cars on Highway 2 is a song. Soon I will see the pumps.
Those curved rectangles shaped like the U.S. and smell the gas.
Our incense. O country, O moon, O stars,
O american rhyme is yours is mine is ours.

(author unknown)

Notwithstanding the reference to America, I like the notion that the world is one interconnected, chaotic, jumble of material objects. What’s the difference between a vodka bottle and a fly? A rusting lid or decaying log? Does location make a difference? Is one object inherently more beautiful/ugly than the other?

A tree discards a leaf or two. Is this litter? A human discards a can or two. Is this litter? Considering that the origin of “litter” comes from “bed”, the tree is literally littering.

Not that I’m in favour of trashing the landscape, but trash found in the landscape just might offer us an insight into what “ephemeral” might mean in a “natural” setting. My Shakespeare Bench certainly did.

More than anything, though, the rusting lids offer us a chance to reflect upon our own ultimate return to dust.

Leonardo da Vinci is widely known as an artist and not so well known as a scientist. He was equally both. And what informed both his art and science was a keen observation of nature and its many interconnections. One could even say that Leonardo was an early advocate of a systemic, interdisciplinary approach to understanding the world around him.

Because I will be co-teaching a course on Leonardo this coming May with physicist and systems theorist Fritjof Capra — where I take the role of Leonardo the artist and Fritjof that of Leonardo the scientist — I have been preparing myself by trying to be as deeply observant of nature as Leonardo would have been in his daily walks around Florence, Milan or elsewhere in Italy. Not that I haven’t been doing this regularly in my life here at Windgrove, but the focus is a bit sharper; a bit more curious as to the physics and creativity behind the events.

Last week I had a problem. There was mosquito larvae in the large Balinese water bowl. So, like a scientist, I scratched my head and remembered that a custom in outback farms in Australia was to put kerosene into water tanks to stop the mosquito larvae from growing. It wasn’t because the kero acted as a poison, rather, because oil floats on water, the larvae couldn’t break through it to get a breath of air.

Like Leonardo, who was always improving on previous past solutions, I reasoned that since it was the “oil” aspect that killed the larva a better solution would be to use something not petroleum based and bad for the environment. Therefore, I chose olive oil.

I poured a bit into the water bowl and lo, and behold, my artist self was amazed at the wonderous light show that bubbled up as the oil separated into little droplets and floated to the surface.

My scientist self was intrigued at how the sun’s rays were being dispersed as they passed through each individual drop of oil and focused to a point behind the drop. Would oils of different viscosities give different results? And how did the length of the cone relate to the diameter of the droplet?

“Too beautiful!” stated the artist. “Like little trumpets”.

“Add some more oil.” pleaded the scientist.

“Hark, the herald angels sing.” blurted the artist as I conjured up a whole host of heavenly angels trumpeting the praises of the beauty of this earth.

“Did you kill the little buggers?” asked the morally neutral scientist waiting for a positive response to the experiment.

“Awesome. Just fucking awesome.” they both said.

Inertia results, not so much in the delay of the future, but in the destruction of its potential.

For a very long time I was aware that the Shakespeare Bench was slowly degrading and that if I wanted its carved-into-the-wood message of “tongues in trees, sermons in stones, books in brooks” to have a longer life, the bench would need to be taken away from its outdoor position along the Peace Path, refurbished and placed indoors.

Although my seemingly good intentions were stymied by a host of delaying factors, the underlying theme was “I’ll do it tomorrow”.

Well, tomorrow is now not likely to come, not after a neighbour and I sat on the bench and it collapsed to the ground under our combined weight because the bench’s interior wood had rotted away leaving just a thin outer shell of little strength.

I could go on and write about how the bench was “returning back to nature” and only following a “natural cycle of life”.

But while true that it was aging nicely and taking on a wonderful patina of grey and lichen, with a modicum of care it could have remained in service many, many more years.

And this is the point I want to make: Even as an ardent environmentalist/artist, I was caught napping, so to speak, and let a very important sculpture fall into disrepair basically through laziness.

It doesn’t matter if this “laziness” was culturally, hormonally, politically, relationally or circumstantially induced. The bottom line is that the talk I talk: “that there are tongues in trees and sermons in stones”, wasn’t honoured by a willingness on my part to be an engaged steward of this message.

So, I’ll take on this “healthy” shame, learn from it, and do what I can to be a better active reciprocator of all the goodness given me by the trees and stones of this earth.

The broken bench has been taken away. Not to be placed on the trash heap, but to be brought to my studio as there just might be a “new” sculpture in the making. One that carries several messages of deep ecology, stewardship and reciprocity and the dangers of not living the words.

It is generally assumed that humans are superior to chimpanzees in all cognitive functions, but a study published this week in “Current Biology” provides proof that chimpanzees are better than humans at basic numeric memory. In a simple mathematical test devised by Kyoto University cognitive scientist Tetsuro Matsuzawa, “Ayumu” (the most prodigious of the six chimps who trained for the “exam”) consistently beat three of the nine college students even after the students were themselves trained for half a year. This doesn’t prove that chimpanzees are better at all maths, but it does offer compelling, scientific proof that the human “animal” and all the other animals found on the great web of life are not all that different. Basically, we are all one. There is no human—animal divide.

Let’s take the test one step further and see if “Nature” is better at mathematics that humans.

The test is to see whether or not a human can build—quickly, easily and with no fuss—a three dimensional spiral phyllotaxis pattern that demonstrates the “golden proportion” and the Fibonacci sequence.

Just outside my kitchen window grows a “saw tooth” Banksia and it is producing—quickly, easily and with no fuss—several winning examples of the above test question. It seems to me that even plants can beat humans in the mathematics game. Proof that the notion of a human—nature divide is as fallacious as the human—animal divide.

Boy, do we humans have to learn to eat humble pie.

Now that spring is here the cute echidna has come out of hibernation and can be seen sauntering along in its hungry way looking to terrify any ant colony she finds. A walk along the “Peace?” path reveals upheaved ground where sharp claws and a pointy snout have wrecked havoc on the peaceful ants who, until the echidna’s devastating visit, were simply going about tending to their community’s needs in their highly organised and well thought out manner.

When the marauding echidna brings catastrophe to the ants, how long before they regain sufficient hope to rebuild what was lost? When an earthquake levels a village how long before the villagers find sufficient courage to pile stone upon stone again to wall out danger?

It is not possible to live forever safely out of harm’s way. One can, though, learn to appreciate the terrifying teaching beauty of earth’s awesome intricacies.

And in spring’s profusion of colour, what of the sweet lives of the bees who dart daringly and innocently from flower to flower?

Black Bear in the Orchard

It was a long winter.
But the bees were mostly awake
in their perfect house,
the workers whirling their wings
to make heat.
Then the bear woke,

too hungry not to remember
where the orchard was,
and the hives.
He was not a picklock.
He was a sledge that leaned
into their front wall and came out

the other side.
What could the bees do?
Their stings were as nothing.
They had planned everything
sufficiently
except for this: catastrophe.

They slumped under the bear’s breath.
They vanished into the curl of his tongue.
Some had just enough time
to think of how it might have been —
the cold easing,
the smell of leaves and flowers

floating in,
then the scouts going out,
then their coming back, and their dancing —
nothing different
but what happens in our own village.
What pity for the tiny souls

who are so hopeful, and work so diligently
until time brings, as it does, the slap and the claw.
Someday, of course, the bear himself
will become a bee, a honey bee, in the general mixing.
Nature, under her long green hair,
has such unbendable rules,

and a bee is not a powerful thing, even
when there are many,
as people, in a town or a village.
And what, moreover, is catastrophe?
Is it the sharp sword of God,
or just some other wild body, loving its life?

Not caring a whit, black bear
blinks his horrible, beautiful eyes,
slicks his teeth with his fat and happy tongue,
and saunters on.

Mary Oliver

I find it amazing that no matter how certain we are of things, not only are things susceptible to change, they can change in an instant. We can be looking right into the eyes of an issue, convinced of its reality. Then, with the subtlest shift of thinking or of events, it appears in a new light.

Graphically, this was demonstrated this week as I was photographing the bracken ferns that grow low to the ground in the area next to the storm deck known as “the wind grove”, the property’s namesake. In a matter of seconds, as a brief sun shower swept through and even as the tree’s shadows remained discernible, the light from the setting sun bouncing off the ferns shifted from golden to silvery. A whole new world appeared in a flash, as beautiful and as enchanting as what came before. Who would have thought these two worlds existed so close to each other?

When things are going well, we might fear that the shit will soon enough hit the fan. True enough. But the situation is just as often the reverse: when things are at their darkest, something or someone can appear to give us hope.

This happened in Australia last week when the federal minister for the environment (actually, minister against the environment) gave his approval for the southern hemisphere’s largest pulp mill to be built in Tasmania. It was a dark hour indeed and many of us felt understandably depressed. Yet within the day, the major newspapers and some highly influential CEO’s and other individuals came from behind their self imposed walls of silence and began speaking out against the political hypocrisy and economic stupidity of this project.

Daily now, the ranks of opposition are swelling and, where last week I must admit to feeling the debate had been lost, today hope is showering down in a mixture of golden and silvery light.

For a year I lived on a farm in Korea that was run by an in-house Catholic priest and frequented regularly by other priests from throughout the country. They seemed wonderfully warm hearted men doing what they thought best for those in their charge. On the surface their public persona was exemplary. Behind closed doors, however, I learned of their being all too human, all to susceptible to the complexities of being human and all to susceptible to the many human frailties including sexual misconduct. I was saddened and appalled and left Korea with a hugh dislike for those in power who not only abused their power, but couldn’t walk the talk they were so ardently preaching.

That was nearly 40 years ago. Today I only have to look at myself and my own long shadow to see that being human — that being part of the animal kingdom — is to be set up for disappointment if total perfection is what one aims for. Wearing the robes of goodliness is never sufficient enough to disguise the earthly animal donning them.

Late on Sunday of this week, when most churches were having evening services, I planted the last of this year’s seedling trees. I held it up to the setting sun, much like a priest holding aloft a chalice or holy book, and with a prayer that honoured the miracle of its young life, placed it into the ground.

When I first started planting trees on this land 16 years ago, I strove for a 100% success rate ardently wishing, more or less expecting, that with enough understanding and technical expertise, this could happen.

The intervening years have taught me, however, that nothing can guarantee protection against the vicissitudes of life. We can water, we can fence, we can pile branches waist high, we can lay down mulch mats, we can increase the size of the the U.V. bags and we can use ever taller and thicker bamboo stakes, but in the end, just like the good priest in Korea, being of this world means being caught up in the wheel of chance where justice and injustice, righteousness and immorality, life and death are interchangeable.

On Wednesday, I spent the day in gale force winds re-bagging and re-staking trees that had been planted two to three years ago and were still surviving; trees next to, but outside of the new protective fencing. I hammered over two hundred stakes into the ground and did my best to protect these struggling young trees from the wind and wallabies. Maybe all this work will be for naught. It could happen that this particular section of the cliff will remain barren despite all the many years of attention, discipline and dedication given to it.

Being human, though, it is in my/your nature to strive for perfection and to live in hope that growth—whether physical, emotional, intellectual or spiritual—is an ever-present possibility.

I thought the day was going to be fairly straight forward, easy and relatively light-hearted. Just use the Subaru to carry fencing material out near the cliff where Glenn, Sally and I would build a protective barrier against the wallabies. The sun was shining, the wind non existent. Perfect. I hadn’t, however, accounted for the soft earth to sink the vehicle down to its axles. Especially a four wheel drive vehicle. Frustrating? Yes. Tiring? Yes. Time consuming? Yes. Ultimately defeating? No.

Every farmer or person who works the land has days like this. Unexpected floods, droughts, mechanical breakdowns or other events that plague the agenda of any day. The struggle is always there.

When struggle comes, as struggle does to every life, it’s never easy to go on. It often seems that not going on at all would be the better thing. The easier thing. The only possible thing. Pressures from outside us, pressures from within, hang heavy on our shoulders, weigh us down, and dampen our hearts. Then the spirit is taxed beyond belief. Then all the pious little nosegays we’ve ever learned turn to sand. Then we begin to question: What is the use of all this pain? What is the purpose of all this struggle?….. And yet we sense that the way we deal with struggle has something to do with the very measure of the self, with the whole issue of what it is to be a spiritual person.

I could go on and talk about the bigger struggles I have with the world or of Tasmanian politics or with my own dark demons. But I also face a form of struggle with every tree planted at Windgrove and how I deal with this struggle is also a lesson in dealing with life’s other struggles.

For the past 17 years an effort is made every August to reforest those areas of land that were stripped clear of vegetation during the time Windgrove’s land was used for sheep grazing. It has never been as easy as in “plant a tree and watch it grow”. It’s been more like: “Let’s put in 500 trees, see how they do and then try to do better”.

Well, this year “doing better” is bringing in 300 metres of chicken wire and 60 two metre long steel “star pickets”. About $1,000 worth. Since 1992 I have been trying to plant out this cliff face with the hope that it would create a windbreak for other trees on its leeward side. The trees when planted — boobyalla and she-oaks — will grow, but the ever hungry wallabies have always outwitted any previous attempt to curtail their access to the young seedlings’ succulent leaves.

Well, with patience and the collective effort of six hands, three brains and four hearts, the car made it out of the mud and the fence got built. My fingers are crossed that this latest defensive effort will work. If not, I figure I still have a few more plans up my sleeve.

The great secret of life is how to survive struggle without succumbing to it, how to bear struggle without being defeated by it, how to come out of great struggle better than when we found ourselves in the midst of it.

The essence of struggle is neither endurance nor denial. The essence of struggle is the decision to become new rather than simply to become older. It is the opportunity to grow either smaller or larger in the process.

All quotes from Joan D. Chittister’s book, Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope

The above photo of Wedge island, which is just off the southern end of Windgrove, conveys nature as a multiple of dualisms: beautiful and sinister, foreboding and enticing, stormy and calm. There is no one description of nature that fits. The flip side of today’s description will be tomorrow’s reality. Similar, I suppose (if memory serves me correct), to what Tom Robbins wrote about in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues when he said: Everything is beautiful; nothing is sacred. Everything is sacred; nothing is beautiful.

The only issue subject to debate with any of the several qualities of nature is their relative weighting or frequency of occurrence.

I say this because of a comment by an art critic who, in his review last year of an “ephemeral” art exhibition of site specific sculpture, wrote:

Anyone who has watched a David Attenborough documentary will know that peace, tranquility and spiritual renewal are entirely foreign to the natural world. Tennyson’s nature red in tooth and claw is much closer to reality.

Peace, tranquility and spiritual renewal – entirely foreign to the natural world? Give me a break.

My immediate response is to say that the reviewer has been watching too much TV and that he should leave the city and try living surrounded by nature for a period of time. If so, he would come to know that the operative word for nature is “benign”; that, if action and drama are to be filmed, hours of waiting are the norm. Certainly, there is a violent aspect surrounding territorial squabbles and the acquisition of food, but after 15 years of watching the eagles float endlessly for hours at a time, I have only seen an eagle red in tooth and claw twice.

When I encounter a snake along a Windgrove path, I always manage to levitate higher than I can when meditating, but these encounters are a sum total of 15 seconds per year. Compare this with the countless hours of walking I do on these paths and my point is made: if drama is what one is after, then be prepared to wait. Peace and tranquility are the rule rather than the exception.

Capturing Wedge Island in the right light has taken years.

The storms that bend and shape the trees happen only infrequently.

Today marks another equinoctial day on the year’s calendar where night and day are equal throughout the world. Equal, perhaps, between the amount of hours given to either light or darkness, but not so much a blending of the two. Reminds me of the old, discriminatory, “Separate, but Equal” apartheid laws of America.

Maybe we should abolish the separateness of light from dark and make the whole of the day a fusion of half light, half dark. What would it be like to walk through a noon landscape that looked more moon lit than sun lit? Colors red, blue and yellow would bleed off into soft greys. The grey hairs on my head would be indistinguishable from the dark hairs of my lover. (Hey, I’m beginning to like this, this dimming of contrasts to a soft, muted togetherness.)

Usually, the color grey connotes ageing and death or the slightly sinister. Ghosts, fog, a grey day, battleship grey, men in grey suits. Not exactly cheerful. But, when I sit down to keep company with grey weathered logs nestled among grey weathered stones, I am moved by their sleepy, slow dissolve into each other. This might be the grey of decay and death, but is there not beauty in this final release of differences and the coming together in balanced rest? My eyes tell me there is.

Maybe heaven is but one joyful mass of grey where beauty lies in the greys of the beholder.