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.
Category Archives: Nature Poetry
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.
The Whole Lake
There’s a turning inside out that can happen when you look upon a landscape, be it lake or river or land or sea or anything really. Suddenly each part is not separate from the rest, but somehow speaks of the whole of the landscape. The whole lake (or much larger place) in the plant, the tree, the earth, the bird, the flower, the bee. The whole landscape in me. And so in a way it looks back upon itself when I see, when it sees itself reflected in its parts. The parts recognising itself, recognising me.
Fisherboy
I go and meet a couple of friends by the river—one a boy of eight or nine; the other night he was interested in spotting birds and fish and crabs and rabbits nearby. Tonight, just as excited to see me, but in between he’d also met a boy of fourteen with rod and reel and lure and crabbing net. The fourteen-year old looked down into the depths and saw more than I did—saw blue mana crabs, saw mullet, was particularly tuned to flathead. When I couldn’t focus any longer, I sometimes called out a dolphin from time to time, the jumping of some whitebait—things that left the water and rose above the surface line—but the teenager saw all below this, his neck permanently bent. Where I saw heron, he saw blowfish, the flashing blue manna, the shooting tail of the flattest head. Where I lived above the surface, he lived below the waterline. This fisher boy lived in it—lived under the surface—and didn’t need to try…where others did.
The Shoreline of Death
Last night after another 40-something day I went down to the beach. And after swimming spotted something moving in the shadows on the sand not far from a couple of people nearby. It took a while to register its form and movements as it appeared near the waterline and moved back towards the dunes. It glided easily on all fours, silently, looking around, smelling the ground, untroubled, unbothered by humans. A fox. It trotted along the sand in the hot night, going almost as far as the dunes before stopping, and slowly slinking in the direction of another person, on their phone, not noticing. Then it stopped, lay down. The person picked up their stuff and moved off. I walked back towards the car parks. I caught up with the person and asked if he’d seen the fox. He looked back as it picked itself up from the shadows and bounced across in the direction in which he’d been sitting. “No,” he said, sounding suprised. “Never seen one here. Are they dangerous?”
This morning I was driving home, further along the coast, next to a break they call isolaters, and noticed a raptor hovering above the dunes. It was all white except the black undersitde of its wingtips, it’s beak and eye, and, when it dived a little or hovered higher, a black patch also on its shoulders. And so we name things—a black shouldered kite. It hovered effortlessly as the wind rolled round its wings, looking from time to time straight, then right, its head pointed into the southwesterly, the whole city cooling a little. It rose again, adjusted, went a little to the side, then dropped slowly, its talons extended, before pausing, rising again, then turning left, flying over where I was parked.
This shoreline, this salty shoreline, is one of the cunning, and of the head, be it canine or bird or a hundred other things. This shoreline, this heady salty shoreline is a shoreline of death.
The Day the Ducks Left
After two 45-degree days, early bunuru / second summer, waning gibbous moon in the morning western sky, water to a level making it difficult to swim, I notice there are but two ducks left. The blue and musk left when diving was no longer an option, the shelducks went with them, the pink ears flew a few days ago, and yesterday the teals and most of the Pacific black ducks left. Only two Pacific blacks remain, one in the eucalyptus shade on the eastern edge, one under the Moreton bay figs on the southern end.
With the others went most of the swans, bar two of this season’t cygnets—one in the centre, black-grey feathers in the morning sun, his fearless sibling eating figs, then returning across the water. Otherwise it’s black winged stilts, a white faced heron in the centre, moorhens in the mud, swamphens on the grass, crakes on the drier ground, with a few dotterels and a sandpiper further south, maybe a small raptor, rails in the rushes, and so on. But, mostly, today, the wetter of the water birds have moved on.
Water and Fire
I walk the parkland between the tuarts by western Perry Lake and note the brown stains on the often bark-less trees. They’re scarred not by markings but by bore water waterings—the grass between them green. I look around the lake and note the reveg plantings, but with weeds on the shoreline between larger trees—a weeping willow even. More water here now that water from a nearby lake has been diverted, no longer heading out to sea.
I look across the scene of brown barked trees and the green of grass between, created walking space with overhead canopy, thinking of movement as well as camping, noting a statue marking a large global scout gathering here, noting other unmarked gatherings in soil beneath.
And I realise, where Europeans use water, Aboriginal people use fire—not with fear, but sustainably, creatively.
Lakes
Some places tell you what they need. Some places tell you what they are. One lake nearby is a place of initiation. Another a place of gathering and camping. One a place of birthing.
So they say.
John Stubley 