A cool morning with our friends in Cortlandt Manor, New York, early June, clear skies, no wind. Everywhere green. And everywhere the sound of rustling, like the softest rain. And, I wonder, is it the combined chorus of caterpillars eating the leaves?
Category Archives: Bush Poetics
The Winter Bark
I walk back past the large gums by the lake noting their shiny, smooth, grey-green bark—the strands of old bark shed in summer now lying wet and crumpled at their feet. No longer do they wait, with kindling-bark scattered for the fire that will not come. Now they start building up again, slowly, smoothly at first, the layers of next summer’s kindling, which will eventually dry and fall and harden with the comeback of the sun.
The Dying of the Trees
For the last few weeks I’ve been watching and hearing about the dying of the trees. Today I really noticed it most obviously after a few days being inside with illness. The dry time has continued into this season of first rains. And some trees haven’t made it. I hear of others, further from the city, but even here I’ve seen many peppermints—wanil—dry and baked and dead; many tuarts by the lake, other eucalypts. There are smaller shrubs by the river, acacias maybe (or were they cockie’s tongues?) that also haven’t made it, in addition to the dead casuarina’s poisoned for million dollar views.
And then at the lake today I thought, and surely it couldn’t be for the first time, of the dead tree stumps in the middle of the lake, dry and grey. They have been there as long as I’ve been visiting—a seemingly permanent fixture in the up-and-down movements of the water and birds from year to year. But for such trees to have once been here—eucalypts I guess, maleleucas maybe—this place would have once been much drier, for it’s in the centre of the lake that their skeletons rest. And they rest next to the straight edge of a fence line, protruding from the bed not quite as high. In the northern part of the lake the dead remains stand even higher, serving most recently as perch for the black shouldered kite. The northern ground is higher, dries out first, is covered in greener grass earlier, so it makes sense the trees were higher there—but even at the southern end they must not have been tiny; the ground must have been much drier, for no tree or bush grows there now, between the deepest centre, and the highest water periphery; only the back-and-forward movement of grasses breathing in the seasons, the rushes and reeds at the edges, then ground cover, going out to some shrubs and sedges and, on dryer land, eventually trees.
Beebidup Puddles
Somewhere near where the granite rocks replace some of the trees, just after rain, you’ll tend to see some puddles forming. We walk the lower trail and drink from the flowers of dripping bottlebrushes. And when I wonder if we’ve brought enough water, that’s when we see the puddles in front of us. The water has been caught by depressions in the rock—flowing down, if puddle is full, to lower ones—whole chains of puddles in some spots. I look for the highest ones in any area, take off my cap, bend down and kiss its surface, sucking through lips as I kiss it. It is clean and clear and fresh, maybe a few quartz pebbles on the bottom, reflecting nothing but clouds and sky and my own bending down to meet it.
Beebidup / Mt Lindsay Views to the West
We go on our wedding anniversary. Eleven years. Never been to Mt Lindsay and just went to check it out. Ended up hiking the whole thing. And from all the views on the way up, the way down, and at the peak, the thing that stays with me is the view to the west. So much forrest. Taking a selection, you could say no land has been cleared—all the way to where the sun will set—just the rising up-down of hills and lower areas, Mt Franklin somewhere near the furthest edge. When the sun comes out it casts shadows under the clouds, which blend with the dark green of trees, and sends them moving along the forrest bed. The whole thing is quiet, calm, though still with some wind, and alive. I wonder how many people might currently be in this whole spread of land, and reckon we could probably count them on not too many hands.
It’s a scene I’ll take with me into whatever city is next.
Tall Trees on Bibbulmun Country
I’m further south, on the Bibbulmun Track, in Bibbulmun country, within the larger Bibbulmun country, and the trees are large. This is a bend in the Frankland River, populated by massive white-barked karris; as well as the large, red, knotted thickness and branching of tingle trees; plus some thick, straight-barked jarrah. There are large corky casuarinas, some balgas, zamias, marris and more. This part of the bend faces north. The trees are enormous, but the whole place feels soft, quiet, like the cold water river by the hut, flowing slowly through the sunshine and granite.
Currawong and the Bark
I hear a rustling in the Galinyala Port Lincoln mallee trees and look up to see a currawong in the top branches pulling away a strip of brown bark to release something that had been slightly deeper inside. What it is I cannot see, but he gets his beak in there, spearing around, like a finger, trying to locate it. Currawong in the morning mallee tree, rustling and reading the bark like paper.
Different Chases
A strangely unsettled morning of bird chasings in which I see, in different places, jakalak the butcher bird chasing koolbardie the magpie, then later koolbardie the magpie chasing manatj the corella, then a big bunch of—murderous you might say—wardong crows go chasing one another.
Morning Walk
I woke a little earlier for a Sunday and drove an hour up and into the hills; parked between the first and second huts on the Bibbulmun; slightly cooler, low 20’s, an easterly, mostly sunny. I took to the track and found soon a couple of emus marching on and occasionally looking back, the sound of their feet through the bush masked by the wind in the leaves above. Jarrah trees, marri—all of them burned in recent years; balga and jirragee the zamia—world’s oldest fermented food, some currently bursting out into orange fruit—lower to the ground; the occasional stand of sheoak, their needless like a soft bed underfoot, the sound of history blowing through the needle leaves above; as well as a stray banksia here or there. I cut along a line about half way up a hill face, with views to the west and south. Eventually the trail started coming down again, into a more open area of white-barked wandoo by the lighter sand near a winter creekline. Ball Creek Hut with quite a few people involved in morning rituals and packups. I kept on up the trail, crossing the dry creek, past where I’d been before with my wife just a couple of weeks ago. The track went up, then followed a line southish, before starting to go down once again, this time through granite outcrops looking on; down down towards bigger rounded granite rocks, and wandoo spaciousness, and another dried-up creekbed with lighter-green-leaved tuart trees, plus I think some native invasive wetter-area species, also with a kind of bright green leaf. I look around and am suddenly touched by the beauty of the place, the sheer amount of nature here, and feel incredibly grateful that in this one place, at least, on a sometimes full earth, there is space enough for a man to look in all directions and see nothing but nature, nothing but bush.
The trail went with the creek and granite a while, even a small puddle here or there with water that could be filtered and drunk if ever needed. I make a mental note. I cross a road and go on. I hear a sound behind me and pause; soon a man with poles and small backpack comes running/shuffling past and I let him go. I look out west, and decide it’s time to turn around—that moment—the moment that never comes for the thru-hiker, unless their trip becomes what is called a ‘yo-yo’. I turn and go back the way I came, feeling only slightly sore. I wind along the creekline and back up past the granite, and then along the more level section. And there, among the jarrah and balga I’m suddenly picked up by the place—not just seeing it in connected patterns and images, not just feeling inspired by it, almost music-like, but suddenly filled by it. There’s nothing in particular around me except the jarrah and balga, but all in an instant I’m suddenly inside it, as it is inside me. The knowing of it. The knowing me. I confess I had been singing a little to it; and sing a little more now. The growing soreness in my legs is instantly filled with this place instead. And I am no longer outside it, and it is no longer outside me. What is it to care? It cannot be anything other than this. And so I walk with it, not slackening the pace I usually don’t bother with, and begin to see more, or more comes towards. Dermokalitj the scarlett robin; soon after: bamboon the western yellow robin; chunyart the ringed necked lorikeet later; spider webs minus the spiders. I seem to notice everything now, while before seems like I was merely skirting by, locked up in my own wanderings and wonderings. This experience is maybe not so unusual, for me or for you, I assume, but for me it’s a kind of first time I’d experienced it while hiking, while exhausted, while sore and tired. For me it’s usually one or the other. But this day I was given a taste of something; maybe intuitive hiking.
I reach the hut again and all but a French family of six have moved on. Some small round birds flit around the campsite—and I remember I’d seen some earlier. I sit and let the family get ahead a bit. Eventually some other hikers come. So I leave and soon after pass the family, equipped with all their gear for camping a single night at the hut, plus a newly-fashioned bow, as well as a balga walking stick. One of the daughters holds hands with the dad. It’s a nice scene. And, before long, I’m back at the car, noticing most things as I go driving back down those hills; down down to the town—to the city—below.
Adding to the Red
Adding to the red of this time of year, I find also a red-flowering paperbark by the western edge of the lake; as well as some pink gums at the northern edge, and to the east. The bootlebrush are already appearing; plus more distinctly-red flowers by the river. They are all opening red to the burning of the sun made more this way by the smoke of fires at the end of the day.
John Stubley 