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

This week a jaunty forest raven dropped down off a branch to pick up a piece of stale bread. As I watched his “on guard” antics of always checking out where danger might be lurking, my own gaze moved past the bird and on down the path that leads to the Peace Fire. Seeing its smoke drifting lazily in the air, and, with the raven and bread in the periphery of my vision, I was reminded of an encounter with a similar sort of bird, a black currawong (the main difference between the two being their eyes, with the raven’s white whilst the currawong’s are a disturbingly piercing bright yellow). The encounter took place some five years ago and was a key factor (along with constant pestering by my webmaster, Allan Moult) in cracking my resistance to setting up this blog, Life on the Edge.

The time I speak of was a few months after the establishment of the Peace Fire (April, 2002) and a few weeks into my three year daily surf, but not yet into the weekly writing of Life on the Edge which started in January, 2003.

Now, the blog is an established practice, but five years ago, although managing somehow to self publish Earth Links, a small monograph of sculpture and Roaring Beach Stories, I only dabbled in the occasional bit of writing. However, with the advent of the Peace Fire and The Swim, I was tinkering with the thought of doing another small, little book publication tentatively titled, Fire and Water. Being the slothful character I am, though, the act of writing remained just that—a thought.

It was around four in the afternoon and I was in my outdoor studio, not only bent over a piece of wood with chisels flailing, but also doing a bit of ruminating about Fire and Water, rolling ideas around and hoping something would hatch. Did I have the talent? Was there a need for more environmental writing?  Should I commit time to doing this little book when I could be carving? Is the book’s title too cheesy, too new-age?  etc., etc…… In other words, procrastinating.

Suddenly, like a meteorite falling out of the sky, a currawong lands on a saw horse just near to where I was working. Besides startling the day dreaming out of me with his totally crazy, unannounced flapping entrance, in his beak was a large rock whelk sea shell that I recognised as having come off my house deck.

Once I regained my composure, I said: “You cheeky bird stealing from my collection of shells”. Then, with an exaggerated motion, the currawong spits the shell out onto the ground next to my feet, cocks his head and gives me that sideways look. “Do you expect to exchange this for a piece of bread?” I asked. After a few more cocks of the head with those yellow eyes peering inquisitively at me, the bird jumps off the saw horse, picks up the shell and flies off with it into the trees and out of view.

“Interesting”, I said to myself, then went on quietly carving while pondering the possible significance of the shell. Just a coincidence? Or had this feathered augur come with a plan?

Two hours later, I put on my wet suit, went for a surf and stayed until the sun disappeared behind some very black clouds coming in out of the west. Reaching home, instead of going immediately into the shower, I thought it best to stoke up the Peace Fire before the rain hit. So, I dropped off the boogie board and flippers in the yard and walked up the path to the fire. Half way there and what do I find right in the middle of the path?  You guessed it… that very same rock whelk sea shell. “Yes….” I excitedly screamed, “Fire and Water!” The symbolism was too apparent to ignore.

Well, for an hour anyway, because although impressed at the time with the currawong’s visit, a few days later the initial euphoric impact had lessened to just a “lovely” story, had been pushed to the back of my mind and I refused it entry into motivating me to do anything like actually writing.

Back then, my everyday morning breakfast routine would be to go sit with my toast and triple expresso coffee in a corner of the house next to a pair of French doors that swung open to an outdoor deck that, with windows that went from ceiling height to floor, offered an expansive view to the outside. I had finished breakfast and was slowly, very slowly, doing my best to move from the comfort of the cushioned chair to the hard board I sit on in the studio. Yet, despite the high amount of caffeine buzzing through me, my preference was to sit idly and read what others had written about nature and the elements.

When I came to the Mary Oliver poem, “Raven with Crows”, my attention perked up with her description of the crow as “a corn-meddler” as it brought my attention back to what I had witnessed a few days earlier and made me think of the currawong visitor as “a shell meddler” doing its best to mess with my mind. More importantly, it pricked my conscience sufficiently to want to become more constructive in creating the second “little book”.

What should happen next? The currawong is on the deck tapping the bottom of the French door window no more than two feet away from my feet. I look through the window amazed at its reappearance. Never before had a bird been on the deck let alone a big black one tapping on a window as though asking permission to come into the house. All I could manage to do was just look at it. Finally, I said: “Okay, I hear you. You’re trying to tell me to get off my butt and get writing. Done deal.” The bird stopped pecking, gave me the yellow eye, proceeded to peck a few more times and then flew off.

That was five years ago. The currawong never returned, either to the studio or to the house. It’s black winged messenger’s presence seems only to have been needed to spur on the creation of Life at the Edge. With 8,000 people a week now reading about the comings and goings at Windgrove, a return flight was never necessary.

We all owe a bit of thanks to this bird.

There is always a bit a solid wisdom coming from the cartoon character Hobbes. Yes, happiness can be found in a sun drenched field.

So why do we keep forgetting this?

This morning was sunny, but it was also a cold day with a stiff breeze blowing in from the southwest.
While out and about enjoying its crispness, I came across this Bennett’s wallaby obviously agreeing with Hobbes about where to find happiness. With her back side protected from the wind by the dense foliage of a coastal wattle shrub, she seemed to be definitely enjoying soaking up the warmth of the sun.

For long minutes we just shared the same space, happy in the moment, unconcerned about mortgages, car payments, financial success or power positioning.

And, back at the house, guess who I found trapped in the sink again all shivering and cold unable to climb up, out and over the steep stainless steel walls? Must be the tenth time I’ve rescued this tiny Little Pygmy-possum.

Acting like a big, sunny field, the warmth of my stomach and cupped hands provided this happy creature with a few minutes of solid contentment before she decided to scurry home under the stove where, no doubt, a few tasty crumbs awaited her.

Like many other lucky people, I received Paulus Berensohn’s Valentine card this week. This year his drawing is, at once, more powerful and more pleading.

Opening up the card, Paulus writes on the inside:

“Help”
the cry of the Heart
— to offer and give
— to need and receive
— to each other and our earth

For Paulus, the heart, in all its manifest shapes and sizes, is asking for help. In this time of global chaos, the cry of the heart is not specifically personal or solely human. Gaia also is hurting; anima mundi also is hurting; all creatures great and small are hurting. Love is needed everywhere.

On the morning of this Valentine’s Day, I found, half drowned in the bottom of a water jug, a Little Pygmy-possum desperately trying to stay alive. It had fallen in looking for something to drink, but due to its small size—two inches long, 60 mm—it was unable to climb or jump out of the jug. Boy, did it look miserable.

While resident artist, Sally, cuddled the little guy close to her belly to help lessen any hypothermic conditions, a hot-water bottle was prepared and positioned in the bottom of a box, followed by lots of soft clothing. Here, the pygmy-possum was gently placed in a warming hollow of clothes. Giving us what looked like a heartfelt “sweet thank you”, it then burrowed deep into the fabric and disappeared out of sight.

Nothing could be done now but wait until nightfall and see if this tiny nocturnal marsupial revived enough to climb out of the box and find its way beneath the oven where, I suppose, it feasted nightly on the bits of food and crumbs dropped by the messy chef.

When Sally and I returned late from a trip to Hobart for our own food gathering and a dinner out, we noticed that the box was empty. We went to bed sleepy in the contented knowledge that all had turned out okay.

But, as in all matters of the heart, the doors of compassion, joy and pain keep opening and shutting. The “little guy” turned out to be a mother as, the next morning, I found two dead babies on the kitchen floor, most likely drowned while in the pouch of its mother and subsequently removed when she, herself, recovered. A third was later found by Sally.

All three are now buried under a stone at the base of the ancestral midden. May their little spirits rest in peace.

Wedge-Tailed Eagle: Aquila audax; wing span approaching ten feet/ 2.9 meters; female larger than male; nest is a huge pile of sticks lined with fresh eucalypt leaves, often high.

Forest Raven: Corvus Tasmanicus; wing span approaching three feet/ .9 meters; large stick nest lined with bark, wool, 10m or higher in fork in forest tree.

These two wonderful birds are always hanging around Windgrove; the eagle majestic in flight, the raven cocky and cheeky.

But why can’t they get along? Singly or in groups of up to five, the much tinier raven will harass and dive bomb the eagle until the eagle drifts off slowly. I’ve watched ravens pump their wings furiously for long lengths of time to keep up with an eagle only to have the eagle soar off easily without the pesky raven bothering it. Minutes later the eagle returns and the chase is on again. How much energy is expended in an attempt to protect territory; territory that in the end is not protected. You see, the raven never wins. Somehow, though, it must gain some satisfaction (or entertainment value) from the harassment.

Some days I feel like the eagle, other days the raven.

Recently, I put the large Gunn’s sign back out on the main road as my way of being the raven. The logging can’t legally be stopped, but I sure love harassing the bastards.

Here’s an interesting fact: If all the 6 billion people on this earth were to be placed in Tasmania (about the size of Ohio or Ireland), every person would have the equivalent space around them of a small back yard in which to live. Considering how over populated the world is, this almost seems an impossibility. Just goes to show that the problem the world faces isn’t so much the numerical number of people, rather their consumption habits.

If humans were equally spread around the globe, there would be so much space between each human that they wouldn’t see each other. They would then, should they desire company, be forced to make friends with all the other “people” in the animal and plant kingdom.

Yesterday I went for a walk around the Peace Path in order to visit my nearest neighbours and said hello to around 50 wallabies, one echidna, 2 blue tongue lizards, 3 yellow crested cockatoos, 2 wedge tailed eagles, 2 kookaburras, 12 pademelons and a wombat in a burrow. And this was just the animal kingdom.

The deck (with picnic table) on the ocean side of the house looks out to Storm Bay through about 75 wind shaped silver-peppermint gum trees. These “tree people” with their dancing arms doing a mass South American salsa, are alive with individual personalities and whenever I walk among them or sit on the deck with them, it is hard not to feel a real presence.

Little wonder, then, that last evening when Australia played Uruguay in the final match for a qualifying position for soccer’s World Cup, I took my TV out of the closet and onto the deck.

I mean, really, who would want to watch such an exciting match as this all by themselves?

The game went into double overtime and finally settled with a penalty shoot out. The trees enjoyed the night in.

Walking along the beach this week, I saw several “creatures” washed ashore. Looking into the eye of one of them, the squid, I couldn’t help but see a portion of myself.

Are we related?

When we hear the word “ancestor”, who does that bring to mind?

It is easy to hold to the notion that one’s grandparents or great, great grandparents are our ancestors. Even going back ten, twenty and thirty generations is easy enough to hold to the notion that those people born 1000 years ago are biologically linked to us.

What gets increasingly more difficult to embody is the notion that our “ancestors” might not look like us.

I’m not talking about “Cro-Magnon” ancestors; I’m implying someone, something who was our forebear in the very, very, very distant past. Not in the Tertiary time period, nor the Cretaceous or Jurassic. Or even the Devonian. We’re looking back 500 million years ago into the Cambrian when the earliest members of our family tree were floating about in sun warmed ponds.

In this family, one brother swam off to the right, a sister swam off to the left and your great grandmother (to the 10th power) stayed put and married the boy next door.

The rest they say, is evolutionary history. The ancient brother’s fate eventually led to today’s Fairy penguin; his sister’s fate the Squid; all of us reading this blog arrived as humans, and, somewhere in all this the sea gull flew in.

Bill Bryson, in ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything, says this:

“The tiniest deviation” (i.e. swimming left or right) “and you might now be licking algae from cave walls or lolling walrus-like on some stony shore or disgorging air through a blowhole in the top of your head before diving sixty feet for a mouthful of delicious sandworms.”

And, for a good reason to wake up with a smile every morning, consider this by Bryson, as well:

“Not only have you been lucky enough to be attached since time immemorial to a favoured evolutionary line, but you have also been extremely — make that miraculously — fortunate in your personal ancestry. Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth’s mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stuck fast, untimely wounded or otherwise deflected from its life’s quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result — eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly — in you.”

Three cheers for our good fortune. May we do good with the time we have been given.

In our cultural mythology, ants are considered “community minded” and “patient” and “disciplined” builders of their miniaturised, yet vast, highly “militarised” societies.

Isn’t it marvellous that such tiny creatures could be such good role models for us “advanced” humans?

Being sick last week I had some time to read up on ants and follow them around the still green lemons in the atrium.

I’m sure all of us have seen ants moving along a line on the kitchen counter and have observed their antennal communications. What the occasional observer might not see is that, along with “touch”, what is more crucial to the ants’ organised behaviour is “smell”.

Depending upon the species, ants produce ten or twenty different pheromones to signal specific requests and warnings, passing them through physical contact or leaving them behind as chemical trails.

Aside from the numeric information that ant species number over 11,000 and their combined weight equals over half the weight of all insect species (total of 750,000; mostly beetles), it is the ants’ etymology of their entomology that most fascinates me.

Take their phylum, “Arthropoda” . Most of us would look at this and our minds will either go blank or some fearful image of a third grade teacher will bring a sense of dread or panic flooding back into consciousness.

However, we all know the word “arthritis” and know that it deals with “joints” (if somewhat swollen or inflamed). We, also, might know that podium, pedestal, pedestrian and podiatrist have something to do with feet. Therefore, ants belong to the phylum that simply means “jointed feet”; a phylum comprising classes of Insects, Spiders, Crustacca and Myriapoda.

The class of Insects has various orders, one of which is Hymenoptera. This contains ants, as well as their evolutionary cousins, the bees and wasps. The key to understanding why ants are included with bees is found in the breakdown of Hymenoptera. Every teenage boy knows that a Pterodactyl is a “winged” creature from the age of the dinosaurs. This same boy might also have discussed “hymens” with his class mates during lunch time with giggles of assured adult knowledge. “Hymen” is Latin for membrane. “Pter-” is Greek for wing or feather.

Hymenoptera is simply a membranous wing; something every queen ant has.

Within the order Hymenoptera, one family — Formicidae — contains all the true ants. The form of the ants is easy to recognise as compared with many other insects as all are the same basic shape and have a characteristic kink in their ever busy antennae.

Of interest here is that “form” in Latin means shape and beauty. It also means “ant”.

A person who studies ants, however, is not a formicologist; rather, a myrmecologist, from the Greek “myrmeco-” for ant.

Lastly, and of great interest is that to “formicate” (as opposed to fornicate) is to crawl like ants and to swarm with moving beings. Just possibly, group sex could be associated with new meaning.

Where Does the Temple Begin, Where Does It End?

There are things you can’t reach. But
you can reach out to them, and all day long.

The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.

And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.

The snake slides away; the fish jumps, like a little lily,
out of the water and back in; the goldfinches sing
from the unreachable top of the tree.

I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.

Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around as though with your arms open.

And thinking: maybe something will come,
some shining coil of wind,
or a few leaves from any old tree —
they are all in this too.

And now I will tell you the truth.
Everything in the world
comes.

At least, closer.

And, cordially.

Like the nibbling, tinsel-eyed fish; the unlooping snake.
Like goldfinches, little dolls of gold
fluttering around the corner of the sky

of God, the blue air.

Mary Oliver (from Why I Wake Early)

Where Does the Encounter Begin, Where Does It End?

And yesterday, walking my morning walk,
looking at the dawn of a new day,
the world did come a little closer

in the form of a wedge tail eagle
(wing span 2 meters/6’6″).

Several times it swooped passed.

If not the eagle’s feathers,
than surely the draft from its wings is what
I felt upon the nap of my neck
when I bent my head to the side
as it flew by.

An extended arm could easily have
grabbed a talon had one
or both
been distended.

Twice it landed upon the hillside above
around 15 meters/ 50 feet away.

Twice I walked to eagle as Mary Oliver
would ask of us:
“Reach out with your arms open.”

I am not professing that a great spiritual encounter
came with this engagement.
In eagle’s eyes, I might
only have been a possible breakfast.

But the knowing that fills me,
is that being “present” every waking
hour here at Windgrove is transformative.

By walking and looking, by swimming and looking,
by constantly “reaching out”,
I am slowly dissolving into earth;
into earth’s cycles of life and death.

Peter Adams

The eagle I encountered today was not afraid of my human form. In eagle’s eyes was my body on offer to feed him/her yet? Happily for me, no.

Will my body be on offer in the future? Happily for me, yes.

I have taken from the earth all these years to sustain myself. It will be an honour to give back what flesh is left on my old bones.

This solstice eve, I give thanks that, although the dark is at its longest, the light that comes into our lives on even the shortest of days can be staggering.

It started out, as they say, simple enough.

I was on the back deck basking in the warmth of a warmer than normal late autumn afternoon sun and quietly contemplating the Gandhian principle, “Sarvodaya”.

This was because a distant neighbour Jane had just buried her dog at Windgrove and I was thinking about the emotional pain and loss she was experiencing for her beloved Irish springer spaniel.

Sarvodaya recognises the intrinsic value of all life, human and other than human; all people, all plants, all animals, the entire Earth. All life. No privilege and no monopoly; everything should be shared.

It seemed appropriate, therefore, to let Jane bury her friend and companion of twelve years on a plot of land at Windgrove that faced the setting sun and overlooked Roaring Beach. It was a simple sharing and a simple acknowledgement that this dog had been well loved.

So, there I was, tea cup in hand, sipping and pondering the goodness of shared love that arises when humans can connect on a deep level to the more-than-human world, when a Brown Goshawk, a medium sized raptor, glided over the treetops and into view, about ten meters/thirty feet away.

It never beat a wing; rather, just slowly moved along sideways, forwards, backwards, all the while looking down.

Because of the day’s activities and feeling a bit Gandhian and open-minded, I looked at the bird and said out loud: “Hey, friend, give me a message.”

The bird pivoted 90 degrees and came gliding directly towards me. Right at the zenith, with me looking straight up at the hawk, and the hawk looking straight down at me, it stuck it’s legs straight down as if to brake itself and let loose with a stream of shit. Only because of forward momentum did the stuff not hit me squarely on the head; instead landing on the roof behind.

But I got the message.

And laughed aloud. It really was a funny sight seeing those thin taloned legs splayed straight out and forward.

Maybe this is how they always take a crap in order not to dirty their feet?