Life on the Edge

Last week I celebrated the 10th year of my becoming an Australian citizen (Australia Day 1996).

Yesterday morning, I also celebrated reaching the end of a huge undertaking to learn what I could about my new country (or, at least, the tiny portion of it called Roaring Beach). With a group of friends gathered at the base of a sand dune to share coffee, cake and a platter of fruit, I walked into the water to mark the end of this particular journey.

Today, I went to the edge of this same water, but didn’t go in.

How strange it felt.

Today, I went to the very same dune at the top of Roaring Beach like I have done for the past 1212 days, but I didn’t descend down to the beach and allow the ocean to grab me with her wild wetness and toss me around. I walked to the top with a yearning to taste, one more time, the salt of the sea in my mouth, but stayed and only looked.

I stopped at the top because it felt important to honour yesterday’s ending of my more than three year surfing commitment with a day away from the water. Some form of closure seemed proper. A day of no swimming was appropriate in order to separate what had been done with what next will happen.

A new moon will rise tonight, and with it, an opportunity for new beginnings.

So, the wet suit has remained hanging in the tree, the boogie board and flippers propped up against the wall and me just feeling odd. 

Storms, sun, on shore winds, off shore winds or no wind. Big waves, little waves, clean sets, confused sets, messy swells, right hand breaks, left hand breaks or dumping straight across. Pleasant times, scary times; big smile days, sore bone days. It was one hell of a ride.

There were plenty of days, especially in the winter with a southerly blowing, when all I wanted to do was to flop down on the couch by the fire and call it a day. Or, when hail pelted my face walking to the beach, wishing I had never started something so bone chilling cold. But never once in all those days did I “exit” from the water without feeling refreshed, excited or exulted. Sore, possibly, but not regretful. I invariably bounced back up the hill to the house and felt wonderfully alive. This was especially true when I did a 3:30 A.M. swim two winters ago (under a eerie quarter moon with frost on the ground) in order to make it to Hobart for a vigil at Parliament House. Boy, did I greet the dawn all fresh and full of beans.

One big lesson learned, among many lessons, is that inertia stops many of us from truly engaging in life. Once engaged, however, magic happens.

And, after having experienced 1212 magical days in a row, I can only feel lucky.

What is the natural order of things? Who or what follows whom? Is there a correct sequence to events in the world? Do things move along a prescribed path?

Take, for instance, fruit on a tree. The botany class I had as a youngster taught me that trees flower in spring, get pollinated by bees and other insects, bear fruit as a result of that pollination, and hidden within the fruit is one or more seeds to move the generations along.

Curious this.

Today I stood in front of the cheesewood tree (pittosporum bicolor) and something wasn’t quite jellying with my boyhood lessons because the tree’s fruit was behaving more like a flower.

Let’s go back a few months. In early spring the cheesewood brings forth an abundance of small, yellow, bell shaped flowers. Once pollinated, the mysterious workings of the world set about to transform this sexual encounter into bearing fruit. So far, so good. The laws of nature seem to be on track.

Today, hanging like luscious apricots (but much smaller), one might think that this particular cycle of the story is almost completed with some animal or bird soon to eat the fruit. Later, defecating out the fruit’s seed elsewhere, the seeds will germinate, thus, starting the process all over again.

But something magical happens with the cheesewood. The fruit, it seems, likes remembering when it was a flower and, therefore, splits itself open and turns itself into two flower petals.  Presented on two plates of yellow is a sticky red secondary fruit with seeds within it. Why the extra step? Why the throwback into being a flower? Who knows?

When one begins to look closer into the workings of nature, things just get curiouser and curiouser

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.

Lichens maintain a symbiosis with cyanobacteria which photosynthesise for the lichen in return for safe housing and a supply of nutrients.

Many lichens are extremophiles.

Great word, isn’t it?  Extremophile: lover of extreme conditions. Whether the hottest, driest, wettest or coldest place on earth, lichens can be found. Shows what level of protection living with a partner can provide.

In terms of biomass, the global weight of lichens is greater than all the biomass in the oceans. Must mean that partnered living is the way to go. So why am I still single approaching 60?