Elements

Painter and friend Jerzy Michalski doesn’t normally smoke, but today sits jauntily blowing an “up your’s” celebratory smoke back into the eye of a sky that for the past five days has caused an unbelievable level of havoc and torment.

The celebration, even if only minor and personal, is because his home and studio were spared destruction by the fickle flames of a forest fire that showed no regard to plant or animal, the young or old, those innocent or those of criminal behaviour, those praying fervently or the atheist hoping for a bit of luck. Jerry happily accepts this temporary win for himself, whilst compassionately knowing that others, many who were burnt out totally, will require his shoulder to lean on.

Let’s go into the above photo and move back through a portal of time to five days ago when this ordeal began; when these fires stranded thousands of tourists and residents alike on the Tasman Peninsula who had to abandon their homes or travel plans as the fires ground through the forests with their ferocious temperaments; are still grinding as I write.

“Fire’s spontaneity is its freedom. Fire flourishes without a why. Fire has a total intentionality. It is unselective, un-ideological. It consumes without preference whatever lies in tis way.

The democracy of fire is its terror. It has a frightening innocence. Fire is amoral. It shows no recognition of any barrier or boundary. With an innocence that is without mercy or awareness, it will burn anything or anyone.”

John O’Donohue

It all started last Friday when the temperature reached 41.9C / 107F degrees; the highest ever temperature since record keeping began 120 years ago.

I was in the garden trying to keep the vegetables cooled down when I looked up into the eastern sky and saw this massive wall of clouds arise within minutes. (Notice my neighbour’s house at the top right of the hill.)

These were not fluffy clouds that kids on hillsides look up to dreamily. They were clouds of fearful portent being generated by a massive forest fire developing exponentially in size quickly and with devastating speed.

Two hours later another separate fire front moved into the western sky. The heart shape tear in the clouds poured down an eerily beautiful yet ominous light onto a reddening green blue sea. Just before dark, Jerzy was knocking on my door seeking refuge after forcefully being evacuated from his home in the small sea side village of Murdunna.

My home in this level of heat, though spared the charring of the fire, had turned into an oven and we sat outside in our underwear till past midnight hoping for the best. Fortunately for us, the mosquitoes seemed to be in hiding.

Morning arrived with eye stinging smoke settling softly into the valleys around Roaring Beach. The major fires are now contained but much smoldering and flareups remain. Jerry is still trapped here and unable to drive back to his home because of road closures. All of us residents on the Tasman Peninsula are, thereby, land locked to some degree with access onto and off the peninsula limited to fire and police vehicles on the roads or those willing to take a one-way trip on the emergency ferry to Hobart.

There has been a tremendous outpouring of neighborly and community love and volunteerism. For this my heart swells. Several friends have lost homes, livestock and livelihoods. An active, supportive hope keeps us ticking along. An indication that any future climate change catastrophe will be survived.

When I went back to the garden to tend to my plants, beneath one wilted and ravaged heat stroked pumpkin leaf, another curled upward towards life.

I smiled.

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“There have been evenings when the light
has turned everything silver, and like you
I have stopped at a corner and suddenly
staggered with the grace of it all …”

William Stafford, from “Waiting in Line”

The “corner” I’m stopped at is along the Peace Path just past where the Shakespeare Bench used to be until it rotted away. I’m shooting straight towards the sun; a low hanging winter solstice sun that in less than 30 minutes will drop behind the hill in the far background.

The beauty at this time of year — a beauty with the power to stagger — is seen in the muted dune colours whose texture is that of softly crumpled sheets of green.

This is due to the low angle of the sun’s rays diffusing themselves in the drifting wind borne sea mist rolling in from the beach and creating the diaphanous backlit condition so often used in “dreamy” studio enhanced wedding photos.

What interests me today, though, is my inability to see these very same mist particles when they are right in front of my face. Sort of like the rainbow that is only viewed from a distance: one can never stand in it and witness the colours dancing bows over their head.

But what happened this week was that the camera captured some of these very same backlit minuscule droplets of mist just meters in front of me.

While walking I never saw them, but downloaded and on the computer screen there they were: whiskers of light, tell tale trails of invisibility made visible.

I did a calculation: The tree trunk was around a foot thick or 300mm. The mist trails in the background would then be around 4 inches or 100mm in length. Shutter speed was 1/100th of a second. This would calculate out to have the mist moving at 10 meters or around 30 feet per second. Too fast for my naked eye to comprehend. But the camera did.

Like little ghost trails.

I sat at the computer staggered with the grace of it all.

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Last night the house hummed with silence.

For the first time in a long while no human guests were around. The wind had abated to a soft leaf rustle, possums neglected to walk across the metal roof, the mouse chose not to chew in the wall cavity near the bed, and even the ghosts took their spirited presence elsewhere.

Nestled in sleepy contentment. Happy.

Blessed aloneness. A condition rare in our socially crowded, obligated world.

Morning has come. In the dim wet light of dawn my blue breakfast bowl sits as serenely as a monk’s begging bowl. A pervasive preciousness of time drips in tune with the movement of mist.

Now, the work must begin anew. There is meaning and responsibility in this blessed aloneness.

May the elements flay.
Flay with feathered fronds
strip me bare of expectations
and endow a puer wisdom.

May I look onto the revealed inner bark as onto a mirror.

May I remain unhurried. No distractions.

Just the pure privilege of unencumbered connection to earth, air, fire and water. This, and the acceptance.

Eventually
everywhere I look
awakened heart seeing
into awakened heart.

This press of time we humans seem born into, how often do we walk or worked rushed, absorbed in thought as beauty bursts forth unrecognized?

“Stop and tarry”, I say.

Admittedly, it is hard to see the rainbow when standing directly beneath its arching grandeur, but the point I want to make is that our intense focus to get from A to B can deny us from seeing what is actually happening under our noses, or behind us, or in the sky above, or…

or to the left on the rocks 20 metres below the cliff we’re standing on where the power of an incoming wave wells up to break in dramatic fashion.

Soften the gaze, open up to the wider scheme of things. Shift focus; change direction. Then, bring one’s attention to detail.

We set the pace.
But this press of time –
take it as a little thing
next to what endures.

All this hurrying
soon will be over.
Only when we tarry
do we touch the holy.

Rumi

At the far end of Roaring Beach are sand stone and sedentary cliffs born in the oceans millions of years ago; now risen to offer shelter within caves carved by wind and waves.

A young child sits beneath an overhang. To her right are the remnants of an aboriginal charcoal midden of blackened shells exposed by recent storms. How old? The girl 12. The midden? 1,000 or 2,000 or 5,000 years of age? Without carbon dating, no one really knows.

This morning I download yesterday’s photos of the cave and on the computer screen there appear, next to this ancient midden, some mysterious white vertical shimmering lines that I was unaware of when standing in front with camera in hand.

Try as I might, they remain unfathomable to my rational mind.

Mary Oliver writes:

“There are in this world a lot of devils with wondrous
smiles. Also, many unruly angels.”

Flipping the image upside down, can you see, perhaps, the darkened face of the guardian?