by Claire Dunn
I open my eyes to blackness. A small breeze whiskers my cheek as I pull my face away from the tree. Gradually my eyes adjust enough to make out the boat shapes of gum leaves gently swaying, backlit by a stage of tiny flickering stars. All fear is gone.
I turn and walk slowly and steadily back to my swag, knowing that there is no going back.
6.
“I’m going to teach you a skill crucial for wilderness survival, and all you have to do is sit,” Niko, our bird expert, told us on the first day in a series of five bird-language workshops. “Find one place that calls to you. Know it by day, know it by night, in the rain and wind. Know the stars and where the four directions are. Know the birds that live there and the trees they live in. Know these things as if they are your relatives, which in time, they will become.”
This place, he explained, is a “sit spot”, and in the cool of first light every morning I am busy holding auditions for mine. Rubbing my T-shirt over the lenses of the binoculars slung around my neck, I pad barefoot down my shelter trail as the sky reddens in anticipation of sunrise. I’ve already scoped out the area in which I want my sit spot – an easy walk from my shelter, at the junction of two trails, in the transition zone from dry, scrubby banksia forest to wetter eucalypt forest near the creek. Like the fertile breeding ground where freshwater and saltwater meet, any edge where one ecosystem type collides with another is a multicultural mixing pot, and should make for the liveliest show around, if I can find a good seat – somewhere comfortable (preferably with a backrest), with good cover for small birds and clear space for wallabies, a view of both ground feeders and canopy high fliers, ideally with a water feature. I’m talking dress circle only.
Perched on a mossy log, I can barely see past the tangle of vines in front of my face. No good, move on. I begin to feel like Goldilocks testing out different chairs: too low; too wet; ooh, too many leeches; too prickly; too visible. This is taking way too long. I begin to crash through the bush impatiently, exactly what Niko said not to do. When I have my sit spot, then I can stop.
“Ouch,” I exclaim, as my big toe stubs on a tree root. A bird flaps up noisily from the ground nearby. I hobble down the trail, trying to regain composure. After a while I start to feel a familiar tugging, as if a string tied around my waist is pulling me forward. I pick up the pace, my heels landing with loud thuds on the ground.
Stop! I will myself to a standstill. I’m in the middle of a forest that is sweetly chorusing the dawn. The whole day, hell, the whole year, stretches out with nothing I have to do, and yet … I’m rushing. I can feel it in my limbs, a kind of not-quite-bodily sensation, an urgency, like I’m always a step ahead of myself, never quite touching the sides of my experience. When I rode my bike back from Kate and Sam’s yesterday, I was gunning it, pumping my legs to get back as fast as possible, in case I missed something. Missed what? A log burning? Hello, my name’s Claire Dunn, and I’m addicted to busyness.
At least I’m not wearing a watch, having banished it to my car as soon as I arrived. Recently it has sneaked back into my lean-to (albeit “hidden” under a pile of blankets), and I find myself taking guilty peeks at it throughout the day, comforted by the guidance it gives me on when it’s appropriate to eat or sleep. Its presence is beginning to feel superstitious, though, a talisman protecting me from something.
Stretching my arms wide, I consciously expand my vision, wiggling my fingers at the furthest edges of my frame of sight to remind me how much I can actually see. “Wide-angle vision,” Niko calls it. As I soften my gaze, my mind also relaxes, that string around my waist going slack. Loosening my knees, I drop my centre of gravity and start taking slower steps. Each foot falls naturally on its outside edge, testing the ground first before rolling the ball inwards, the heel barely brushing the path before my weight shifts. I give up control to my feet, letting them weave a roundabout path through the forest. My body tingles in enjoyment at the meander, filling up at the sensations of the small dips and rises, as though I’m drinking in the land through my soles. The wide catchment of my gaze registers subtle movements of leaves, scuttling skinks in the undergrowth. The waking forest sings with snaps and crackles, as if I can hear the new growth bursting through buds, shoots and tips.
Circling to the east, I suddenly see it – my sit spot – a giant uprooted scribbly gum lying along the edge of a trail. Running over, I climb to the top via the ladder of exposed roots. A flat platform at the base of the trunk allows just enough space to sit cross-legged. My back is perfectly supported by the roots, which extend up behind my head like a webbed throne. I try out three different positions in which I can sit or lie comfortably. The sky and ground are equally visible. Small bushes are on one side, an open trail on the other. A bracken fern partly obscures my sitting figure. A crevice in the tree has collected water, and a family of blue fairy-wrens splash and preen not metres away. I have found my spot and it is just right. It’s like a neighbour has just brought over a casserole and welcomed me to the community.
And make myself at home is what I do. For about an hour a day I sit like a forest princess and observe the doings of my new furred and feathered friends. I’m so excited by the anticipation of what might show up that I’m able to maintain a Zen-like stillness despite fierce attacks by biting insects. True, I do come dressed like a Bedouin, with layers of flowing clothes and a mozzie net draped over my face, but I’m finding that the more I focus on the action around me, rather than the frustration of being eaten alive, the less the insects seem to bother me.
This sit spot will be my classroom, the place where I can turn the pages of the book of nature, learning the language of my new forest home. Birds are my way in. They’re the most visible, charismatic, demonstrative, diverse and responsive creatures around, and will be the key to unlocking the complexities of jungle law.
I’m not an entirely new recruit to the world of feathered friends. On request, for my thirtieth birthday I was given a pair of binoculars and a bird guidebook, my twin brothers inscribing it with, “Happy birthday, sis. Ornithology rocks, eh?” Okay, so it wasn’t fashionable, but I found ornithology really did rock. When I held those magnifiers to my eyes, birds that had been background music began to take on shape, colour and personality. I realised that they were there sometimes and not others. Rather than one call, they had several. It was as if I had been surrounded by exquisite original paintings all my life and was only just noticing them.
The birds at my sit spot don’t disappoint. This is no prim English suburb. No, this neck of the woods is the migrant part of town, noisy and raucous, with family dramas spilling into the central piazza. I am pinned to the soap opera playing out in front of me – the constant feeding frenzies, territorial skirmishes, petty fights, games and courtships. Most dominant are the families of neurotic white-cheeked honeyeaters, who keep a vigil against marauding wattlebirds wanting a piece of the banksia flower action. Eastern spinebills are unfailingly graceful as they hover like hummingbirds, their new-moon beaks curving into the tubular red bells of the mountain devils. Finches flock for seed in the grasses, throwing up their red underskirts like flamenco dancers. Thornbills are social butterflies, whirring and purring around me, and whipbirds cut the air like lightning. On the ground floor, matronly wonga pigeons waddle and peck; while above, golden whistlers are sun-drenched suitors showering the forest in a lyrical symphony. As well as the regulars, there is the buzz of drop-in predators such as the collared sparrowhawk, and rare and quiet visitors including the topknot pigeon and king parrot.
Summer is a heady season for a novice twitcher. I am on a birdy bender, drunk with the thrill of each new find. After each sit I race back to my lean-to, sketch the unknown specimen and cross-reference several books until I have a positive ID. I keep a daily log, full of observations and questions. Not just what is it, but where does it live? How far does it roam? What does it eat? Questions lead to more questions. I am a detective on the case, sketching my suspe
cts, posing hypotheses, conjecturing, the journaling helping to keep my nose on the trail and sniffing.
One morning there is a new call, a loud and repetitive whining coming from the rainforest. I can’t stay in my seat. Slinging my binos over my back, I crawl along wet leaf litter following the sound. I finally spy the source: a family of baby spangled drongos perching on a low branch. They would have disappeared to Papua New Guinea during the winter months, but now they’re bringing up babies in my neighbourhood. Mouths wide open, the babes flick their fledgling fish-tail feathers, the whining turning into a squealing, “Pick me, pick me,” as exhausted Mummy flies in with a bug in her beak. I’m oblivious to the multiple leeches taking hold of me as I lie amongst the thick carpet of leaves and watch the family. I sketch my drongos and wonder what other creatures lie hidden, what kindred spirits I have yet to meet.
Niko’s expert eye helps to swing the doors of the forest wide open. Instead of the hostile island I’ve been living on, I start to see the hidden charms of my home, which transports me to a storybook land where giant owls kidnap parrots and possums by moonlight; where wrens and warblers weave silken sacs of huntsman spider babies into their nests. I can now nod to the ringtail possum as it sleeps in its dray, in a casuarina tree on the main trail, and know that the disappearance of a golden orb-weaver spider overnight signals that the golden-tipped bat, its only predator, has visited.
“If all you do this year is learn how to sit, how to watch and how to walk, you’ll have achieved the greatest survival skills of all,” said Niko cryptically. “Because what they are is a doorway to awareness. It’s up to you how far down that rabbit hole you go.”
*
In the dusk twilight, Shaun is pacing around an unlit fireplace when I arrive at the Gunyah.
“D’ya hear that?” he says excitedly. I thought I heard something at my sit spot this afternoon but presumed it was a cicada-induced hallucination. Cupping my ears in the direction he is pointing, I make out a dull throbbing beat.
“I reckon it’s a bush doof. I saw some kind of alien sign on the gate to the property across the creek the other day,” Shaun says, hopping from one foot to the other.
“Huh, bizarre,” I reply, feigning uninterest, knowing exactly what he is about to propose.
“Come on – camo mission!”
“Shaun, I’m actually really tired. I’ve been paperbarking all day, and I’ve got to get up and do it all again tomorrow, so I think I’ll give it a miss.”
Shaun shoots me a “told you so” look. He accused me the other day of being too busy to play. While I suspect he is wanting to play in more ways than one, the accusation stings with its thorn of truth.
I walk off to collect kindling, the bassline now a clear rhythmic thump from the east. Dammit, he’s right. It would be fun. We could, of course, walk straight into the party, but it’s a perfect opportunity to test out the scout awareness skills we’ve been learning. It’s a pity Ryan’s not here.
Rather than Baden Powell badges and knee-high khaki socks, the scout class that Ryan and I signed up for at the tracker school referred to the revered Native American Apache scouts, infamous amongst white settlers for their Houdini-like ability to escape any enclosure – to quite simply disappear. The scouts, specially chosen in childhood, were set apart from the tribe and trained intensely in the arts of survival and bird language, healing and endurance, intuition and body control. Legend has it that they could bilocate (appear in two places simultaneously) and read minds. Their role was to be the protector of the tribe, warning their people of danger from enemy tribes, and directing them safely to the next food source. I was intrigued to see how this ancient lineage would be passed down to a hundred fee-paying students in a week. I quickly found out it was through three tools – mud, sleep deprivation and blindfolds.
Mud was our camouflage uniform, coating us from day one. Our groups of ten were never (and I mean never) to leave one another’s side, and we had to dig invisible “scout pits” (think: graves) in which to catch the two or three hours’ sleep we were afforded. During the days we spent most of our time down at the swimming hole, blindfolded while walking across logs sprung with swinging buoys, learning martial arts or walking around the forest for hours. At night our missions required us to travel barefoot for miles out of camp, moving silently and invisibly along the sandy edges of the pine woods, being tested by various “awareness triggers” such as tripwires, ambushes and motion sensors, and also by the real need to avoid the often gun-toting locals. The mud-encrusted line at breakfast was alive with stories of the previous night’s adventure, everyone’s eyes bright and fiery. I pictured myself training as an Aussie ninja during my year in the bush, rising at dawn to don my blindfold, tuning my senses to finer frequencies. I feel instead that I’ve mostly been carving a deeper rut in the track from shelter to kitchen to sit spot and back again.
“Okay, Shaun, let’s do it,” I say.
*
We use a soft whistle to locate each other at our rendezvous spot by the creek. The forest is skittish, with harried flaps of wings and scuttles in the brush, as if the day creatures are rushing to get home. With the moon fat and almost full, perhaps hungry owls are out early. Crickets and cicadas meet at the day’s edge in overlapping waves of sound, a harsh staccato punctuating the smoother track of the evening. A night bird suddenly peals with a hooting cackle from somewhere above us. I startle, the hairs on my neck prickling. As I look up, a winged creature momentarily blots out the evening star. The throb in the background ratchets up a notch in pace and volume. Is it the doof or the sound of my heart beating in my chest?
Already half covered in ash and silhouetted against the darkened greenery, Shaun looks like a ghost. He’s a funny fella. I certainly wouldn’t have predicted buddying up with the young army dude. I’m careful to keep my boundaries, but, really, I’d be pretty lost (and roofless) without him. I join him in applying the foundational layer of my camouflage, the ash serving to dull my fur-less human shine.
“Not so heavy, Shaun. It’s moonlit, remember?” I whisper as he stripes the backs of my legs with powdered charcoal. I smear it over my front in zebra-like patterns, overlaying it with patches of cold, dark mud dug up from the creek.
“Don’t forget your face,” Shaun smiles mischievously, slapping a mud pie on top of my head and across one side of my cheek. I wet a bracken frond with white clay and flick it over us, mirroring the moon’s splattered shadows through the underbrush. A final roll in leaf litter and our make-up is complete.
I gasp as Shaun crouches at the base of a tree, his camouflage almost completely disguising his outline. I strain to make him out, his only giveaway the two large, round whites of his eyes staring up at me.
I, too, feel myself growing diffuse, fading into the dusky light. The weight of the clay and mud hanging off my body wills me to stoop and crouch closer to the ground, and I have a sudden desire to drop to all fours and prowl through the wet rainforest brush, growling. I giggle at the thought of what my friends would say if they could see me.
“Time to party?” I ask the young animal in front of me.
With a thumbs up, Shaun falls in step behind me, as I cross the bridge and break in to a quiet jog along the edge of the track. When the music gets louder, I drop to a fast crouching walk and move until my shoulders barely touch the tree line, ducking under branches, step-hopping over twigs, bending and flowing with the vegetation. Any tiredness has vanished. I feel wide awake, shapes and colours more distinct, the smell of ripe nectar almost sickly sweet. All I can hear is the soft patter of our bare feet on the clay verge. My body feels lithe and flexible, my movements precise and concentrated, as if I’m running over slippery rocks. Shaun is a moving shadow, his bright eyes flashing back the excitement in my own.
At the first sight of car lights, we sink and fade into the brush, waiting as they sweep over us and turn uphill. With a
nod Shaun takes the lead, commando-rolling across the road and cutting through the bush to join the car’s tracks on the fire trail. My thighs burn as I follow him in at a low crouch. When we crest the hill, the full blast of the doof hits me. It sounds like an industrial machine stuck on a grinding loop. A few yards away, a hundred or so cars ring a cleared area where small figures move under flashing lights and video projection screens. Shaun turns to grin at me, his white teeth floating independently of the hazy outline of his face.
Using hand signals we plot our approach. I cling to cover and lead the way around the edge of the forest, heading for the back of the party. Scanning the field for movement, I almost stumble into a swamp before I see that the ground has turned to water. Frogs plop from waterlilies as I wade in, bubbles rising from the muddy bottom. I bend over until I’m almost parallel with the surface, the swish of water around my legs barely audible. On the other side I grab some mud from the bank to touch up my camo, giving Shaun a quick thumbs up before moving off again, deciding to take a risk and follow a back fire-trail rather than continue around the edge of the bush.
An owl-like whistle from Shaun alerts me to company. I freeze. Voices are approaching. I search for cover but there’s none, only a grass patch on the side of the road. Damn my impatience.
I hear a slurring male voice turn in my direction. “This way, boys, there’s a track.”
I dive in beside a grass tussock and wrap my body around it, my heart pounding.
“Gonna find some hot chicks tonight, fellas,” one laughs in a gravelly voice.
I feel totally exposed. Trust your camo, I tell myself.
The laughter gets louder, but I will myself to focus. Filtering out the sound of their voices, I visualise myself becoming smaller and smaller, a tiny speck of sand falling to the ground, burrowing deeper and deeper into the earth. The ground shakes with the hard stomp of boots next to my head, but instead of the howl of shock I’m expecting, the voices quickly fade into the music. Not realising I’d been holding my breath, I gasp for air and let myself feel again the full spread of my body on the earth. I can’t believe I wasn’t seen. Shaun creeps over and lies next to me, looking equally scared.