by Claire Dunn
Closing my eyes, I take a few deep breaths and pull back, my shoulders loosening.
Keep floating, keep breathing.
Barely able to keep the stalk moving in the notch from exhaustion, I visualise oxygen pouring into my limbs like liquid gold from the core of my belly, streaming down my arms and into my hands and fingers. I breathe long and deep. Suddenly I feel a shift, my arms gaining strength, instinctively pressing together and down, as if tapping into some kind of muscle memory. The sound changes, deepens. It is wood grinding to a dark powder and coalescing. Smoke fills my lungs and still my arms continue, up-down, up-down, in fast, fluid strokes, as if cutting through water. A warmth in my belly surges up and out through my fingers.
I know I have it before it arrives; I can feel it coming. I keep going even after I see a tiny red glow from within the black dust. Not until it rolls out of the notch and sits smoking independently on the bark cradle do I double over in front of it and cry.
I gather myself together and transfer it to the lichen-lined heart of the tinder bundle, breathing on it as one would a baby, long and slow, lavishing it with affection until it flares into flame.
As the fire crackles, I send out thanks to the creatures – even the scaly ones – who dared show me their dark underbellies and sacred feathers, who threw down a vine for me to climb into their night world, carrying me over the threshold and tucking me in. I snuggle into the swag under my grass doona, warm in the knowledge that this hermit is not alone at all.
7.
A pair of azure kingfishers swoops in to dive-bomb the creek in a lightning flash of luminescent blue, before coming to rest on a half-submerged branch metres from where I sit on the bank. In a woollen camouflage jumper, khaki cargo pants and bare feet, I am invisible to them. Even the mist from the teacup in my hand blends with the mist rising from the still surface. They’re far too occupied with bobbing up and down, gazing at their reflections, to notice, anyway. I’d be a narcissist too, if I had their good looks. One of the birds arches back its neck and sopranos a long upward call. So it is you. Mystery number seventy-six solved. I switch back into wide vision. The two birds are stencilled animations against a painted backdrop of tiny white flowering tea-trees. A bark boat floats by, a shipwrecked spider tiptoed in the centre. Without warning the kingfishers alight, their beaks barely skimming the surface before they careen upstream like jet-fighters, banking sharply between vines and fallen logs.
A sharp snap of sticks being broken over knees signals that Shaun’s up. We’ve been at it again – shelter building, that is: a holiday house for me. My shelter site had started to feel a bit suburban, the once-wild frontier of The Block now gentrified with our well-defined paths and thatched roofs. I moved my cooee point further out but also started dreaming of a little shack on a quiet bend of the river. Shaun’s assistance is his present to me before he leaves for the army in a couple of weeks.
It took us only an afternoon yesterday to knock up the holiday house, bar the last layers of paperbark we plan to complete this morning. The design is based on the standard survival shelter – a ridge pole held up at thigh height on one end by two interlocking Y-branches. Sticks resting between the pole and the ground are the frame for the paperbark roof. The steep pitch has given the paperbark a chance to redeem itself as a viable means of wicking water, passing Shaun’s test yesterday of a bucketload from the creek. If this were a true survival shelter, we would include two or three feet of leaves for insulation. There’s a reason those are called survival shelters, though – you don’t want to spend any longer than absolutely necessary in them. I know, I’ve tried.
At tracker school, on day two they confiscated our sleeping bags and tents and told us to build a shelter. In that moment the oak leaves on the ground turned to gold. We ran to fill jumpers and sarongs, knowing every leaf would count in the bid to stay warm. Debris piracy was rife. After forty-eight hours of leaf hauling, I had created something resembling the bower of a burrowing Jurassic bird. Dressed in every piece of clothing I had brought overseas with me (including two pairs of undies), I painstakingly inched my way sideways into the narrow tunnel entrance. Once finally installed inside, I pulled a string to draw closed a door made of a leaf-filled sarong, sealing the airlock. I lay panting in the pitch black, my ribs rubbing up against the stick ribs of the roof. Bugs scuttled and scratched all around me. I was stinkingly, stiflingly hot but there was no room to strip layers. The mild claustrophobia that I had hitherto experienced was nothing in comparison to the sweltering panic inside that thing. Sweat poured from my underarms as I contemplated the roof caving in, imagining my screams as my mouth filled with suffocating leaves. There was nowhere else to go but into the cold night. I closed my eyes and focused on my breath, willing myself with every inhale to cool down. It was hard to tell if I had actually woken when my eyes opened to the cave’s blackness. I felt weightless, floating in space or an inky womb, a cicada curled deep underground during hibernation. After a time, as if coming from the other end of a tunnel, I heard the first muffled bird of dawn and emerged blinking into the light.
That was a survival shelter, not a holiday house.
I look across the creek to the paperbarks we stripped yesterday. The exposed bark is dark pink, like the new skin under a scab.
Rising stiffly, I follow the curl of campfire smoke to where Shaun squats, toasting bread. Bread is no longer an occasional luxury, as our neighbour Terri, who homeschools her two kids up the road, delivers six fresh loaves to our gate every week.
“Sleep well?” Shaun asks, with a grin, his dark hair flopping over his forehead.
“I did,” I smile back. “Yep, it’s a fine hobo shack.”
“How does it compare to the pandanus?”
I’ve recently returned from a three-day solo trip to a remote beach, where I camped under the low spreading branches of a pandanus tree in the dunes.
“It was pretty awesome too,” I reply, thinking back to the last night, when I sat under the broad arms of the pandanus, turning a bird on a makeshift spit over the fire, the ocean crashing gently onto the shore.
My belly growls loudly as I take over one of the toast forks. Shaun pokes me with a stick and I giggle.
“How’re you feeling about leaving?” I ask.
“Well … you know, sad, but kinda ready for it,” says Shaun, spooning some of Dan’s native grape jam onto a crust.
Shaun has been a bit of a wandering ghost since the communal campfire was extinguished. Several times he cooeed at my shelter and I didn’t reply. It must look as if I’ve dumped him, but I’m really loving being alone at my shelter. I’ve been having fun cooking in the same cast-iron cauldron pot that as a girl I would fill with water and flowers and call my “witches brew”. It’s like I’m getting a second go at childhood.
“What do you think you’ll miss the most?” I smile. “Apart from thatching, of course.”
Shaun looks back at me intensely. I immediately regret asking.
I look into the fire. I’ll miss him too. Who’d have thought my closest friend out here would be a young army wannabe? It’s just easy; I don’t have to try around Shaun. With him, what you see is what you get. While I’m a little worried about how I’ll go without him, I’m more concerned about how he’ll fare in the army. I don’t think he realises how much he’s changed in the last five months. Last night he said he felt native. I’m not sure if native is the word I’d use, but I wonder whether it’s similar to the humming I sometimes feel when I’m out on the land alone, an energy pulsing through me.
“So, you up for the survival mission?” Shaun says, breaking the awkwardness. His one request before he leaves is for a group survival trip, where we take nothing but knives and the clothes on our backs.
“Sure. Wouldn’t miss it,” I say. I don’t tell him that I’m still tired from my solo mission. It was pretty hard, despite the fact that I took
some food with me.
“Are you going to check my pockets for nuts?” I laugh and spear another slice of bread.
*
“Watch your footing, it’s slippery,” JJ yells at us over the roar of the river, straddling two mossy boulders with his bare feet. With JJ’s long blond hair shaved close on one side, his brown pecs flexed against his half-buttoned safari shirt and a leather pouch his only luggage, I don’t think our survival guide realises he is the more likely cause of slippage than rocks.
“You doin’ okay?” Shaun bounds up beside me, all smiles. So much for his knives-only rule – his head-to-toe Gore-Tex is a wearable tent. He did relax the rules somewhat, in the end, letting us each bring a raincoat and water bottle. But no nuts.
I give him a thumbs up. He leaps behind me to check on Chloe and Dan. Ahead, Ryan is backdropped by a distant waterfall spilling from a high rocky mountain. He walks apart from Nikki. I wonder whether they’ve had another falling-out.
Despite his warning, JJ practically runs over the rocks, and I concentrate hard to keep up. I shiver a little despite my woollen jumper and beanie. Camping in May without a sleeping bag, or even a tea bag, is a first. I certainly wouldn’t do it by myself, and even with the group I’m nervous, especially considering the heavy clouds gluing together at the end of the valley we’re heading towards.
JJ circles one finger in the air, signalling for us to group up.
“Smoko,” he yells, reaching into his pocket and offering around a handful of bright red berries. Nikki does the same, having already identified the edible fruit of walking-stick palm.
“Everyone doin’ alright?” he shouts.
“Whoa!” Dan yells, teetering on a slippery rock. He grabs Chloe, who slips and falls forward onto her hands with a yelp.
“Anyone bring a fire-kit?” JJ says, looking west to where thunder is growling.
“Not allowed,” Shaun grins.
JJ looks slightly bemused, although there is a clipped edge to his “Onwards.”
At a fork in the river, we fill our water bottles then follow JJ uphill until we reach a huge sandstone cave – just as the rain starts.
“Not bad, huh?” JJ says, extending his arms like a proud host.
The cave floor has room enough for a tribe ten times our size, the overhang an arched window, framing a view of thick bangalow palm forest. I look around at the walls, almost expecting to see painted handprints.
“It’s amazing,” I say, seriously impressed.
JJ nods, buttoning up his shirt and pulling on a brimless brown felt hat. “Okay, folks, treasure hunt time,” he says, counting on his fingers: “tinder, bedding, food, firewood and …”
“Firestick,” Shaun finishes.
“We’ve got an hour before dark; let’s get a move on,” JJ says.
I’m glad I brought a raincoat as I step out into the steady drizzle. I can’t imagine where to look for a stalk in the rainforest, let alone a dry one. I mentally prepare myself for a cold and hungry night. Seeing the boys heading downhill with machetes, Nikki and I stay up high.
“Hey, look!” Nik says, pointing to a log teeming with small white termites. Licking her thumb, she presses it down on the pack and pops it in her mouth.
“Really?” I ask. Nikki nods encouragingly. I chew quickly, mouth open and nose screwed up. To my surprise, the ants turn into a rather pleasant peppery paste in my mouth. It reminds me that I haven’t eaten since our early breakfast. Gosh, I’d love a cuppa.
The rain is running in small waterfalls down the outer rock walls and the back of my neck as we pick our way back, arms loaded with firewood and pockets of tinder ferreted out from rock crevices.
Inside, the boys are huddled shoulder to shoulder, on their knees next to the fireplace. Nik and I dump our firewood and rush over.
“C’mon, you can do it fella. Bring it home,” Dan says to Shaun, who is attempting to spin a stalk the width of a chair leg between his palms. With a cheek on the cave floor and bum in the air, JJ is whispering unintelligible words to the board with a fixed gaze.
“Walking-stick palm?” I whisper to Chloe. She nods.
“Bugger,” Shaun says, as his hands fumble on the bottom-to-top changeover, the stalk jumping out of the hole. “Last one,” he says, collapsing back on his haunches as Ryan takes over.
“Atta boy,” Dan yells, as thick smoke appears. Ryan’s lips curl back in a grimace, sweat beads condensing on his forehead. Nik stands behind him, palms hovering reiki-style over his back.
“We got it,” JJ says quietly, before shouting, “We got it!” Scooping up the coal with his knife, he drops it into a rainforest fungus, which he doubles over. Holding it in one hand, he weaves figure eights around his body. We watch with held breath while the smoke thickens, trailing behind the moving bundle like a meteor. The fungus bursts into flame and he stuffs it into the kindling teepee, blowing it to life with a few long blows. The other six of us whoop in relief.
That night our dinner is termites and banglalow palm hearts, which taste like bok choy, roasted on the coals. They’re by far the most satisfying bush-food carbohydrates I have tried, but still are more about boosting morale than filling the hungry hole. We crash out on the bed Chloe made from layers of dried bangalow fronds, spooning tighter in the night as clouds of misty rain float in.
*
“Come on, dinner’s not going to come and bite you on the bum,” JJ says, stirring us out of what looks like a fire-staring competition the next morning, as rain falls in a curtain over the cave entrance. Nik and Ryan opt to fish and set traps nearby, while the rest of us head upstream.
The dense rainforest is a maze of dripping wait-a-while and lawyer-cane vines, which scratch their appropriate names below my shorts a million times as I stumble blindly behind JJ. I poke listlessly under rocks in search of crayfish, shivering under my raincoat. The others mooch around, waiting, while Chloe and I spend half an hour digging a hole with our sticks to unearth a single finger-sized yam, our energy expenditure far more than its intake could offer.
My head is aching and I’m starting to feel shaky. Why did we choose to come to the rainforest in the cold and wet? This is the season in which the tribes of this land’s traditional inhabitants would be heading for the coast, not the freezing mountains. What do we know about surviving in this environment? It’s pure foolishness. I just want to be back in my shelter, cooking up some baked beans.
When JJ eventually stops, even Shaun is grim-faced. We must have walked twenty kilometres, at least. I pull off some more walking-stick palm berries and squat to nibble at them. They’re starting to make me feel nauseated.
This hunt seems like it’s going to be the opposite of mine last week. Although I didn’t really intend to kill anything, I carved a throwing stick and carried it with me, and practised setting a few traps. I was trying on hunting to see what it felt like, giving it a test drive, and I was content enough with the few whelks, pippies and seaweed stews that I cooked up. In the end, though, the prey came looking for me. Walking along the beach at dusk on the last evening, I noticed a dark shape in front of me. It heaved itself up as I approached, before slumping back on the sand. A sea bird with a badly injured leg. My hand moved instinctively to stroke its back. The bird shuffled, looking up at me pleadingly as a sea eagle circled. I knew at once that it was for me. Crying, I cradled the bird and thanked it for its sacrifice, for the teaching it was offering. Placing a piece of driftwood under its head, I steeled myself for the kill, letting out a primal yell as I brought my stick down. In the last light I managed to gut and pluck it. It was the first animal I had killed and eaten, but it wasn’t a hunt.
“I’m pooped,” Dan says, hanging his head.
“Maybe we should head back,” Chloe offers weakly.
“Okay, gang, I’m handing over to you,” JJ says, his throwing stick turni
ng a perfect two rotations in the air before landing back in his hand. “It’s your call if you want to eat tonight or not. There’s food enough here, you just have to get out of your heads to find it.”
I scratch a notch in the leaf litter with my throwing stick.
“Put yourself in the shoes of the prey. Think like them. Where would you go on a day like today?”
“Home,” Dan sniggers quietly.
“Use the rain to your advantage,” says JJ, ignoring the comment. “It’s masking your sound, right?”
It’s enough to motivate Shaun. “I’m ready,” he says, smearing mud over his face. My belly is twisting in knots of hunger, my eyes blurry. I really need to eat something soon.
“Yep, me too,” I say.
Abandoning the hunt for the elusive crays, we fan out across the flat creek bed, JJ trailing behind. As rain bounces off leaves in loud thuds, my bare feet are silent on the spongy soil. Without anyone to follow, I begin to take more notice of where I’m walking, looking side to side and above, as far in front as the thick foliage allows. I squat to search inside fallen logs, part fern fronds and poke in tree crevices for signs of life.
I know you’re here somewhere. Come out, come out, wherever you are.
Spying a bird’s nest, I climb a vine to check for eggs. Between two tree buttresses is a burrow, and I carve off a leggy stick to probe it. A brush turkey mound is piled high with leaf debris, and I scour the ground for tracks.
Warmer, warmer, getting warmer.
The hunger pangs are fading, my mind growing sharp and alert. No longer shaky, my legs have a new energy, a bounding aliveness. I move upstream through the forest, feeling like a river myself, weightless and fluid. I pick up sounds beyond the thump of rain – distant birds, frogs, smaller rustlings. Catching movement in the tree above, I spy two doves, feathers flecked with the brightest pink, nestled together in the fork of a branch. As my awareness extends further into the nooks and crannies of the forest, I feel as if I am becoming diffuse, all thoughts of past and future gone, sucked into a single focus: food. All is sound, sensation, movement. I glance back behind me to see the others similarly bright-eyed.