Life on the Edge

I see the rainbow, but I also see the storm.

This week a 14 year old boy from Melbourne, who had recently visited Windgrove with his school mates, sent me a letter.

“You are definitely one of the most amazing people I have ever met! Your determination to save the environment is fantastic. The experiences that we had were nothing like anything we had experienced before.”

But I also received an email, part of which read: “......I take offence at your comments.”

In short, my determination to save the environment was fantastic for one person and an offence for another. The thing is, they were both correct.

The latter email came from someone whom I have known for around 15 years in the environment movement and who has even stayed at Windgrove a few times with his wife and child. He also works at the local Council and has a role to play in how the dirt bike noise issue gets resolved.

Earlier this week, when it seemed to us eleven property owners at Roaring Beach that our multiple letters of complaint about the dirt bikes were not being acted upon by our Council after the return of the dirt bikes on the weekend, well...... what can I say, but that I wrote a quite heated letter to the Council and castigated everyone, including my friend, for not being professional and upholding the law. I even wrote the friend and said something along the line of:  “If I have to choose between friendship or the environment, the environment will win.”.

I have since apologised, and my friend may or may not forgive me. The point that I’m trying to make, however, is that doing a fantastic job for the environment is not ever easy. Friendships can be created, but friendships can as easily be lost.

Almost every evening for the past month I have been slightly obsessed with drawing up plans for the four Windgrove residency cabins; places where writers, visual artists, musicians and others will stay for two months to ponder their navels if they so choose. Not overly large (around 250 square feet or 25 square meters max) they must not only sit into the landscape comfortably, but also function well as a comfortable home away from home. Passive solar design considerations, the view from the windows, the layout of the tiny kitchen, the walk to the outdoor shower/toilet and the trees seen along the walk are all important.

What will it be like for someone, who has just flown in from America or Africa, to open the door and walk inside? How will they feel? Will their jet lag be momentarily replaced by an exhale of exaltation?

So, I sit at the dining table, books and papers sprawled out. There is no music on the stereo, the TV remains in the closet and all is quiet save for the wind in the trees and the sound of surf beating into the dunes. I look at each drawing and conjure up a person inhabiting the space between the pencil lines. I imagine the distance between each cabin. I look seven generations into the future and see people walking in and around a matured, landscaped cluster of cabins.

Are the birds singing? 

These cabins might not get built for another two years, but I am compelled now to start the design process; a process where the finished cabins will not look anything like what I am drawing tonight. But it is important, at least for me, to explore idea after idea and allow the mysterious growth of new ideas to spring forth from the composted ideas of earlier cabin designs.

P’sP = 6P

Peter’s Principal states that Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance

In like manner, even planting out this year’s trees takes a certain amount of planning in order that, 100 years down the track, the trees planted now will still be around. With hungry wallabies, rabbits, salt spray and dry, windy conditions, growing trees successfully requires some forethought (and a hell of a lot of work).

This week I took delivery of an order I placed four months ago. Six thousand, four foot long bamboo stakes; one thousand five hundred mulch mats, one thousand five hundred tree guards and 560 seedling trees.  In two weeks, the final delivery of another 940 trees from a different nursery will arrive.

I’m excited.

Tomorrow, just to make sure the planting out of the trees goes easily, I’m planning on having a full body massage.

Love those plans.

The dark curtain of squall moves steadily towards me.

The winter sun is low; moving to set. It casts a final warming light onto a green, seductive sea.

Standing here now is to stand in a moment of grace even while knowing all will abruptly end.

Looking south past Wedge island, through the line of obscuring rain, is a vast wild empty plain of open water.

All the way to the Antarctic, they say. Some 3000 kilometres.

Standing here now is to stand in a moment of time.

To be alive in this very moment. How precious.

In twenty years (or perhaps tonight in my sleep), when the final, dark curtain falls, will I awaken on the other side of anything? 

I take a deep breath and give thanks for this moment of pure earthly bliss.

Living life at the edge calls me to be present. Demands of me to be present.

I take a second breath. Then turn my back on the approaching dark and walk towards the remaining light.

This week, when I was finally oiling the third and littlest of the “still lives”, I also happened to be reading an article in Resurgence magazine by Deepak Chopra that brought a new awareness to me about just what I was actually applying tung oil to.

“....It is possible today to compute the total number of atoms in the atmosphere on planet Earth. It’s possible to compute what you are inhaling and exhaling in one breath. With a little more calculation, we can show—beyond a shadow of doubt—that right this moment you have in your physical body at least a million atoms that were once in the body of Christ, or the Buddha, or Michelangelo, or Leonardo da Vinci, or Saddam Hussein, or Osama bin Laden, or George Bush. You have a million atoms right now that have been in the body of every single being that has existed since the dawn of creation. In just the last three weeks a quadrillion atoms (quadrillion means ten followed by fifteen zeros) have gone through your body and they have gone through the body of every other living species on this planet. So think of anything in the ecosystem right now—think of a tree in Africa, think of a squirrel in Siberia, think of a peasant in China, think of a taxi-driver in Calcutta, think of a small child in Afghanistan—and you have raw material in your body that was circulating there only three weeks ago. In less than one year you replace ninety-eight per cent of all the atoms in your body....”

“....At the atomic level you make a new liver every six weeks; a new skin once every five days; you replace your skeleton every three months; and you replace the raw material of your DNA every six weeks—it comes and goes like migratory birds....”

Awesome. 

I look out my window. There stands a native olive tree in a grove of silver peppermint trees. A wattle bird flits through; a wallaby chews on a spear of sagg grass. In the distance the ocean is calm where last week five humpback whales frolicked.

Oven on the dining room table the group of three “still lives” wait to be photographed.

I look at all of this and call out with William Stafford’s words and atoms literally coming from my mouth:  “Part of me.”.

Some days just don’t go according to plan.

When I awoke yesterday morning, my schedule had me leaving in a quick couple of hours for the drive to Hobart for a series of appointments, culminating in my giving, that evening, the opening speech at an exhibition of paintings by Faridah Cameron. One such painting, “Rock Pool Starry Night”, is shown above.

Instead of feeling buoyant about the day, I was both slightly nervous about the speech and troubled in spirit because of a current, neighbourhood issue dealing with the noise of trail bikes in the area. Nine property owners in the Roaring Beach community had written letters of complaint, but enforcement by the council wasn’t guaranteed. Without going into the details, there were a series of very early morning phone calls to me from some of the concerned neighbours. To deal with them, I had to cancel my first scheduled appointment in Hobart.

However, I was determined to make the best of it because the next scheduled appointment in Hobart was to have a massage. This was to be in celebration of this day being the 1000th day of my daily commitment to going into the water at Roaring Beach. And, boy, did my body and soul need some caring hands.

This appointment, too, was cancelled.

I was in my house putting on my wet suit for this one thousandth surf when I began to hear a series of “whoooooooo’s”. A lovely, deep, very guttural sound that I had never heard before.

Let me say here that one reason I took on the commitment to surf for three years, three months, three weeks and three days was to learn about the many voices of the land and sea at Roaring Beach that made up the large, communal “Voice” of Roaring Beach. The “whoooooooo’s” were an interesting new addition.

And there they were. A chorus of five humpback whales spread out across the width of Roaring Beach. Yes, five!

I won’t say that they were at Roaring Beach specifically for me, but as it was the 1000th day, I did allow myself the privilege of feeling honoured by their presence. It was as if they were saying: “We have gathered here for the day to support you and the rest of the Roaring Beach community in your efforts to respect and protect this very, very special place.”

They blew, they kept sticking their massive heads out of the water for a view of the beach, they flopped around, they waved their pectoral fins. One of the more frisky whales slapped his/her tail and splashed about repeatedly. They hung about all day. I watched them from every advantage point I could: from the cliffs and from the water. (I have to admit that when I went into the water, in my excitement I forgot to zip up my wet suit and when the first wave hit, my whole wet suit filled up like a balloon with some very cold water.)

But I still had to give the speech.  At four PM in the afternoon, instead of ten AM in the morning as scheduled, I drove off to Hobart feeling fully loved. I opened the exhibition on time with a speech peppered with a passionate, fiery love for this earth and the greater cosmos; where all is a fusion of matter and spirit. My encounter with the whales had me totally reinvigorated and empowered and I throughly enjoyed the evening.