A leaf flew into the window last night during a storm of 170 kilometres per hour winds. It plastered itself onto the glass and is still there now stuck like glue offering an image to the brief frailty of all life. Everywhere I turn and look there is branch debris, the wind is still strong, the waves tumultuous and the light foreboding. Inside the cocoon of my house and warming fire I ponder the words of Mary Oliver who writes in Winter Hours near the end of the book (and winter):

Now the winter, the winter I am writing about, begins to ease. And what if anything has been determined, selected, nailed down? This is the lesson of age—events pass, things change, trauma fades. Good fortune rises, fades, and rises again but different. Whereas what happens when one is twenty, as I remember it, happens forever. I have not been twenty for a long time! The sun rolls toward the north and I feel gratefully, its brightness flaming up once more. Somewhere in the world the misery we can do nothing about yet goes on. Somewhere the words I will write down next year, and the next, are drifting into the wind, out of the ornate pods of the weeds of the Provincelands.

Once I went into the woods to find and almost unfindable bird, a blue grosbeak. And I found it: a rough deep blue, almost black, with a heavy beak; it was plucking one by one the humped, pale green caterpillars from the leaves of a thick green tree. Then it vanished into the shadows of the leaves and, in the same moment, from the crown of the tree flew a western bluebird—little aqua thrush of the mountain, hundreds of miles from its home. It is a moment hard to top—but I can. Once I came upon two angels, they were standing quietly, keeping guard beside a car. Light streamed from them, and a splash of flames lay quietly under their feet. What is one to do with such moments, but cherish them? Who knows what is beyond the known? And if you think that any day the secret of light might come, would you not keep the house of your mind ready? Would you not cleanse your study of all that is cheap and trivial? Would you not live in continual hope, and pleasure, and excitement.

Mary Oliver

With Zimbabwe and Tibet in the global news and Tasmania’s pulp mill given more federal approval, it is hard to live in continual hope, and pleasure, and excitement. But not impossible. The hill is still there behind the fog. The unfindable is findable. The secret of light will reveal it yet again. Perhaps tomorrow.

“Quick”, I yell out to Sally. “Grab your rainbow hat and let’s go searching.” Sure enough, within minutes a rich vibrant arch of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple cuts down out of the sky and lands just meters from us. Like circus kids beaming happy at the joyful stunts of clowns, our “in the studio all day” slightly tired moods are suddenly lifted by the magical antics of sun and rain.

The dark pelting clouds did their thing. Now, a rainbow sweeps in and waves a big “hello again” across the sky to those of us standing in awe below. Although the portents have been there all day—squalls of driving rain punctuated by open blue sky— it comes as a surprise, this rainbow, when the emerging sun meets the fleeing remnants of rain falling from the cloud’s tail end.

And, if anyone doubts the power of a rainbow to transform—not just figuratively, but literally, as well,….count the number of fingers on Sally’s hand.

We’re not sure what to do with this blessing. Painting could be a bit easier with an extra finger to hold an extra brush, but buying gloves might prove difficult.

Today, as I have done nearly every day for the past few months, I hauled cut tea-trees out to the cliff top to form protective barriers in an attempt to subdue the wind as it roars in from Storm Bay and hammers the little tree seedlings sheltering in, what turns out to have been, flimsy plastic bags. Who knows whether or not this strategy of woven tea-tree “doughnuts” will do the trick? Just have to do it.

And, even if these monster barriers, themselves, get blown away, what can’t be taken from me is the tremendous joy I have felt just being there. Sure, my knees and back get sore, but the residual happiness left over at the end of the day more than makes up for a wee bit of physical hardship.

Today, as I have done every day I come to these cliff tops, I took time to look around and marvel at what I saw. Something of interest will always catch my eye.

Today, a white boat caught in a shaft of sunlight while all around dark clouds and dark water lay in wait.

The inner happiness I was experiencing. despite the harshness of the weather, reminded me of this Marge Piercy poem:

If they come in the night

Long ago on a night of danger and vigil
a friend said, Why are you happy?
He explained (we lay together on a hard cold floor) what prison
meant because he had done
time, and I talked of the death
of friends. Why are you happy
then, he asked, close to
angry.

I said, I like my life. If I
have to give it back, if they
take it from me, let me only
not feel I wasted any, let me
not feel I forgot to love anyone
I meant to love, that I forgot
to give what I held in my hands,
that I forgot to do some little
piece of the work that wanted
to come through.

Sun and moonshine, starshine,
the muted grey light off the waters
of the bay at night, the white
light of the fog stealing in,
the first spears of the morning
touching a face
I love. We all lose
everything. We lose
ourselves. We are lost.

Only what we manage to do
lasts, what love sculps from us;
but what I count, my rubies, my
children, are those moments
wide open when I know clearly
who I am, who you are, what we
do, a marigold, an oakleaf, a meteor,
with all my senses hungry and filled
at once like a pitcher with light.

Marge Piercy

It’s been a Clint Eastwood sort of week with plenty of the good, the bad and the ugly

The Good

Last Friday and I should have known that, as the sea had remained mirrored calm for five straight days, something was afoot. On Saturday clouds moved in slowly like heavy fog and banked up out in Storm Bay. Thunder rolled every now and then. At night, a flash of light.

Sunday, and the sky became increasingly dark and wild with curtains of rain finally sweeping the landscape. That night I awoke in the dark, not because of any noise or out of a bad dream, but because of the smoke. Never before had the wind been so great as to cause a downdraft in the wood heater and it pushed puffs of smoke in reverse to pervade the house.

By Monday morning the property was awash with sheets of water running everywhere. And I mean everywhere. With the ground squishing underfoot and all five dams full to overflowing, it all looked fantastic with a vibrancy in the landscape that only moisture can bring.

The Bad

But then, the more destructive aspects of such intense wind and rain began to reveal themselves. Anything and everything loose in the studio, wood shed or around the house was strewn who knows where.

The three visitor tents, that had stood standing for nearly two years in very sheltered locations admidst trees and thick shrubbery, were flattened, literally ripped from their stakes and domed supporting rods and hammered into the ground. The worse, though, was seeing whole swaths of newly planted areas stripped of their protective plastic bags and seriously damaged. Six weeks of work undone in a night.

Panic set in because these little seedling trees would be very vulnerable to any passing hungry wallaby. A quick calculation estimated around 400, possibly 500 trees were in immediate need of being re-bagged and re-staked, otherwise, they would be nibbled down to nothing or, worse still, pulled out by their roots.

However, the continuing strong winds and rains meant that I couldn’t begin this task until the weather abated. All day Monday and Tuesday I waited. I fretted. I tried to read, but felt like I had abandoned an orphanage and left 400 babies to the marauding wolves. My only consolation was that as long as the weather was this wet, windy and cold, just possibly the wallabies might not venture out too far from their protective habitats.

Wednesday morning arrived clear and I was soon at “the front” working furiously against time knowing that by nightfall there would be no keeping the critters away. It had to be done. I left a telephone message at the local medical clinic cancelling my appointment saying that my health had to take 2nd place to the health of the trees. By four in the afternoon my body, especially the knees and legs, said “let’s quit”. But I had to keep going because, for every tree left exposed to the approaching night, it meant one more facing the chop.

A wedge tailed eagle glided past and, as it took a hovering position at the top of the hill, I pledged to work until the eagle went home. (Damn, if the eagle didn’t stay until nearly dark.) As I began the long hobble back to the house, I looked back in the moonlight at the remaining 200 or so unprotected seedling trees and my heart was touched by their plight. Would they sense the animals approach?

An hour later I lay soaking in the hot bath easing the pain in my muscles, but the pain in my heart still suffered for the trees. They had only just been planted out a few weeks ago and tonight their brief existence in this world as trees might be ending. Even though I had done nearly everything I could, I truly felt bad.

Two days later and the pain has eased because the majority of the seedlings should survive. Most of those “left standing” Wednesday night were chewed to the ground, but enough was left promising growth.  Great. I’ll be having a beer for them tonight.

The Ugly

See the color separation? The brown is top soil washed into Roaring Beach by the storm. It came from land clearfelled for a pulp plantation and left exposed. Such a waste. Every good farmer understands the importance of retaining top soil. To see it all needlessly in the ocean is to see a future farmer short-changed. This is far worse than “bad”. This is ugly.

For three days I have been repairing my trees. I can accept this as part of the cycle of living on the land. But it is really hard to have to look up out over the water between the trees and see years and years of top soil accumulation being senselessly wasted.

Today is the spring equinox (fall equinox for the northern hemisphere). The day where everyplace on earth receives an equal 12 hours of sunlight. A balanced distribution of light, so to speak.

It’s hard to give a single sense of being in balance in any one day. It woud require, it seems, a look at the disparate elements of the whole day. Out of this might emerge a sense of balance and one could then say:

The [balanced] whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts.

While doing my round of morning walking meditations, just as the dawn light came upon the Peace Spiral I took a lovely photo showing its reflection in the still water of the pond thinking that this would be a nice visualisation of the day’s equanimous character. But I have chosen not to use this image.

I took another photo of the Peace Spiral around noon when the ABC film crew were next to it during a shoot while they were interviewing me for the Stateline TV program. But this hasn’t captured the full balance of the day either.

I took a third photo of the surf just after my swim while perfectly formed long lines of swells came into the beach then crested into waves with white manes spewing off their back. But this didn’t quite hold the full essence of what an equinoctial day might be about.

At sunset, while doing some repair work on the Peace Walk path and the low yellow/orange rays of the sun cast a deep serene light over the landscape, I took a photo of a circle of same aged trees that looked all harmonious. But….. not really suitable.

After dinner, with just a few small, sharp tools, I spent a leisurely hour working on the second of a group of table top altars where stones are perched atop mesa like structures. Interesting close up photo, but….

It’s getting late. And I have to choose a photo of something before the equanimity of today becomes tomorrow’s imbalanced, stressed out craziness.

Eennie, meenie, miney mo…….catch a tiger by the toe…..

The sound woke me up. Massive waves cresting at 24 feet roared into Roaring Beach this morning.

Quickly, I scurried over to the Drop Stone bench and sat spell bound like a seven year old on Christmas morning. With great joyful anticipation of bigger and bigger things to come, I saw with widening eyes the visual evidence of some great storm to the south of Tasmania.

However, not to be outdone by the great sound coming from the water below, a greater piercing noise announced a chattering flock of yellow-tailed black-cockatoos. They came out of the morning shadows to the east, descended upon several banksias just beyond where I was sitting, and began to partake in a breakfast feast of seed pods.

Sociable, always in conversation and exhibiting both a humorous and tough demeanour, I have adopted this large stocky bird (four foot wing span) as one of my totem animals ever since finding a yellow tail feather in the she-oak grove up the hill back of the house.

I abandoned my box seat at the wave show in order to try and see how close I could get to the cockatoos before their sentries spotted me. I took off my woollen beanie with the red puff ball on top and shoved it into my jacket pocket. Hunched over and hiding behind woolly tea trees, native currants, banksias, blackwood scrub trees and saggs, I slowly inched my way towards the flock; a flock as happy and noisy together as any group of caffeinated New York breakfast diners.

Twenty feet, fifteen, ten, nine……… I was within seven feet of two of the birds; one holding a seed pod in its claw while eating it, the other preening itself. “What a great morning,” I thought. Two for the price of one. Big waves and twenty five or so cockatoos for company.

And then the screeching alarm went up as I’m sure one of the birds caught the sun glinting off the gold tooth exposed by my big smile.

The photo shows them heading back towards the morning sun. But not empty handed. The cockatoo, just below and to the right of the main bird in the photo, has a large banksia pod in its beak. Can you also see the waning gibbous moon hanging in the dawn air?