Life on the Edge

Fact one: Nearly all of the immensely tall old growth mountain ash forests in Australia, the eucalyptus regnans, have been logged away. Most of the last remaining virgin stands are in Tasmania, but the trees here are being chipped up, turned to pulp and used for products like toilet paper. The fact that the biodiversity of these forests—as seen from the ground—is being destroyed has been known for some time. However, what is only now being discovered is the rich diversity of life in the forest canopy—that top portion of the trees rarely, if ever, visited by humans.

Fact two:  Humans are the only primates that do not spend time in trees. Even gorillas, the largest primate, spend up to 20 percent of their day in trees.

In the fascinating book, The Wild Trees, Richard Preston describes in great biographical, emotional and scientific detail, the new breed of human tree walkers that ascend the tallest trees of the world in their efforts to save them.

“The forest canopies of the earth are realms of unfathomed nature, and they are vanishing. The earth’s forests are being logged off, burned away, turned into patches, and reduced to small fragments. We know very little about the forests or about what is happening to them, as little, possibly, as we know about the oceans that surround the continents. We do know that whatever happens to the great systems of nature will also be what happens to us.

The species that live in forest canopies are largely unknown. The forest canopies of the earth are believed to hold roughly half of all species in nature. The forest canopy is the earth’s secret ocean, and it is inhabited by many living things that don’t have names, and are vanishing before they have ever been seen by human eyes.”

Kevin Rudd and the Australian Labor party won the federal election this past weekend partially by promising to sign the Kyoto agreement on greenhouse gas emissions. This, in and of itself, is good news and most of the international news media talk about Rudd heralding in a new era of progressive environmental legislation. I should be happy with this election win, but I am not. As John Howard gave his televised concession speech on election night admitting defeat, I was certainly relieved that he and his nefarious cronies didn’t get back in, but I did not feel jubilant that Rudd and his cronies got in.  Why? Because both the Liberal and Labor parties have supported—with a billion dollars of tax payer’s money—the forestry industry in Tasmania and the construction of Gunns Pulp mill. Kevin Rudd talks about Kyoto and the need to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions, yet he backs a pulp mill that will increase Australia’s CO2 emissions by 2% per year or the equivalent of putting an additional 2 million cars on the road. And, more importantly, the pulp mill will double the amount of trees cut down (80% from native forests) increasing the total yearly tonnage of wood chips to nearly 8 million. 

In Preston’s book, tall tree climber and canopy voyager Steve Sillett speaks about the redwood forests in America, but he could be equally talking about Tasmania’s forests when he states: “They were reduced to scraps by us. Our society—and I don’t mean just American society; I mean Chinese, Brazilian, European society, all of us as humans—we are homogenizing the earth’s biosphere. We don’t know what will happen to the biosphere or to the forests. I’m afraid that our work trying to understand the redwood forest might just turn out to be documenting something magnificent before it winks out. This forest gives us a glimpse of what the world was like a very long time ago, before humans came into existence. We are in one of the last great rain forests remaining in the temperate zone. These tiny little pockets are all that’s left of it. We can talk about conserving biodiversity, conserving species, but that isn’t enough. We could keep the redwood species alive as a bunch of little redwood trees, but this forest and all that it shows us would be gone.”

If I have one wish about this election it is that Kevin Rudd will go out on a limb and with the force of an angry gorilla losing his tree home sideline the powerful forestry union in Tasmania and preserve what is left of our natural heritage. The original, intact forests in Tasmania were among the most beautiful forests on earth, and they’re almost totally gone. Our human fate rests with the fate of these trees.

.....And if, in the end, all other avenues are denied us, if it takes standing on the road to the pulp mill site and placing our bodies between their machines and our home, we will stand there, in peace and with pride, united against hate and greed, joined in our love for our island. And if we are arrested and thrown in jail, then we will go to jail in our tens, we will go to jail in our hundreds, we will go to jail in our thousands, and Paul Lennon will have to build seven new prisons to house all the people who will come and who will keep on coming before they even attempt to pour the foundations of one new pulp mill.

If it must be, I will stand on that road to the pulp mill. Raise your hand if you will stand there with me, raise your hands so Kevin Rudd can see he was wrong, raise your hand so Peter Garrett can see that people care, raise your hand so John Howard can see this matters, raise your hand so that ANZ, Perpetual, AMP and the Commonwealth Bank can see that will have to deal with the fallout of the biggest civil disobedience campaign in Australian history since the Franklin River blockade if they do not take action now.

Now is the time for turning, now is the season for our change, now must come that moment when we no longer are cowed, when we cease to be silent, when we speak the truth to power and say no to this pulp mill and yes to a future in which we are governed in the spirit in which we live: with goodness, with the interests of others in our heart and not the leash of greed tearing at our throat. Now is that hour, now is our future. The journey is long, the road is dark and frightening, but together we can reach our destination: the Tasmania of which we all dream, where all are welcome and all prosper, made no longer of lies but truth, built not of rich men’s hate but our love for our island and for each other. Our love. Our Tasmania. Let’s take it back.
....Richard Flanagan in a speech to 15,000 people at a Anti-Pulp mill rally in Hobart last Saturday

And when Richard asked the rally crowd of 15,000 people to raise their hands if they would commit themselves to block the construction of the pulp mill, we all did. Such a beautiful thing to witness: all those hands waving in the air.

photo: Matt Newton

If, during this Australian federal election campaign I hear one more politician’s deceptive spin on why tax cuts are more necessary than money and incentives for the environment to curb climate change, the skin on my already sceptical hide will become doubly thick and I will become irreversibly afflicted with GOMS—grumpy old man syndrome. 

My consistent saviour in all this negativity, the life line that never fails to rescue me from depressive anger, the soothing ointment that bathes my wounds is this: the marvel of the natural world.

Watching dual blossoms of wafer thin yellow petals emerge from a thorny, tough old cactus is enough to both kill me with delight and force me to muse on why it is so important to stay in touch with life and love (or at least keep smiling through gritted teeth).

Its appearance is only for the equivalent of a sneeze in time, but the oh-so-visible touch of stamen’s anther of pollen across carpel’s stigma shows how a cactus, even with all its protective thorns, still finds the means to display a lust for life—flaunt it actually—with a delicateness more tender than a multilayered silk petticoat. What does it mean to push past the pricks for this improbable swift existence of exquisiteness. Beauty as brief and as fragile as this needs not only applauding, but mimicking.

Screw the politicians and other thieving bastard bandits who would rob us of our natural heritage. Our lives are much too brief to have our happiness shut down by their deceitful ways. Rise above it all, I say, and not waste another moment being cursed with GOMS. Burst forth past protective armours and grumpy feelings with daily astoundments of joy and yellow tinged or red blushes. Quickly now, start behaving with exaltations of starry eyed wonder because all too soon these human bodies of ours will be pushing up daisies.

Not any time soon, mind you, but the thought of being fodder for a few flowers is rather comforting as I rather like daisies. Better still, I like the notion of actually becoming a daisy or, maybe, a blade of grass bending under the gentle weight of a morning’s moist dew, dropping low to touch and kiss the earth.

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

Mary Oliver

I walked through a myrtle, sassafras and wattle rainforest last week and it was akin to swimming through green light. A rare clear day allowed the sun to penetrate the umbrella’d canopy and make translucent and reflective the many thousands of leaves it bounced off of on its way down to the forest floor. Such magic. Such a change from the wind blown and stunted trees found at Windgrove; trees, that although beautiful in their fiercely gnarled way, don’t posess the soft, moist green quality that emanates from within a rainforest.

The path was along the shore line of Lake St. Clair (the last section of the famous Overland Track). After taking the ferry the full length of the lake, where Sally hopped off and walked back 17 kilometers, I got off at Echo Point for the shorter 12 kilometer distance. The sign read that my portion of the walk would take three hours. It took me six. The knees were only a tiny part of my slowness as it was the green beauty I found myself immersed in that kept flooring me and to crawl along any faster was impossible.  I just didn’t want to leave this bearable lightness of green. Most certainly, I felt like the bee in Basho’s poem:

The bee emerging
from deep within the peony
departs reluctantly

How will time judge me? Damned if I know.
My accomplishment is, I got up today.
I tried to write a poem. K’ung-fu Tzu said,
“The study of the low penetrates the high.”

The quote above (and below) from the poetry of Sam Hamill speaks to me on those slow mornings when high inspiration fails in its bid to whip me into a frenzy of creative endeavor.  Just getting out of bed and being a quiet observer provides sufficient meaning to the day. A walk of low expectations has many delights.

“.....And in the end,
it doesn’t matter that we suffered or
did not suffer for our art, but that we
found in verse the courage to stand against
the state, political and religious.

How often you’ve said you don’t know a thing
about Zen or the Tao, but you’re a sage
all the same, and in the tradition of
Chuang Tzu and Confucius, a questioner,
a loner who has struggled to reach out.”

“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. 

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 windgrove”, 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 it. 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.