Hike up into the hills around the Lower Helena Reservoir. The Doomben—’weired’ further up; diversion ‘dammed’ here. I take the higher trails up and up until I’m on mountain bike tracks. There is rain, and washouts have formed through the gravel and clayey mud; elsewhere there is granite and quartz in places. The rain has come after the dry summer; but not soon enough for many plants—and not just smaller bushes but also parrot bush, sheoaks, and even eucalypts—many dead. Some trees look like the red of autumn northern hemisphere; others grey and lifeless. It’s like a fire has gone through, without the blackened burn marks; but a similar effects remain—a swathe of dead bushes and trees, though not so cleared— some of the signs of fire without the flame: The flameless fire of the long dry summer. (And I can’t help wondering if the land needs some of them gone—if not by fire then by thirst.)
Author Archives: jbstubley
Turtle
Sitting on the jetty, south end of the lake, where feet used to hang over and hit water last winter, sun shining, 1.3 metres—rising 4cm this working week—and from out of the water, right in front of me, slipping through the still surface layer, pops the small round head on the end of a long neck of a turtle. Yerrigan/yaarkin/yagan.
The Height of the Nest
Mid July; lake level about 1.3 metres. And the Swans’ nests have been built high. They stick out like little volcanos above the surface; built against future rising waters—waters that will rise in the time it takes for the the future to birth in cradled warmth—first of egg, then nest and feathers—so that eventually it may step off into waters still lower than the nest’s edges…into another liquid.
The Steaming Lake
Clear sky minus some slight cirrus at the lake. It is cold. There’s a slight easterly at the river, but it is glassy at the lake. And today there is steam on the the water, and steam coming off logs in the sun. Fungus lives on a tree branch by the lake’s eastern entrance, white and wrinkled. A djidi djidy sits on the grass by the gazebo near the water’s surface; 1.26 metres. A swan shoes a swamphen. A swamphen shoes a coot. There’s a black face cuckooshrike. And wardong the old crow gathers a loose twig from a tree—he doesn’t fly straight to any existing nest but to another branch, where he sits a while watching me watching him; maybe he doesn’t want to show me the nest…maybe it’s the first twig of the one that’s coming next.
The Owl Whisperer
There is a kind of owl whisperer at Lake Claremont. I see her fairly often, and we have become kind of colleagues. She has rescued barn owls from the water, and from the attack of crows. She has no qualms about picking them up, or throwing something over them if only it will help. She’s been scratched and harassed in the process—by crows, magpies and owls. She looks for them, and finds them, amongst the trees beyond the edges of the lake; she tells me where, and sometimes I can see them too—like the tawny frogmouths to the east, or the barn owls to the north west in recent years. She tells me about other ones today. I look and look and cannot find them; not like she finds them, and they find her. And yes, she does (with no negative judgment intended) slightly resemble one.
Rivers Becoming
I take a walk today out where one river becomes another, both ways. I start at the Derbarl Yerrigan Swan River side and walk upstream, levels still pretty low somewhere near mid-winter flow. I follow it up the bank, northern side, hopping a granite rock or two; 10-o’clock flowers coming out, moorhens, galahs, shelducks, black ducks, egrets, herons, fantails, balgaz, tuarts, melaleucas, zamias, casuarinas; kangaroos at Walyunga—where it turns into the Guggleyar Avon—water bubbling, guggle-yarrin. Then I turn back around, following the water as it flows.
Noticing also, on the valley walls—especially south side—the many dead trees. It looks like the red and orange of northern hemisphere fall…though without a springtime coming.
Back to the Lake
Back to the lake today after five weeks of being away: USA away. And the thing I especially note are the bardoongooba—the Australian shovelers—tipping themselves 90 degrees to reach what they need to reach down there—most likely grasses—orange legs kicking in the air; the lake at 1.2 metres.
Gold in Eucalypts
Morning winter sun of Bold Park breaks through eastern clouds strong and golden, finding itself reflected in golden leaves of eucalyptus trees, especially the Tuarts. And I remember a study some years back that even showed how trees can pull up the gold in the ground and bring it into their leaves. Golden ground, golden sun, golden leaves.
Rearrival
Feeling is spreading in my chest,
Connection to rock, tree, beast, human being.
We can be experts beyond expertise;
You must love the overlie.
Elk
In a half-asleep, half-awake daze of driving away from the Salmon River, Idaho, after five days, we come up over a rise and see a whole country spread out before us, early evening. And then, off by the edge of the road on the other side, a mother elk and young, which is one thing, but how my cousin reacted was what I noticed most. He hunts them at another time of year, shoots them with bow and arrow. Something about the way he saw them that struck me. Some other kind of connection.
John Stubley 