One thing I’ve reflected on from hiking the forested foothills of Kathmandu, is the obvious absence of ants. I don’t think I saw one. In the dried mud and high ridges, on the dusty roads, on the side of the ridges leaning down, not one. Here, in Australia, amid the sand of silica or limestone, they are almost always to be expected, cultivating the old land. In the upspringing claymud of the Himalayan foothills, nothing.
Author Archives: jbstubley
Wayan and Kwirlam
Wayan the whitefaced heron and kwirlam the purple swamphen on the dry lakebed. Wayan is still, white-faced grey, and silent, watching something in the dry mud, frozen mid-step and ready to strike, spear like. Kwirlam, all dark and colourful purple chested blue, with red nose and beak, comes up behind him, a little off to the side, and adopts the same position for a while, mirroring, mimicking, pausing mid step, and looking over, round as the heron is straight, full as the heron is line-like. The swamphen moves on, into the reeds, where he noisily and colourfully feeds, often on grass stems or seeds. The heron finally shoots out and pounces, something living soon no longer so in its beak. The one bird as if fallen down from the skies, thieving bugs and insects with a flick. The other, as if risen from the earth, like the sound of its guttural cry, as wilful as the heron is awkward and barely descended. The heron, when he does fly, flaps jerking at the air; the swamphen barely makes it off the ground, it’s feet dangling, ready to touchdown again, destined to be the only bird who stays when the lake finally, completely dries.
Perth and Kathmandu
In Perth, light catabolising into the earth. Thought imbued will.
In Kathmandu, light through the earth upbuilding. Will imbued thought.
Landscapes
Earth and Air
In Perth basin a flat landscape of sand and limestone; a place of earth and air; birds, butterflies, insects and wildflowers of all colours; a place where light and earth breaks down, catabolic.
In Kathmandu valley foothills of clay; also earth and air; birds, butterflies, insects but colour less than Perth; light and earth is more upbuilding, anabolic.
In Himalayas mountains of granite; also earth and air; limited life; light catabolic, earth anabolic.
Water to Fire
In Bali an island from coast to mountains; water to fire; birds and insects almost muted; more life-filled.
Fire
The Phillipines from coast to mountains; country of fire and I.
Upbuilding Mountains
Arriving in another place—like this place, Kathmandu, with Himalayas visible beyond these forested foothills, their snow-capped peaks and grey rocks all hard and granite-like, while here, in the hills, the roads and cutaways are all dried clay—here it’s easy to contrast the difference to the flat sandy limestone of the Perth basin with everything, like rain, pulling down and away. Here, however, rising from the Kathmandu valley, up the first foothills, and up again all the way to the massive top-of-the-world peaks of the Himalayas it’s possible to be carried that way also inwardly. Up and up, rising from beneath your feet. One polarity, one extreme helps the other end of the spectrum be seen. One draws down, almost as if pulling the sun down into the earth, from the head, into the feet. While here, something rises up, not the earth exactly, but like some other kind of sun, from the earth, from the feet to the head above.
Kathmandu Sun
Climbing the forested foothills above Kathmandu amongst the different varieties of pines, some rhododendrons, planted raspberries and even kiwi fruit, walking a ridgeline, it’s easy to hear and sometimes find with the eyes a whole range of different birds—from black kites circling high above, eight together some days, swallows darting through the canopy, small birds with white eyes, tiny birds they call tits, grey-headed warblers, long-tailed minivets bright as glowing coals in the nighttime fires, small birds with yellow breasts, blackbirds, crows, other long-tailed friends—all out with the morning sun, singing, darting, sitting on branches above the ridge, diving down the other side, belonging, it seems, to the outing of the sun. And then maybe you’ll see bees smaller and larger, black and yellow on raspberry and other flowers. And maybe on the ground, on tiny white flowers there’ll be a butterfly orange or white, or even one I saw a bluey grey, fluttering quickly to finally slowly alight on flower, folding up the outerside of its now brown wings, disappearing almost, leaflike, only to fly on in a small blue cloud again. Or maybe there’ll be a tiny ladybug red and black on large green leaf, or even folding up its wings after landing on the dusty clay soil. All of them much harder to find on cloudy, colder days. But on this, sunny warm day of early spring, they seem to have been called up and out—seem to have risen from the dark and the cold and the shadows…with the morning sun.
Beings of higher places, it seems, alighting on all the trees and plants which wait for their arrival, tethered as they are to Earth.
Kathmandu Haze
In the Kathmandu morning valley, on days clear of clouds, you can clearly see from forested foothills above the haze of pollution and smoke sitting on the city like a blanket—a layer of orangey brown that obscures most of the city but doesn’t cut off the views of the highest peaks of the Himalayas beyond. And then, as the day progresses, the sun pours in, the valley warms, the traffic increases, and gradually the hazy blanket rises, climbing up the view of the mountains beyond, the hills your standing on obviously engulfed, all the time the smoky hazy line rising higher until, come noon or early after, the peaks of the mountains can no longer be seen. But clearly into view rises below: Kathmandu.
Back of the Head
Sometimes I find when I visit other places I realise how clear the light is in Western Australia. In other places the horizon often seems hazy, muted, softly defined. But in South Western Australia the light is so clear it’s almost as if you can see beyond the horizon, then beyond the next one, all the way around, and around, until you spy, finally, in one startling faroff vision, the back of your own head looking on.
Sky Thieves
The last couple of nights along the river I have walked right under the downward gaze and flapping of a raptor. Two nights ago, the large osprey flew right above me, all white bellied and brown eyebrowed, feathers somewhat askew, heading downriver, but destined to turn back again to its nest upstream. He looked down through me to the shoreline beside us, then disappeared behind a tree by the jetties; I didn’t see him reappear, and couldn’t find him when I looked. He may well be the same one who sits sometimes on the first lights above the bridge, or who grabs fish by the boat ramp on the otherside, flying low to the water in the centre of the river inland with its catch in its feet.
Last night we walked more upriver, and at a little lookout the slightly smaller form of a black shouldered kite came into view, more manicured than the haggled looking osprey, black underwing tips, black eye, hovering right above us, beak to the southwesterly, looking past us to the shoreline below, showing his black shoulders when he shifted further upriver, then gliding off inland—maybe the same who sits on the lights above the trainline by the beach some days, or further up the coast, hovering.
All the time these birds seemingly appearing from and disappearing back into the heights of the sky above, coming from it, made from it, not daring even, it seems, to touch the ground but only to take from it, or from the water in the form of fish, something that it can speedily take back to its skyhouse and nest—a thief from the skies above, plundering what the earth gives up from below, gives up from the depths.
Death Processes
I’ve been visiting the lake to observe the drying process, and the freeing up of the dying forces. When things dry out, collapse, something else is freed up. The lake was full of water and of life, a real world in miniature, even just a few weeks ago. Now there are seven swans, two Pacific black ducks, a sharp-tailed sandpiper, three stilts, one white-faced heron, a handful of crakes, some moorhens, swamphen regulars, and maybe a rail or two in the rushes and reeds. Green grass is growing on the drying bed. The landcare people are measuring water quality today. I’m not sure they’ve ever been here before. They don’t know the usual water levels, that it dries out most summers. “We looked up the history before we came—this is one of the largest freshwater lakes in Perth. The water levels used to be right up there. The canopy was tuarts and paperbarks.” They get their shoes caught in the waterline mud as they reach for the water with a bottle on a long pole. They scatter swans and ducks, and the sandpiper and stilts move on. They ask if the old fence line was a jetty. I ask them what they’re expecting to find. They talk about heavy metals, the way the tropical fig leaves impact the water quality. I tell them about the figs already cut down for the borers, the paperbarks from before colonisation on the way out. They look surprised. The wind picks up as they try to approach the lake, blows them backwards. They put on Wellington boots. I wish them luck and leave them to it.
John Stubley 