Talleh Tales: Chapter Two

[Water lillies in Talleh Lagoon]

Warming to this new style of bushwalking, with its less-is-more vibe, I retired to my tent after the "ripples at dawn" event (see here). With our plans for the day decidedly low-key, and neither Jim nor Lisa up and about, a lie-in seemed appropriate. 

 

Some ambient bird song helped me doze until the strong sun warmed my little red tent a bit too much. Time for breakfast. We’d made a kitchen space between some boulders, and we relaxed in its comfortable warmth, sipping and chatting about our options for the day. We decided that a circumnavigation of our lagoon would be a good way to get to know the immediate neighbourhood. 

[Exploring the neighbourhood]

So from our little bay we walked south through light scrub to the next bay. Water lillies dotted the shallows and carpets of red seedheads of mountain rocket brightened the whole scene. Nearby we found an elevated open place beside a large eucalypt, with room for many tents. Feeling the generosity of this whole lagoon, we agreed this spot would have made a good alternative campsite to our own. 

 

[The next bay south]

We wandered on, enjoying being off-track with only a vague agenda. At the southern end of the lagoon we needed to cross the outlet stream. Here the scrub thickened markedly, and boulders joined the party, necessitating a little scrambling, some bush-bashing, and a small leap across the stream. Once on the other side we could turn north and walk up the eastern shore of the lagoon. 

[Lisa and Jim cross the creek]

Of course it wasn’t that simple, but after some creative meandering, we found ourselves more or less opposite our campsite. From our “home” campsite we’d looked across to a grove of pencil pines near a beach, and had wondered whether it might hide a pleasant, pencil-pine-shaded, lakeshore campsite? Now that we’d reached it, we saw that the answer was NO. The only campable spot was the beach itself. This was well away from the pines, and was both sloping and very open. Still, it was a very pleasant spot for a break on this calm, warm day. 

[An alternative campsite?]

We reclined on the beach, watching swans on the lake, which were no doubt watching us back. We’d taken lunch with us, but as it wasn’t even midday yet, we made do with a snack and a drink. We’d save lunch for when we’d got “home” and could add a hot drink to it. 

 

The afternoon continued warm and sunny, and two of us talked ourselves into a post-lunch swim. The lake was quite shallow, and not too cold, but there was no persuading Jim to come in. If the urge to swim ever comes over him, his response is to have a good lie down, or else to book a flight to Queensland. After the swim we all toyed with the idea of heading to our tents for a nap. But by now the sun had grown fierce, and the tents were unbearably hot. So I decided to continue my day the way it had begun, with a quiet sit by the lake shore. 

 

I shuffled my Helinox chair into a small patch of shade and sat still for a very long time, just looking out over the calm waters. Swans drifted in and out of view, rising trout occasionally rippled the water, and tiny wavelets made the softest of splashes beneath me. I’m not always good at stopping and being meditative, but this was an opportunity too good to miss. And wasn’t one of our reasons for going “slow-packing” the chance to feed our souls?

 

As I pondered my morning experience, and the sense of God hovering quietly over the waters of creation, I thought back to the old testament prophet, Elijah. This gifted man had suddenly met life-threatening opposition, which had plunged him into a period of dreadful anxiety and depression. He’d hidden on a mountainside hoping to be rescued by some words of reassurance from God. Instead Elijah experienced a series of intense natural events. First a mighty whirlwind, then an earthquake, and then a fierce fire passed by. But, we’re told in I Kings 19, the Lord was not in any of those. It was only after all of those natural dramas had subsided that Elijah heard a “still, small voice” (as I learned it in Sunday school). Other translators have it as “a soft whisper”, or “the voice of fragile silence”. However we translate it, it was in this surprising, quiet, and extraordinarily personal manner that God chose to speak to Elijah.

 

Someone closer to our own time and place, the bush bishop E.H. Burgmann, may have had a related experience. In the 1940s, writing about his time in the Australian bush, Burgmann says:

 

The bush . . .  will not speak to a man in a hurry. Its message is worth waiting for. Only the soul that is stilled in its presence can hear the music of its song.

[Looking across Talleh Lagoon]

Here, now, by this softly whispering lake, I felt I had come to such a still point. It was no mountaintop experience; there had been no spectacle or miracle. But I had experienced both a quiet awe and a deep joy. And as American author, poet and biologist Drew Lanham recently put it: 

 

Awe is a kind of prayer. Joy is my praise.

Take Off Your Shoes!

God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses! . . . Don’t come any closer! Take off your sandals, because you are standing on holy ground.” – Exodus 3:4-5 (abridged)

Sunrise and moonset over Kunanyi/Mt Wellington 

A friend used to frequent a place called Bastard Hill. When he asked why it was called that, a grizzled local replied “because it’s a bastard of a place”. It’s the kind of sensibility that has lead to place names like Dismal Swamp, Useless Loop, Mount Buggery, Bust-Me-Gall Hill and Stinky Bay.

When it comes to place names, Australians don’t get lyrical. We tend to call a spade a bloody shovel. We’re generally not good at poetics or reverence, tending to shy away from overt exhibitions of emotional connection. The exceptions that prove the rule are places like Uluru and, arguably, the MCG. The former is as close to a universally accepted version of holy ground as Australians are likely to get. The Melbourne Cricket Ground’s “sacredness” is only likely to be recogised by that vociferous minority of Australians comprising most Melburnians and the sports mad.

Off-shore you might add places like Gallipoli and Kokoda, but certainly the list of “sacred sites” is a small one for most non-Aboriginal Australians. I wonder if that reluctance to overtly own our connection to place is a short-coming worth working on. I think back to former Tasmanian Premier Robin Gray’s description of the Franklin River as a “brown leech-ridden ditch”. Surely that bluntness merely disguised a wish to exploit or harm that wilderness river.

In thinking about this in local terms, I realised with a slight shock that I have no name for “our” neighbourhood bush. I walk in it most days, whether for a 10 minutes dog walk; as a “long cut” on my way to work; or simply to get out and breathe, ponder, talk, exercise, pray, listen, explore or photograph. To us its either “the back track” or simply “the bush”. But should it have a proper name?

What might this bird orchid be singing? 

Freeing my inner Eeyore for a moment, I’d be inclined to suggest that there isn’t anything particularly spectacular about it. It’s a mixed forest of peppermint and stringybark eucalypt on steepish, flinty mudstone broken here and there by outcrops of sandstone. Although its understorey of shrubs and ground-covers sometimes approaches prettiness, it has been much put-upon over the years, variously fire-ravaged, over-tracked, eroded and beset by weeds. All in all most would feel it more holey than holy.

But what constitutes “holy”? According to the Talmud, “every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, 'Grow, grow.'” How mind-boggling is the thought of every living thing attended by a celestial maintenance team? Only marginally more boggling than the sight of the night sky above the bush; or the moon setting over the cloud-blanketed summit of the mountain; or a bird orchid rising in mute worship from this spring’s leaf litter; or a gang of black cockatoos flouncing and squawking their way through the forest.

The night sky over our bush 

Angels aside, the bush holds enough small wonders to still my soul every time I’m open to that. If holy ground is where you can feel insignificant and yet paradoxically connected to that which IS significant, then yes, this bush is holy ground.

Which makes it a place God can “call” to me from. I think it’s time to take off my shoes.


[I would like to acknowledge Barbara Brown Taylor's book "An Altar in the World" for seed ideas as well as the Talmud quote.] 

To What Shall We Liken Lichen?

[a playful poem for the Christmas season]

When creation seemed at a perfect end,

and any self-respecting creator

would have packed up and gone home satisfied,

Our God winked … and introduced algae to moss,

added moisture and cold,

turned the sun away for a season.

And smiled to see this old man’s beard,

this grey green confounder of taxonomists,

festooning the forest,

branched in silent celebration,

like so much self-renewing tinsel.

Federation Peak - Part 12

[part 12 of a 15 part series decribing an ascent of Tasmania's Federation Peak]

12) Getting Down

[Federation Peak photo courtesy of Tim Chappell]

Federation Peak to Bechervaise Plateau, Thursday February 7th, 1991

Some cheery soul has told us that 7 out of 10 mountain climbing deaths happen on the descent. Clearly going down is more dangerous than going up, but is it more difficult? Early in the walk we’d had a dispassionate discussion about just this. We had various theories. Some of us had argued that climbers must relax too much after summiting; others that they just become exhausted after the exertions of the climb. I wondered whether they simply couldn’t see as easily where they were going during the descent. I theorised that lowering yourself tentatively is a lot more fraught than reaching up tentatively. The former has a serious point-of-no-return that the latter lacks.

As I reach the lip of the summit block such thoughts are my unwelcome companions. But looking over the edge and down to Lake Geeves, some 600m below, makes it anything but theoretical. Suddenly the third person “they” becomes first person “we”. In fact the climbing arrangements make it first person singular for me, as I’m voted the last one off the mountain: the rope-holder and rope-bearer. That North Head abseiling boast has come back to haunt me!

The problem with being last off is that you have to sit and watch everyone else get nervous at every single obstacle. Much of the time we’re not using the rope, as there’s too much traversing to make it useful. So I have little to do but wait and watch. In the fertile ground of inaction, my own nerves grow rapidly. Each problem is magnified as I see others struggle with it. The butterflies in my stomach reach eagle proportions. The nearest I can get to action is to advise from on high. I revert to this now as Bill, who’s leading, meets one of the serious bits of the descent. We’ve all turned face towards the rock, so Bill’s finding it difficult to locate the correct foot placement. As he’s below me at a slant, I have a reasonable view of where he should be going. I call down instructions, conscious of keeping a steady voice, of not frightening the horses. But the wind is roaring, and a soft voice is useless, so I doubt that my tone is as reassuring as I intend. Bill, then Margaret and the Doc, negotiate the difficult drop slowly, faultingly. But in the end there’s not too much panic. They then turn and guide Natalie and Peter down, and it’s their turn to try and sound confident. Jim and I are pretty much out of earshot by now, and cooling off while we wait. Or perhaps we’re shivering from nerves.

Eventually we too get to descend. If it’s a climbing test, we probably rate a terminating pass. And even then not without praying a prayer that’s only marginally more articulate than “God save us!” I think I specify my need for strength and wisdom, a self-centred and preservationist prayer perhaps, but nonetheless a crie-de-coeur. My old climbing instructor had hammered into me that “knees are for praying, not for rock climbing”. Never the purist, I am using my knees at almost every opportunity on this scraping and scrambling descent. But if I disregard his rule, I at least remember to pray. And not only on the several hairy sections of the descent, but also during some of the long waits in beautiful and terrifying places. If God is both Maker and Protector, it’s as well to remind him you appreciate both!