The Earthrise Diary October 2010

© text Don Diespecker 2010

The Earthrise Diary (Oct 2010)

Don Diespecker

October 5 2010. Now it’s between 14:45 and 15:00 hours and although I don’t enjoy saying this, even to myself, the rain has started again; well, showers, perhaps: showers seem not quite so dangerous. At this time yesterday I could still see daylight under the adjacent bridge between the undersides of the stringers (the main horizontal beams between the piers) and the surface of the torrent (such stringers are actually {most of} whole trees trimmed to fit by Council workers using adzes and large-blade axes when the bridge was largely destroyed and rebuilt in 3 weeks by Bellingen Shire Council). Not so now. The water level has indeed fallen a little since 09:00 this morning and the sun even came out briefly before midday, but despite my wonder and amazement staring at the sky and seeing patches of blue, there’s a lot more water up there, a lot more.

I was going to tough it out and leave the car here but it was difficult to relax, yesterday arvo; it was raining or showering, but lightly. Perhaps, I thought, I could get away with it: get away with leaving the car in its carport hoping the rain wouldn’t become heavy. Finally, I was concerned enough to get out of bed, get dressed again, don the bright yellow wet gear, grab my torch, jump into my wellies and drive up to the old house at Dreamtime (I’d checked earlier with Leif). It was dark and I had a wet walk down to the Dangerous Lower Levels where my house is, trying to save on the torch batteries while walking, by turning the torch off and on but not being so concerned with thrift that I would carelessly walk into a Gigantic Snake (I abhor most snakes although I occasionally say hello! and then only when I feel secure enough after having startled the snake with my Annoying Human Vibrations). Snakes move so fast that by their awesome speed they have the power to reduce us to jaw-dropping awesomeness (or perhaps you, dear reader, remain Unperturbed at All Times when snakes are On Deck)? Anyway, there were no visible snakes and I arrived home in one piece, yet could not sleep except when I dozed off annoyingly and precisely when I had not wished to.

It rained through the night and I was not at all surprised to see that the river was well up—almost as though there had been flood rain—and wonderfully noisy. When I eventually tottered out of bed (having listened to lots of hourly ABC news and not wanting to miss anything after a day of being Updated by friends and neighbours as to where the best websites were—the ones with whirling radar pictures that also included storm fronts and rainfall and synoptic data—so that I knew, really knew that there was a very good chance of there being a flood. There was a time when I didn’t mind floods at all but that was when Jannelle and I and the dogs used to sit and watch floods as though they were entertainments (only because we had never experienced a really BIG one). Thinking about that now, in retrospect, the dogs always seemed very impressed by rising floods and had little or no compunction about joining J and me when we adventurously (maybe even recklessly, sometimes) would swim across or through descending floods (by which time the water would be lime green and a frothy white as distinct from dark brown and threatening). We occasionally had to encourage the dogs to pause where we paused, centre-stream where the water seemed still or ‘dead’ long enough for us to rest briefly, take renewed breath and then plunge on to the far shore. Dogs learn fast; ours did, anyway, and J and I seemed not far behind in learning River Stuff except on the occasion when we unwisely, (code for foolishly), decided to ride a descending flood while together in the canoe. The dogs were smart enough to Keep Out of the Canoe Altogether and ran barking along the bank instead. I have a memory of them bounding above and below the line of lomandra along the right bank, barking, barking and probably advising us as mere Human Fools to Have a Care, but we swept on, oblivious in the canoe and so sank with it, miraculously saving it and ourselves at approximately the mouth of the gushing downstream creek. We got ashore, wet and cold (it was a winter flood) and the dogs sat happily panting as if to say, You see, Foolish Fools, the canoe doesn’t work at all well when you attempt to move, even slightly, across strong flows. How right they were.

I was describing this flood, not the old one in the ‘80s (and the downstream creek is again gushing white water after having run a banker a couple of times). During the night and while I was dozing and vaguely aware of seeing only bits and pieces of Q and A on ABC1 I heard a tree coming down, which, partly masked by the roar of the flood sounded like a relatively thin green SWISH (it was the twin member of a very old and very big cheese tree growing in the corner where the boundary line runs up the hillside). Today, when I examined the Great Limb, I noted all of the epiphytes, the little plants that attach themselves to living trees, parasitically (they thriftily manage to live on air, mostly). This mass of trunk and great foliage is sprawled across the boundary line in such a way that I think it could possibly be of benefit because in high floods the mainstream pounds into the hillside (and where floods have made a tight corner in the right bank), then rebounds whirling and becomes a very BIG eddy or, if you prefer, whirlpool of logs and tonnes of debris, then pushes ashore into and all over my much battered riverside “lawn” where it sits, immovable, until either the next bigger flood arrives or a kind neighbour arrives with a tractor to cheerfully push the debris back to where it came from (and send the mass bobbing downstream to invade elsewhere). But now I’m not so sure. There is so much foliage that it would certainly partly trap incoming rafts of debris, but then there may be the risk of the tree also coming ashore accompanied by Much Else and it would take months to reduce and clear it all with only an axe.

I’ll also mention the colours of the river flooding. The rising flood soon becomes, first, a rich brown, and as the flood progresses and also when it later begins falling, the brown changes impressively from chocolate to slightly muddy to a very milky coffee colour and days later with the torrent much lowered will become a pale and beautiful clean green (eau-de-Nil, perhaps) colour. And have I mentioned the river ‘noise’? The noise is tremendous and quite raw, especially where the rolling water gets chopped up in the rapids as the almost-flooding river climbs higher. When, for example, I began to appreciate that I had, after all, managed a couple of hours of Fitful Sleep, I became aware of the Sounds of the Flood. I have to say, that the sound of the flood is exquisitely beautiful. One should probably be Scared Stiff at the Sounding Flood, yet, should you be relatively safe and more or less dry inside a house (as I was) you would no doubt enjoy that sound as one of Nature’s best, a Powerful Singing of Dynamic Water, water in motion: there is nothing quite like it. Flood Roar is quite something; it dominates as an overwhelming storm of sound. Imagine the energy generated by one person diving into or two hands splashing and moving the water in a relatively still river and then marvel at the power of a length of the torrent surging and noising. Think of a high storm wind or the sound of jet engines.

Also, the riverside casuarinas that lean so precariously over the water have, when you peer closely through the (near-flood) river mist, displays (what else can I call them?) of orchids… There, the secret is out. Don’t tell. Please. These are very tiny orchids; they are not those great big things that orchid growers claim to have grown (like proud parents), but the very small and even fragile-looking little air plants that cling to the riverside trees. There are at least three species that flower at this time of the year: the delicate-looking white spider orchids that stand upright on branches in very early spring, the slightly bigger yellowish plants that produce small yellow flowers on tough stalks, and the several-cluster white (almost fluffy-looking) miniature ‘trees’ of orchids that seem delicate and which for some reason hang down from the undersides of branches.

When Nick was here we raised and re-set some of the top-most timbers (cut by a bush sawmill and sold as ‘sleepers’) in the old retaining wall behind the house (in 1984/5 J and I explored possibilities of placing the back of the house some 2-m higher than it now is and so I had a small bulldozer get up on the slope and cut a house-long level foundation ‘platform’ for us to use if we wished. We decided against that design and twice built a long timber retaining wall (our first attempt wasn’t the best) against the steep slope between the house and a false summit that includes very big trees and a weathered stone cliff decorated by an old fig tree that attracts fruit bats in summer). The extra height would have given us greater protection against high floods (because we’d have used longer poles to raise the front of the house accordingly). Subsequent explorations of the slope indicated large amounts of loose scree beneath the lantana and although we knew the slope was then unstable we ought to have avoided making that platform). The retaining wall has served well to protect the back of the house, but after 25 years the timbers have deteriorated and the loading on the wall from the saturated scree has now breached the wall (we used lengths of 200-250-mm dia. hardwood poles, dug in, and then stacked the ‘sleepers’ behind the line of poles allowing appropriate gaps between each horizontal timber to function as weep-holes. The wall has worked well—until now.

October 6 2010. Overnight pressure on the wall has almost pushed one pole down and through about 45% and although the wall is more or less still functional it’s clear that the mass of soil, stone and dense lantana on the slope will eventually cause the retaining wall to fail along the greater length.

The timbers that Nick and I re-set, in the way they have now collapsed, suggests that when the slide occurs, there is a moderate probability that the direction of the slip may be deflected and so carry much of the slide at an angle that will take it down toward the Theatre Garden and the river. I don’t deceive myself about the danger of the house being wrecked: there is a very high probability that the house will be severely damaged if not destroyed if the slide comes down directly and at right angles to the wall. I’m hoping that I won’t be entirely present in the house if that occurs.

Chilling? Yes.

The river and its potential flooding got as far as popping through the gaps of the concrete deck (Plains Crossing Bridge) then the river must have peaked because the level began falling (not much, but enough). By Wednesday morning (Oct 6) and after an almost no-rain night, the river level was still falling and I was able to change my chelation appointment to suit this window of opportunity and drove to Bellingen (both Richardson’s Bridge and Hobart’s Bridge had had a near flood over their decks), completed chelation and then went on to Coffs Harbour and Park Beach Plaza and completed the most urgent chores and then returned home (brilliantly sunny and humid in Coffs; intermittent showers on the way home, and the river level continuing to fall). Tired, I started to write this, then went early to bed, dozed and otherwise slept with one eye open…

October 7 2010. Today there was the sound of the descending near-flood, prior to a misty sunrise. The Pre-Sunrise Morning Inspection revealed a beautiful high river, white-capped through the rapids, birds flying along the stream, the river pale green, the torrent rolling and splashing loudly. Storms have been predicted—and obligatory showers, of course, but not yet. I’m now moodily sipping a medicinal glass of Shiraz because rain of any quantity will further load the saturated hillside, further reducing my chances of living long enough to win the Nobel Prize for Literature—but that’s life. Suddenly I’m reminded of something I managed to see on TV last night and actually remember: David Stratton and Margaret Pomeranz discussing Francoise Sagan and the film of the book, Bonjour Tristesse. As did the critics, I remembered the book well, but was startled to see the actor portraying the writer not as the young woman (teenager) she was when she wrote her famous story, but as a middle-aged woman! What that reminded me of was a story I wrote recently, one, suggested or even perhaps adapted from, I think (one becomes hazy when self-medicating), the ill-fated and unpublished “Earthrise”, this story called, “One morning in May” (ah, Meliza Korjus, I shall take to my grave that 1938 I think it was, image of MK (The Berlin Nightingale), that exciting singer singing ‘One day when we were young’ in the film The Great Waltz. I saw it, I think, in about 1939 when I was living with my family in Pilgrims Rest (the family had returned to South Africa in 1937, my Cabin Boy Year). Yes, 1938. Anyway, forgive me, I was reminded of All That because in my long story in which Col Harvey Rigaud—I loved writing that story—the character of an ADF guy who deployed (if that’s the word) a remarkable young woman, the character, Lt Col Sarah Hart, for Special Ops during that unfortunate time in the future when Australia was invaded by “Militias” from neighbouring countries…and Harvey Rigaud was, alas, sitting in his Brussels office (sorry, that’s a long story) attempting to learn French by reading Bonjour Tristesse in French. Francoise Sagan, born in Lot, was only 18 in 1954 when she published her novel. As I recall, I was only 25 then.

When I went down to the belvedere at 13:00 there were five blue and white irises open and there were many of the five-petal pink clovers flowering too and not forgetting the myriad native violets—all flowering in or possibly on the lawn. Consider how surprising it is to see violets chopped off by mowing in one week, then up and blooming again, the next with a near-flood in between. I’m fortunate to have such a lawn, a self-organizing lawn: one that is a gift of the floods (not this near-flood, though). Further, the tradescantia is flowering (white, like tiny orchids), there are (also white) small jasmine flowers, a few surviving impatiens (balsam, when I was younger) and although I saw no dahlia tubers sprouting during the Morning Inspection I counted four popping up under the chicken wire in the Dog’s Garden at 13:00 hours. They were not, of course, flowering. And, how could I almost forget: the European privet has begun flowering, too. Jannelle used to suffer awful hay fever in October because of the European privet flowering. Once, I remember, I saw a carpet snake (python) hanging out, literally, on a flowering Euro privet. My point is that the mingled scent of these little flowers is heady and, well, strange. While being chelated yesterday I surreptitiously leaned forward to sniff at a vase of flowers: the sweet pea had very little fragrance (I well remember how overpowering, almost, sweet pea seemed when I was a child; similarly so with the dark red Joyce carnation—ah, those lost scents). Missing, here and now, is the sweet and sour smell of a rising flood cleaning decomposing debris from the banks; instead, the strangely mingled scents of privet and jasmine.

Two more remembered events and then I’ll stop. The first was seeing, on Monday, Oct 4, I think, a line of 13 big brown cormorants, bedraggled somewhat, standing in the rain on the opposite riverbank, just upstream of the bridge. They looked unhappy, annoyed and a little tense (not unlike myself these past few days). As I stepped on to the bridge deck the cormorants decided to leave and took off upstream in the mist and rain, climbing at first, as they generally do, before dropping lower quite quickly so as to fly along the line of the river but scarcely a metre or so above the water. I guess they go hungry when the river becomes a near flood.

The other sight was also a surprise: yesterday (Thursday, Oct 7) afternoon there was part of a rainbow to be seen about 50 or 60-m downstream. It spanned both sides of the river. I wondered if anyone else saw it, or had I been the only human to be privileged? Oct 8 2010.

October 26 2010. Some sun this morning and some bigger patches of blue. There have been intermittent showers (and rain periods) for days; consequently the river has come up the best part of 1-m—which is considerable.

By chance I recently saw James May’s interesting TV program on, of all things, his plasticine garden exhibit (Royal Horticultural Society: Chelsea Flower Show). The exhibit was certainly unusual and indicated just how hard one has sometimes to think when planning such unique tasks: details, details, and the exhibit was a great success if only because the Public liked it so much.

I’ve been editing—never my favourite occupation except when the writing is old enough to be interesting (‘did I write that?’) or when part of the subject or topic being re-thinged is also the subject of a television program (this one about Greece). I strained to see every detail because this particular program was brilliantly filmed from a helicopter. I’ve been re-editing a story about Rhodes and Mykonos and was so intrigued that I realised I was moving and peering at odd angles (‘I well remember that street!’ ‘That was where the café was, the one where they danced!’). I was seeing, for the first time, familiar places filmed from above and almost simultaneously visualizing some of those long ago times—a compelling and nostalgic experience. When I thought afterwards of my enthusiasm I knew that it had a lot to do with the unusual way of presenting the material: I need a helicopter if I’m ever going to see Earthrise properly.

–Then I sat down and had a good look at the canopy over the riverside lawns here.

The canopy, when looked at, seems omnipresent and unless I make a point of straining to see up and into it, I’ll miss most of the action. I’ve been thinking about this a great deal: most of what I look for and look at is habitually low-level, on or near the ground, or at or close to eye-level; I seldom walk about here while looking up. It simply is not safe to walk looking up: there are snakes, e.g., that never welcome being disturbed; multiple objects to trip over, nettles itching to sting me, branches and shrubs supporting thirsty leeches ready to leap on me (yesterday I went outside to plant some seedlings, the rain having miraculously stopped, yet I was unable to avoid a leech in the ear (this is much less fun than you might think). When I stopped and looked up I saw high above me a complex network of branches alive and dead, great amounts of greenery, the canopy a moving, gleaming show of lights and colours, birds moving and feeding, orchids and other epiphytes. Significantly, I saw the extent to which some trees like several of the old and high white cedars have spread their enormous limbs such that together, they cover or overlook very large areas. So what, do I hear you murmur? So this: imagine that you’re pushing a noisy motor mower and wearing earmuffs. See? You would be, as I often am, greatly at risk of being driven into the earth by a falling limb or an entire tree that noisily breaks (though we hear it not), hurtles destructively down by smashing everything that impedes it and arrives with all the carelessness of gravity to destroy gardeners. If I’m sitting quietly, reading or writing in the garden I have a small chance (on hearing a limb or whole tree breaking overhead) of Making A Dash For It, but it’s scarcely half a chance: you would probably bet on gravity bringing branch and victim to a dramatic and deadly finish on the lawn or ground rather than the gardener (however young, sprightly or otherwise inspired) struggling out of the chair, books and papers and medicinal glass of wine flying in ultra slow motion as if glimpsed magically in the mind, viz, seeing oneself fleeing during the action immediately before being crushed like a cockroach, terminally). It’s almost enough to make a chap give up mowing. Gardeners must necessarily live and move &c &c down on the ground contained within The Understorey. (Unless, of course, we have the means to establish Aerial Gardens along the big boughs. One possibility might be to construct walkways enabling access to these Elevated Places: stoutly made and supported, they would rise gracefully in easily walked spirals and inclines and be so well camouflaged that hardly anyone would notice them unless they looked UP). As I look out the window I realise I’m seeing a forest of trees here and that despite their great heights, most of those trees—the major portions and parts of them—are Up There Out of Sight, Almost. I feel so grounded down here (where so little light penetrates) that I must use my imagination to see those timber inclines, neatly hand-railed, built by Aerial Specialists, paths above ground that will allow me (and my friends) to stroll for hours INSIDE the canopies so wonderfully joined that they’re as profound as the ceilings and insides of domes of cathedrals. Only those ants that enjoy living high up in the stumps of eucalypt branches can enjoy what the birds enjoy: elevated views. Perhaps I could become a Photography Instructor: students to bring their own ladders and then practice picture-taking from on high.

Speaking of which: on my occasional walks recently, I’ve been (very carefully) walking and also looking up and into the roadside trees, most of which grow on that side of the road adjacent to the high ground. Down by Richardson’s Bridge there are very high riverside casuarinas (river oaks perhaps) that are so well dressed with stag and elk horn ferns, birds-nest ferns and sundry other ‘parasitic’ air plants that they look as decorative as some of the supporting pillars and other structures in Gaudi’s great cathedral in Barcelona. And along the way there is a splendid old tree (a species I’m not familiar with) that not only contains a BIG ecosystem of its own (all kinds of plants) but it allows crossover vines from the other side of the road to use it and that made me look out for crossovers along the road (there are a few). And that made me wonder why certain plants and trees grow mostly on one side of the road and not much on the opposite side. Vegetation on the high ground side is as thick as jungle (too crowded for a dog to bark in) and so much of it so densely packed that a number of once big and high trees are now as dead as dinosaurs having been strangled by vines and creepers; they appear as inelegant skeletal remains that poke their decaying trunks above the profuse growth below; nothing grows on them and they’re as bare as driftwood on a beach.

Which reminds me that the jacarandas have begun flowering (they started much earlier this month in Bellingen’s streets and along the trunk road and now trees in flower can be seen along Darkwood Road: the spring blooming hasn’t quite reached the Earthrise jacarandas, but it’s almost here.

The strong green stalks of Christmas orchids are now well up; some of the grasses, having grown themselves rapturously during all these wet days (and probably all of the nights, too) are now seeding. These oddities are green, with wheat-like seeds straw-coloured. Indeed, everything that can grow is doing so. The new dahlia tubers are leaping out of the wet earth; most are now safe (I hope) within the Dog’s Garden which now is dramatically surrounded by chicken wire (enough wire to cause the toughest of infantrymen to think twice before going over it and to my pleasure, discouraging all manner of Creatures from entering (like bandicoots). There are new roses, transplanted impatiens that the feral deer haven’t yet found, some nursery seedlings like petunia and marigold and red salvia to make some colour there).

Which reminds me: the lawns are looking suspiciously fecund, not only from the rains and showers, but I suspect, from the high floods in the last couple of years, for there is a number of relatively new-looking grasses not previously seen here. One of these mystery growths appears among the usual grasses as emerald green and looking oddly like young kikuyu prior to its pushing out long stalks that have as many as 12 flower-like ‘petals’ at the ends of which are small buds or blossoms (if cut by the mower, and I haven’t been able to mow for weeks, they instantly respond by regenerating the cut stems. Can they be alien growths, I wonder, from Out There?

The sub tropical chickweed of winter has ’disappeared’ and been ‘replaced’ by native violets (you’d never suppose there had ever been chickweed in the lawn, at all), so much so that if you’re a looker-downer like me (when respectfully walking on grasses) that you have to be so aware of each flower as to step carefully over or around hundreds of them. Big Lawn looks so floral now (the pink flowers of clovers are blooming, too) that I feel guilty at the prospect of mowing should the days become hot and dry enough. And there are also new-looking ferns appearing in those areas of Big Lawn where in winter there are impressive great forests of mosses. Perhaps I could advertise Lawn Tours and become the principal Guide?

Along Darkwood Road I’ve seen King Parrots feeding on the roadside dock; the dock is luxuriant now, some of the plants about 2-m high, bent over, heavy with many leaves and the tiny seeds. October has also been busy with butterflies bobbing through the gardens; most of them white, and often flying in two’s or three’s. Also, along Darkwood Road and the Trunk Road, the pecan orchards, now brightly leafed, and even more beautiful when seen through Polaroids.

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare?

WH Davies (1871-1940).

THE EARTHRISE DIARY 8/10 (August, 2010)

THE EARTHRISE DIARY 8/10 (August, 2010)

Don Diespecker

© text Don Diespecker 2010

While Earthrise and the rest of the Valley containing this place have been beautifully unpacking the early spring, I’ve been experiencing a topsy-turvy time: the end of a busy winter writing narratives (fiction and nonfiction) and some verses coinciding with a sudden illness in the family, followed by some home-front dramas and several medical and dental alerts, but I’ll excuse myself from impelling you too far into dilemmas and apprehensions. With the completion of stories, essays and poems I’ve also been able to partly return to some favourite jobs that are also exercises, as well as Ordinary Work: gardening of the casual and meditative kind (code for spasmodic weeding, pruning and clearing, whispered encouragements to new plants), colleting or cutting firewood, continuing the build of the riverside lawn’s protective stone wall, visualizing a back-up pipeline from riverbank to the big storage tank next to the carport. And I’ve had a return drive to Newcastle where everybody who has a car now seems to be driving f-a-s-t in traffic—as though Peak Oil is about to arrive in the Hunter Valley. It was a time (down and up the Highway) of White Knuckle driving… There was a time when all long distance drives were adventures, fun, but I’m now an Old Guy in an Old Car and I have the sneaking suspicion that I’m the only driver driving within the speed limit. And what about these lethal Overtaking Lanes? And since when did the drivers of loaded logging trucks start behaving like Formula One drivers? Wince. Shudder.

Speaking of logs. Cutting firewood is a good exercise and a good learning exercise: breaking a length of old wood (up to about 100-mm dia.) with either an axe or a blockbuster requires the cutter to cut in the right place with just enough force to break the wood without causing it to fly up in one’s face—hit it too forcefully in the right place and the cutter will need medical attention. Splitting sawn bloodwood rounds requires a blockbuster because of the hardness of the wood. The splitter has to be able to see the concentric rings of growth on the flat surface of the round and aim to split pieces on or along a ring to try to break off fuel-sized chunks. Cutting across the rings requires much more force and is counterproductive. Everybody in the area knows this so I’m really addressing Dear Readers who have not yet had the experience of splitting bloodwood rounds. Further, one 250-mm high round, after sawing, that may be 80- or 100-years old is too heavy to be moved, other than by rolling it a short distance, as you would roll a wheel. Please read this last sentence before surrendering to boredom: bloodwood is a hardwood and will attack your hands fiendishly with Hideous Splinters: handling it requires caution and patience otherwise you’ll need the point of a sharp knife and fine tweezers to remove the splinters: gloves may help to ease the pain. Once cut the pieces are best moved toward your slow combustion heater by wheelbarrow (the rounds that I’ve referred to are so big and heavy that splitting one half a round will more than fill a wheelbarrow… We’re dealing with Big Stuff, here, guys. And a word of caution: heavy axe or blockbuster swinging may put your back out and/or your wrists, and/or sundry collections and arrays of muscles.

–Which reminds me: I dislike wearing gloves because my hands seem clumsy in them. I have a fine pair of fleece-lined leather gloves somewhere but never wear them (I used to wear them when I lived in London, though, because the winters there used to be damp, chilly, unpleasant). And I’m reminded now of some black leather gauntlets that I wore in childhood: I used to walk to school in all weathers in Victoria, B.C. My cowboy gloves had a red star sewn on each of them and leather fringes and I used also to wear, in winter, a leather helmet with goggles—just like those flying helmets worn by the intrepid fliers Sir Charles Kingsford Smith (1897-1935) who made the first trans-Pacific flight in 1928 from the US to Australia; Charles Lindbergh (1902-1974) who made the first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic (New York-Paris) in 1927; Amelia Earhart (1898-1937, born in the same year as my mother, Grace: in 1932 she was the first woman to fly the Atlantic alone and who disappeared over the Pacific in the year when I was an 8-years old cabin boy on the SS Bencleugh); and Amy Johnson (1904-1941) who flew from the UK to Australia in 1930 in 19.5 days and who disappeared over the English Channel in WW 2 while serving with the Air Transport Auxiliary)…and. Ah, childhood, it was all so very long ago!

Slow combustion heaters, by the way, vary in their efficiency and they all like to be made hot before the enthusiastic owner starts shoving great splintery chunks of bloodwood (the very best firewood locally) into the firebox. The implication is that a store of dry deadwood twigs and branches is required to start the ‘young’ fire. By bedtime my less than wonderful heater will have consumed several pieces of heavy bloodwood: their remains glow and produce electric blue flames that twist and dance at midnight…which is one of the factors that make bloodwood so special. Now you know!

The new wall, set back from the lawn edge in a grand sweep, is only a half-metre or so wide and may barely reach as high as the adjacent belvedere’s companion wall and encloses giant maidenhair (some of them more than a metre high, together with bracken and bleeding heart seedlings). This new wall also contains some big stones (if you value your back, do not try to lift very big stones, ever! Rather, turn your wheelbarrow on its side next to the biggie, kneel down and push or roll the stone into the side of the barrow and, while still on your knees, push and lift the barrow on to its standing points. Wearing kneepads helps.

The stones come from old sources in the gardens: the central circular wall in front of the house is being demolished (it served no useful purpose other than to ‘store’ stones and enclose weeds), big-ish stones from the areas where back-flow floods enter the property (adjacent to the river’s Earthrise corner where very large eddies or whirlpools develop in rising floods), and a protective stone surround opposite the deer park gate (some fast-rising floods enter the property from the deer park and wash gravel fines across the lawn from this stone surround that also has doubled as a seat, thus is also being demolished). (The worst of big fast-rising floods are the ones that enter here via the upstream paddocks of the deer park more or less simultaneously with back-flow floods in the aforementioned river corner that smash into the old casuarinas and the lomandra on the hillside a few metres downstream and then swirl back into Earthrise). The wall will be, I’m afraid, only marginally effective because nothing stops a very big flood from invading and dumping tonnes of logs in this area (largely from disposal stacks left in flood zones by upstream property owners for easy disposal by floodwaters).

The new wall is a meditative pleasure, rather than work (the work part of the build consists in collecting barrow loads of stones and pebbles). Most of what comprises these gravity walls is the invisible inside of the walls: stones and pebbles fill that add to the density of the structure; the viewer sees only the ‘showy’ outsides of such walls). Building gravity walls is relaxing because whatever stone I pick up is bound to fit somewhere: I need only walk along seeking a likely spot and when found, place a stone and support it with stone-fill then find another stone to fit in another part of the wall and so on. Intending wall builders may want to know that no fine, medium or coarse sand should be used in such walls. Sand inside walls invariably causes walls to fail or collapse when saturated in heavy floods or heavy rains.

Lest the reader become dismayed by these stoic anecdotes, there are also Good Moments when the Old Incumbent enjoys his lunchtime reading in the sunshine or shade on the belvedere, for the river is always there always moving, forever stimulating ideas, vague thoughts or new images of old memories.

Lomandra mentioned above is a native plant that has long leaves (like sisal) and tenacious roots that hold the riverbank together. Yesterday, while I sat in the bright sunlight reading I realised that the lomandra that so powerfully resist the most destructive of big floods are so ‘designed’ that I am unable to see the tapered tips of their long green spiky leaves in strong light: the mind is obliged to imagine the tips of those sunlit leaves and the entire plant is then easily distinguished because the lower part of the lomandra is an unmistakable dark green colour. Lomandra look almost fragile at a distance, but 4- or 5-m-high roiling flood waves seldom wrench one from the ground—which is why I’ve moved and split a couple of these strong plants into small new clones and set them along the river lawn’s riverside edge.

The young red cedar next to me on the belvedere is showing its pink buds; a similar tree behind me is showing its branching new twigs and leaves. At the foot of the first red cedar are relatively tall young kikuyu grasses, all of them nibbled by Night Creatures (which have decapitated and de-leafed most of the young bleeding heart seedlings. The bleeding hearts have all rallied to make new tops and new leaves, so I’m optimistic). Bandicoots (presumably) have continued making holes in what otherwise looks like lawn (all mow-able grass and lawn is being rested until September and so is being grazed: the grasses include tasty morsels for certain animals. Feral deer, bandicoots and possums and perhaps passing wallabies are the presumed grazing animals. The tradescantia is also being grazed (by deer, I think). If only the critters would adroitly nibble and remove the roots of the currently blooming Mist Flower (which is, I think, the smaller cousin of the bigger and more ferocious Crofton Weed). Mist Flower has indestructible roots it seems and has infested the lawns since it was gifted here by the March 2001 flood.

The finest of the red salvia plants is also on the belvedere and next to the budding red cedar and a healthy bleeding heart seedling haltered to the cedar to straiten it). This red salvia was not only repeatedly knocked down and buried beneath logs and debris during the three floods a year or so ago (and later propped up by the Old Gardener), but it looks healthier than any of the other old salvias nearby (all cloned from plants in the 1980s). Can it be that despite the stone fill of the belvedere, this small area is perpetually damp and sunny? I remember using my steel wire divining rods in this area years ago before building the belvedere and there certainly were indications of springs there. When I think about it, springs and underground streams along the riverbank will almost certainly be the result of water draining beneath the surface from the steep hillside above the house. You, too, may be a rhabdomantist; you need only a wand or wires to find water.

All of the azaleas have begun flowering. The Very Tall Pear tree in Cedar Grove has suddenly allowed itself some blossom although there are still dead winter leaves that haven’t yet fallen (despite the Westerlies that have blown strongly enough to fell many eucalypt branches and twigs).

*

I’m frequently surprised when I realise how quickly time is passing: it’s now about five years since Katrina and the American inaction that dismayed so many who hoped for rescue; it’s nearly a decade since Leighton Hewitt won the US Open and who was arriving home as 9/11 occurred—and also nearly ten years since the Big One here, that monstrous March 2001 flood that destroyed three bridges and scared us all. Time seems speeded up (at least for me).

What else? The light is different, the air more balmy; spring has sprung. The river is so low and has a static look about it: the tops of bedrock outcrops dry off, cormorants perch on rocks and snags drying their wings in winter/spring sunshine. Despite the brighter sunlight and despite the sounds of early morning songbirds, the area seems still and somewhat listless. The spangled drongos will be flying in soon: my bet is that they’ll be heard here on the morning of September 12, give or take…

THE EARTHRISE DIARY 7/10 (July, 2010)

THE EARTHRISE DIARY 7/10 (July, 2010)

Don Diespecker

I went to meditate on the lookout at Double Head this morning and watched the sun rise. The wind was cool but the sun brought her warmth to balance things out. I spotted two loggerhead turtles feeding way down below dangerously close to the whitewash of seawater pounding the headland rocks. They bobbed around grabbing some air when they could then disappeared into the jade opaque waters to surface again unsuspectingly somewhere new! I breathed in deeply and gave thanks for the expansiveness I found there high above the world where the plants cling onto the dry earth and the kestrels call and dive like arrows in search of food.

Petra Meer (July 2010)

Sunday, July 11 2010. It’s been one of those weeks in one of those winter months. There have been (as if I had nothing to do with any of it) computer and printer difficulties and umpteen chores Inside and a myriad of difficulties Outside: off/on nuisance showers with consequent overcast drippy skies, damp cold, mist rising, mud, mud, mud and not enough sunny breaks to enhance my sunny disposition department. Yesterday, for example, after a tricky time (for me, of course, nobody else) and having farewelled my old printer (not a person, but a reliable piece of computer compatible machinery) I brought home a new machine. I was deeply suspicious of this thing because it looked so much like a glass aquarium in places and I was very doubtful about it ever living up to expectations. Fortunately for me, good friend Kerry Smith said he’d help settle my doubts and would telephone the next day, which he did, indicating that a switch to Skype would be helpful and keep down the phone bills. We shared a full screen at K’s suggestion, i.e., down on the coast he could see my moves on his screen while I fumbled at the controls here in the distant bush. He was able to shortcut a way to get the new printer to do its thing and I was grateful and not a little astonished at how efficiently this was achieved (not by myself) at a distance. I was delighted.

I was so pleased that on Saturday morning I looked at the weather, took a chance and hauled out the fire fighter’s pump because my stored water needs replenishing. The pump has a carrying handle but it’s heavy. I opened the tank from the top of my ladder and popped in the inlet pipe then wheelbarrowed the pump over to the riverbank now wet and covered in tradescantia and sundry other weeds. I even used part of a terrazzo ‘pretend marble’ slab (once a coffee table) to set the pump on a level platform in a recess dug on the bank, part primed the inlet pipe through the foot valve, connected the delivery pipe, finished priming by adding water from a watering can, and got the machine going and pumping nicely. If that all looks mundane, it isn’t, quite: it requires some muscle to wrench water-filled pipes on a steep riverbank, to say nothing of carrying the pump riverward without slipping, breaking the anatomy or drowning the carrier before he gets to first base; for old blokes like me, it’s a hot, sweaty tiring exercise—and is sweetly rewarded when the pump runs properly and the river water tumbles noisily into the depleted tank. I was so pleased with myself that I fetched the radio and something to read and sat in the sun (not far from the pump) listening to ABC FM Classics. Very nice, because the weather was not at all wintery and not quite spring-like, but was somewhere between the two seasons, or so it seemed to me. Alas, the pump conked out after an hour and a half. I won’t go any further with that except to say that the micro switch that cuts off the power when the oil level is low has been disconnected and I’ve even changed the oil and cleaned the sparkplug—but gave up (wisely) before going nuts and so ended the operation prematurely; a great disappointment. I switched to other sanity-restoring initiatives (like adding a few more stones to the new anti-flood wall adjacent to the belvedere).

*

Windowed Views.

I recently email-invited some of my readers (old friends lifelong friends and new friends) to write a few words—a short par, two or three sentences—describing the view through a window where they write, or where they were reading my message. These are some of their responses:

The bare spindly winter limbs of a liquidambar are the first objects in view from the kitchen window. Behind them: the bifurcated trunk of a large gum, gray in the early evening light. These two superimposed on the bay. The water shows a faint gold tinge and the ripples flow in my direction from a light sou’westerly. Paddling slowly against the breeze is a solitary swan. On the far side of the water, tree-covered hills usually green but now almost black in the fading light, above them a faintly glowing sky and three long strands of mauve and purple clouds.

Bruce Furner. Fennell Bay, Lake Macquarie, NSW.

From my window I can see my 1-acre garden, my lemon tree laden with golden globes of fruit, the three chick mafia, and the stretch of brown lawn sloping down to the boundary wall where trees over 20-metres tall separate my garden from the outer world.

The birds--crested barbet (yellow, black with a blotch of red on his tail), the hoopoes, the louries and weavers building nests in the thorn trees—complete my view.

Julie Craig. Sandton (Johannesburg), RSA.

Looking up from the small dining-room table I see the spreading branches of a date tree bending and swaying over my tiny balcony. The bright orange dates are still not ripe but the birds seem not to mind and pluck them hungrily perching on the edge of the granite veranda nibbling nervously. Here in Tel Aviv it is 3.30pm and the basil that we planted two months ago in boxes beside the sage and verbena is just beginning to droop.

Sharon Snir. Tel Aviv, Israel.

A few lines from the view from where I write:

Frail mesh is a filter

sky arches everything

light bounces

casting negative shapes

that catch my mind.

Lyn Thiry. Valla, NSW.

I am at my desk once more after driving a full circle of 6000-km. Even though my body is now seated in this old cushioned office chair, much of who I am is yet to be reconfigured. I feel as though I have left small pieces of my being scattered all along the way and in addition to this I continue to carry an unsettling sense of motion somewhere within. As I look out this night over the town, I catch my own image reflected in the glass windowpane. The street lamp and the half moon, the tiny house lights glowing in the valley below are patterned over my own familiar form. I am only half here, flat and transparent and floating in a background of night. It’s winter in my room and in the valley, our house lights are also on and glowing yellow but I feel cold. I'm remembering my journey that spanned latitudes and those times where I tasted the warmth of the tropical north...now I am left wanting more. The cold has heightened my longing for the sun, which seems lost to me now in this half state, less light and more melancholy. In this moment my view leaves me steeped in a cold winter’s night with an intense desire for the dawn.

Petra Meer. Warburton, VIC.

Blue-green with white tips—energy on the loose—kinetic as they roll, potential as they hover, kinetic once more as they crash. A transform of light and sound and the ultra violet rockets off the swirling patches as they gain momentum for a repeat. How do I relate to this? Does E =mc squared make it all relevant or do I luxuriate in the quality of the dance? My Buddha says "Ummmm."

John Morris. Looking northeast through my picture windows 60-m above the sea at Kiama, NSW.

July 25 2010. A soft day here: not too cold but much humidity in the cool air and overcast sky. The expression ‘soft day’ isn’t heard much in these parts; I remember often hearing the words during my years in the UK and Eire; it has always seemed an Irish expression to me (if it wasn’t exactly raining in Eire and if there was a glimmer of sunshine or a patch of blue, a ‘soft day’ was an appropriate description of a ‘pleasant’ day). And it seems we have now all grown accustomed to expressions not heard 30, 40 or 50 years ago: climate change, global warming.

On my drives to Bellingen or to Coffs Harbour/Park Beach this month I’ve seen the jacarandas bronzing in the cool air and the yellow flowers of wattles have been prominent for weeks (the scent of wattles can be detected in some places along the highway—even at 100-km/hr). Up here in the Darkwood and Upper Thora, the red cedars are producing new shoots and flowering trees like magnolia are in full bloom. The leggy azaleas in the Cedar Grove have started flowering, too, so there’s more than a hint of spring—in mid-winter. I wanted to clear around the circular wall of the Dog’s Garden and used the mower (in June) to do that: the grass has continued growing all winter (including new kikuyu grown from seed). I’ve seen no frost here (on the ‘home’ paddock near the house: too many trees shade the area all year, but there certainly have been frosty mornings elsewhere in the Valley this season).

As often happens, I’m again surrounded by new and old books most of which I want to read all at the same time, but I’ve hindered my reading this month because I’ve been writing, re-writing, drafting and re-drafting fiction as well as nonfiction narratives for submission to editors and publishers; writers professional as well as amateur have to be in it to win it. A new Alberto Manguel is ordered and on the way (A reader on reading). I’m itching to read The best Australian stories 2009 (Black Inc. (Ed) Delia Falconer—her introduction is as attractive a read as the stories in the anthology, and New Australian stories, Aviva Tuffield’s (Scribe 2009 anthology). A re-read of Annie Proulx’s Postcards is jostling for a place in the queue. I haven’t yet finished the intriguing Reality hunger, a manifesto (David Shields), nor Arundhati Roy’s The god of small things. I’m months behind in reading the Literary Review magazines. I have finished reading Sarah Hall’s The Carhullan army (a good dystopian read but dark, at least for me). And there are recent copies of HEAT and also Griffith Review that that I’ve not completely read. I was at Russell Atkinson’s recent book launch in Bellingen and now have his double (two collections) book of short stories to read. –And I mention another South American-written book, the translation of a Adolfo Bioy Casares novella, The invention of Morel (1964) but more recently published by the NY Review of Books in 2003. There’s a prologue by Jorge Luis Borges who declared [this book] “a masterpiece of plotting comparable to The turn of the screw.” Borges has also described it as a ‘perfect’ novel. It was the model for the film, Last year at Marienbad (Resnais, 1961). The Casares book, btw, I bought for a modest price from Clouston and Hall’s Academic Remainders (see their catalogues on line)

I’m reminded of a short vacation I once took in Vanuatu to catch up on my reading. Most of my luggage was books.

July 27 2010. The new stonewall, originally intended as being wider and lower, has ambitions, it seems, to be the same height as it’s adjacent Belvedere wall. Shall I call it: the cormorant’s wall; the river lawn wall; the fern garden wall, the Big Whirlpool Wall? In the centre of this almost-enclosed area stands an old cheese tree, much battered by the debris of logs dumped by high floods (the Big Swirl comes into play here when there’s a flood running: a sometimes very big eddy or whirlpool of destructive debris that generally comes ashore if the river is high enough, smashing its way around the central area of Big Lawn and adjoining gardens). In front of the tree: partly buried big stones that protect the tree, and a thicket of giant maidenhair and bracken covering an understorey of tradescantia that catches loam and raises the area when the flooding river washes through). I’m demolishing the old circular wall immediately in front of the house because it contains many useful building stones and because the old wall serves no useful purpose. Unfortunately it also contains many small stones that have been covered with loam by successive floods: a problem for the mower in spring and summer; some of this material will edge the river lawn and build up the riverbank. Some of the giant maidenhair within this enclosed area is more than 1-m high and there are also some new bleeding heart tree seedlings in there. When logs and other debris come ashore here all the ferns will be crushed and all will regenerate when I have the strength to clear the debris. Which reminds me: the night creatures have been digging all over the lawns, Big Lawn, the new river lawn, the Dog’s Garden and even the recovering Cedar Grove lawn. I suspect bandicoots and/or possums (I must check on their diets) and either the same creatures or some mystery animal has also a taste for young bleeding heart tree seedlings or saplings. What a mess. Clearing debris following floods implies the new wall won’t be substantial enough to repulse the logs (I’ll then have the pleasure of rebuilding this wall in a somewhat different style; the adjacent Belvedere has never been knocked down; being monolithic it contains tonnes of dense river stones beneath a top layer of soil and lawn, i.e., the Belvedere has oodles of structural integrity; the new wall will have little. The log debris comes downstream because property owners dump unwanted material or stack it on river flats where floods will conveniently remove it (at least as far as near neighbour’s riverbanks). There is little I can do about that, but I persevere and enjoy building and rebuilding gravity walls when the debris has been returned to the river…

Another month is waning. I remind myself of how busy a time retirement can be. Not that I mind that. The difficulty lies in struggling to maintain a good work schedule inside, writing, and outside, gardening or wall building. Petra’s epigraph at the beginning of this Diary, Bruce’s and John’s contemplative windowed views also imply that slowing down and simply being present is often the way to go (I suspect I may not be the only person in the world trying to maintain balance and pace). And I remind myself that the three poems I recently sent off to an editor are each about here, Earthrise: one about a perceived cormorant air race that seemingly I was part of; another about the (now dismantled) round stone ‘table’ on the Belvedere that skinks and lizards regarded as their high rise apartments; and one about ‘pictographs’ or silhouettes cast by the setting sun on the flooded gums trunks (shadow pictures showing projections of other trees and sometimes, birds). Meditations on water and in gardens and on riverbanks are good for one’s health.

Time to get some firewood before another shower dampens everything again.

Later: so I got wet and the leeches were barking, but I got the wood and split it. Last Sunday I had the gardener up on the roof to remove the top of the stovepipe then clean the inside, freeing it of a mass of carbon. Inside and downstairs one of the footmen removed the steel deflector from inside the heater and cleaned out the ash and carbon; finally I had the gardener and a gamekeeper sequester the cinders in the area of the new wall. My carbon footprint is taken care of for a few days. The firewood is wet but we’ll get it going, never fear. Not that it’s especially cold today: I like a fire to take the edge off the chill and damp.

Later still: the butler having anticipated my wetness and leech wounds brings me a glass of wine. I sit in front of the slow combustion heater, moodily sipping. Sharon said it’s 40˚ plus in Tel Aviv, but here it’s chilly and misty and the low river is rising in the rain.

Almost all the dahlias are up and snoozing in one of my file cabinets (wrapped in newspaper and used postal packages). There are a few tubers at the back of the Theatre Garden; I’d better get them inside before The Creatures tear them to shreds.

Out there on Big Lawn there’s a big patch of emerald green moss; it looks it’s best in midwinter and it’s recycling exhaust fumes from passing traffic and the wood-smoke from my fire and presumably coughing up oxygen—as do the enormous trees. I can’t quite see the native violets in the grass but they’re there too and flowering. There’s a brown carpet of discarded leaves around the Japanese maple and a collection of yellow grapefruit on the edge of the lawn. Bowerbirds have removed the remaining oranges and left only shells of zest. The downstream view is of a grey river in rain, some mist rises through the high forest, and there are streams within the stream that puzzle the eye on the surface of the river. Winter hinting at spring.

THE EARTHRISE DIARY 6/10 (June, 2010)

THE EARTHRISE DIARY 6/10 (June, 2010)

Don Diespecker

Looking is a gift, but seeing is a power.

Jeff Berner: The Photographic Experience

Saturday, June 26 2010. The first month of winter here has seemed strange: green and gold is the dominant colouring and most of the Best Views suggest spring, not winter. The red cedars further down Darkwood Road are hinting strongly at new growth because the weather has been surprisingly mild, there has been an abundance of annoying and soaking showers, and everything that grows, it seems to me, has a reluctance to slow down (as in autumn slow-downs) and to face the reality of winter. It’s all very strange. And although it is winter, and there is, this morning, a palpable cold blast from the South and the skiers are skiing in the Snowy Mountains, the views from inside my house and from most parts of the gardens, are not at all wintery. The Very Tall pear tree in the Cedar Grove is displaying autumn colours (seen for only a few days each year) and the Japanese maple at the edge of Big Lawn has orange/red/brown foliage (winter hasn’t yet occurred to these trees, perhaps) and, the West African Tulip Tree, of all things, continues its summer flowering. Dashed odd, what?

I mention these unexpected states of trees because I’ve been writing about sundry aspects of Earthrise Views. For those who have not seen this place, it is a place of views and it has (at least it has for me) powers of enchantment such that most visitors seem compelled to see particular views. I’m sure I’ve previously mentioned Berner’s observation; it continues to be a potent reminder for me. In the present context it has implications about seeing what is obvious. Yesterday at lunchtime I was able to sit comfortably outside in the sunshine, reading; today the sky is largely overcast and sitting outside reading has no appeal at all.

Sitting and seeing, which I do as often as I dare, certainly makes me think. There are so many notions and even themes in writing essays about The view from Earthrise, or Seeing the view, or The best view. Because a favourite view is generally always there, seemingly unchanged and almost static, there is the tendency to believe that those things are true when the startling truth is that everything constantly changes, everything. Photography of one kind or another would enable us to see many of the changes as they occur. The point I often mull over is that even though some changes are imperceptible or minute we can see changes in a riverscape view from day to day provided we focus. And I suggest that we are also motivated to look for or to seek what we most want to see or enjoy seeing, thus enhancing the probability of our truly seeing those features provided they exist in the view. In other words, if we want to see features of a view we know are rewarding (having learned to know what we like), we’re more likely than not to see those features if they are present either in the usual way or in a similar way. When we are focused elsewhere (fantasies, memories) or muddled or over-concerned about trivial and mundane matters we will be more likely to see an otherwise favourite view as normal, as unchanged because it is the (learned) usual or expected view that is always where it should be. To not focus is to largely ignore, thus the view will apparently be unchanged from day to day. It follows too, I dare say, that if something obvious has changed significantly (water level of the river, a landslip, a fallen tree) even the dreamiest viewer will probably become aware of the significant change.

Sorry! I sometimes forget that I used to be an academic (in an alternate reality) on occasion and thinking in these ways recurs when I grow pensive. Here’s another thing about favourite views: the longer I look at them over time the more I appreciate that views have their own calendars (the view changes colour, e.g., with the weather, the seasons, the time of day). Or certain view features are enhanced (the forest bloodwoods generally flower in February; riverside plants and weeds change colour, wither and sometimes die in autumn months or new growth will appear in the spring months).

Sorry again! This is simply a way of indicating that because I’m fortunate to have good views I use my eyes to enjoy changing patterns of light, of shade, of movements. The seeing of a loved view is good for my health and depriving myself of not seeing these things when I have to be elsewhere may be unsettling…

And if you have read this far with a mounting sense of desperation, here is something less difficult that I also do that you might like to try at home. The Bellinger in front of my house is a serpentine river with impressive bends and it flows through a varied landscape: dense forest that includes tributary subtropical rainforest creeks, steeply wooded slopes, and birds, animals, reptiles, fish and amphibians. The river with or without all the extras is also similar in several ways to other rivers that I’ve known (other Australian rivers like the Gloucester and a range of trout streams in the Snowy Mountains) and in particular, the Cowichan on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, and the Blyde in the Drakensberg of the old Transvaal and to a lesser extent, the Jordan in Israel and Jordan). When sitting idly seeing the downstream prospect of the Bellinger I sometimes realise I am also reminding myself of other similar rivers: the rapids and pool in front of my house are not unlike similar aspects of the Cowichan and the Blyde—these three rivers are small to medium streams (except when they flood or are diminished by drought). ‘Looking at’ the Bellinger, at light or shade or during certain weather may remind me of (similarly viewed) memories arising from similar experiences of the Cowichan or the Blyde (**). Seeing the single river in front of me also enables my seeing, as image (and sometimes, if I may use a little hyperbole, as an ‘overlaid image’) one of those other rivers. I’m not suggesting I can see two different images at the same time, but that it is possible to experience an alternating of ‘the actual river here’ and ‘the newly produced imaged of a more distant river’). –We do not have to limit such ‘remembrance of times past’ exclusively to rivers, of course. When we see a face on TV, say, and are reminded of someone we know who looks like that ‘other’ person, we may become sharply aware of alternating images and perceptions.

If you doubt these perceptual excursions, try this (you can do it anywhere, but please, not ever when driving or operating machinery): think of (or introspect) “when you last went swimming.”

Re swimming: it is probable that you have enabled the making of a new image of an old memory and seen, as image, a viewed representation of yourself: a glimpsed image in your mind, so to speak, of yourself swimming and which curiously ‘represents’ something you did not, could not actually have done, namely, observe yourself swimming (see Jaynes). You can retrospect on many other experiences in the same way and so see yourself; the memory need not be of swimming, of course. Come to think of it, you and I are able to ‘see ourselves’ in one place while being in a distant place, can’t we?

And now it’s raining lightly, again and I’m thinking of the Seine in Paris in the snow and the Pont des Arts. Now I’m remembering the Dordogne in summer! We’re all parts of a universe that sees itself!

What else has been memorable this winter month? There has been a small attempt at a Rodent Coup here at Earthrise: very small mice, about four, found their ways inside and have been a concern. Their numbers have been reduced. I rescued a fish- or leaf-tailed gecko from the bathroom washbasin. Have you ever seen, close up, the feet of these little beauties? I rescue them respectfully by urging each small creature with a towel from basin to a bucket and deposit him or her outside. They always manifest at night. Other night creatures have denuded as many of the bleeding heart tree seedlings as could be found. They leave no footprints so I imagine they’re small (not deer) and are perhaps possums or bandicoots.

The new anti-flood wall progresses slowly and it now is enclosing several bleeding heart seedlings… I’ve also imported from the Dog’s Garden, some grass runners (mondo grass) and put them into the new walled garden too, together with cloned lomandra. Some of the giant maidenhair ferns in this area when I remove the tradescantia groundcovers are more than a metre high.

What else? The roof has been swept, again. The slow combustion heater stove pipes, on the roof, have been tweaked for removal of soot and improved drawing of the fire below. And I’ve been raking between showers. Raking is one of my favourite pastimes: maximum results for gentle and minimal work.

Inside: I continue writing narratives fictional and nonfictional; outside, I try to use sunny times in which to read The art of the personal essay (Pillip Lopate, Ed) (all essays are in English, fortunately), The Carhullan Army (a dystopia by Sarah Hall), Reality Hunger, a manifesto, by David Shields and a memoir by Tim Jeal, Swimming with my father.

If you were here, dear reader, I would offer you some of my splendid grapefruit, an excess of them now are ripe and falling on Big Lawn. Oh yes, and there is now a new scented rose in the Dog’s Garden waiting for spring; it’s name is Smooth Friendship.

References:

Berner, J. (1975): The Photographic Experience. (New York, Doubleday). Quoted in Gross and Shapiro, 1996 p.185. Gross, P.L. and Shapiro, S.I. (1996): “Characteristics of the Taoist Sage in The Chuang-tzu and the Creative Photographer.” Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 1996, 28, pp. 175-192.

Jaynes, Julian. (1976): The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, p. 28.

Excerpt:

From an unpublished essay, “Cowichan”:

“The Cowichan is his primary river of memory and the precursor of all loved rivers; it powerfully signifies early childhood, the family and trout fishing. He was too young to fish the Cowichan in 1932, but he remembers watching Durbyn and his father’s brothers fishing then, well before he could stand in a fast stream with a trout rod. It wasn’t until 1937, after the family returned to Africa, that Dad taught him how to fly-cast on the Blyde, the river that flowed through Pilgrims Rest up in the Drakensberg. “Blyde,” from the old Dutch blij, then into Afrikaans, means joy or happiness and there was plenty of that: swims with the other kids at Flat Rock, picnics and camping and that place under the suspension bridge at First Drift where he could lie still, inches above the crystal river to see rainbow trout hanging in the stream, their fins moving like flowers in a faint breeze.

“But the Cowichan came first in his childhood. “Cowichan,” from a Salish word means ‘land warmed by the sun.’ Early in his Cowichan days he was too young to know beyond those sunny times. Much later in time he discovered other rivers, like those loved French beauties, the Dordogne and the Vézère at Montignac, and the Seine. Living in Paris and watching the Seine had allowed him memories of elegant bridges, eye-catching barges and leafy trees along the quays.

“The serpentine Bellinger meandering through the Darkwood Forest is the stream of the present, the end stream of memory, the river that so readily allows recalls of other rivers he knows. The rising sun glints on the torrent and the sunset reflections of the forest’s steep slopes are green and gold. The surface shines in the moonlight. Living on her banks is a privilege.”