by Claire Dunn
We are all, literally, coming back to our senses.
The rain slows. A cloud parts, a single streak of sunlight landing on my face like a warm flannel. JJ jumps ahead and signals a gathering.
“Conditions have changed,” he says. “What d’ya reckon is gonna want to be out in the sun?” We think for a moment.
“Snake?” Chloe asks.
“Correcto,” says JJ, hinting at his game plan with a jab of one finger upwards.
Single file, we head west to where the rainforest ascends into giant blue gums, thinning to a steep grassy woodland. We scramble with our fingers up rocky scree. Far below, the creek ripples through the valley like a snake in motion, half-shrouded in mist.
I’m following Shaun along the ridge, and when he halts abruptly, we bump up against each other. Curled on a flat rock in front of him is a huge diamond python. Creeping forward, we form a circle around it, watching as breaths ripple down its spine in a slow swell. I don’t feel like a predator. I have no thoughts of malice or violence, just sorrow and gratitude. The snake opens its eyes. They remind me of the bird’s; small, black and beady, staring trustingly into mine. I turn my back as JJ brings his throwing stick down with a hard thump on the back of the snake’s neck, before diving in to slit the throat. Chloe sobs as we lay our hands on the writhing scales. Just like with the bird, I think I can sense the moment when the twitching body beneath my hands changes, when consciousness leaves and the flesh is animated merely by the workings of nerves and muscles, the fire in its eyes dimming to lifeless cold.
Survival is violent. It demands blood and bark, burning the flesh of trees and animals alike. In the city, it is hidden under packaging and buffered by distance. We don’t see the earth excavated to power our homes, the delayed effects of pollution blanketing the globe. Here it is in my face: ugly, raw and real. A letter arrived from a friend the other day. He asked me what I was giving back to the land. Perhaps it is this, the willingness to confront the violence that supports my life, to cradle the dying head of a snake with my heart swelling in gratitude. If violence could ever be beautiful, it is now.
My hunger resumes with a hallucinatory intensity on the way back to camp, as I follow the trail of blood dripping from the forked tongue of the snake slung over Ryan’s back. While it cooks on the coals, JJ launches into a full rendition of The Man from Snowy River to entertain us. Firelight flickers on the cave walls like dancing figurines. I wonder how many camps just like ours this cave has witnessed, how many celebratory hunting parties.
It’s finally ready. Oily juices run down my fingers from the roughly hewn chunk JJ hands me, and I join the others in loud slurps before ripping through the crispy-fried skin to sink my teeth into the white flesh.
When I wake the next morning the snake has come alive in my belly, writhing and squirming. Rain clouds are amassing again, and I’m glad we agree to leave. At the edge of the wilderness, we gather to give thanks for the protection that the valley has offered us: the shelter, water, fire and food. As we turn to leave, a diamond python lies directly in our path, this one farewelling us.
8.
I’m curled like larva in a faded sleeping bag, under a tarpaulin sagging with pools of rain, enclosed by a circle of about ten feet in diameter, etched by the tired scuff of my footprints. My hips, bruised and sore from lying down without padding, shift at regular intervals to spread the pressure, a throbbing pink rash spreading down my neck from a tick bite. My tongue is white and pasty, and I can smell my breath against the freshness of the steady rain. I stretch my arm out to reach for the water bottle. If it wasn’t attached to my shoulder, I would worry about it floating away. I concentrate to pilot my arm in on the object and back to my lips. The water tastes sour but I force myself to take a few gulps. Nausea washes over me as the water sloshes around in my empty belly, and I close my eyes to wait for it to pass.
Another fifteen minutes gone, maybe twenty. I peek my eyes open to check the day’s progress. The vague glow of the sun behind the clouds has made no signs of movement up the trunk I’ve been measuring its progression against since daybreak. How is that possible? Never again will I complain about there being never enough hours in a day. There are enough hours to do most anything: write a book, compose a symphony, raise a family. An entire life could be lived in a day. I’m surprised Rome wasn’t built in a day with that many people working on it. As long as there is a sentinel whose only job is to watch every excruciating detail of the Earth’s turning, time will jam up, will slow to an interminable crawl. I now have direct evidence of this, almost three days’ worth.
It feels more like thirty days since I arrived here, at first light, for the first of a four-day “vision quest”. For Native Americans, the vision quest is a sacred ceremony in which initiates sit within a small circle on a mountaintop, fasting and praying for a vision. Many indigenous cultures have some version of it – the Aboriginal walkabout, for instance – a rite of passage involving renunciation and solitude in the wilds, a fast from all things familiar that is designed to break the habitual patterns of the mind and allow a deeper knowledge to arise. “The sledgehammer” is what Kate called it, a less romantic but perhaps more apt name for the fierce beating the ego receives every minute that passes with almost zero stimulation.
This isn’t my first vision quest. When I began studying with Kate and Sam, I signed up for one. Wanting to confront my fear of the dark, I spent most of the four nights burrito-rolled in a tarp, quivering. But what I wasn’t prepared for was how incredibly vast ninety-six hours could feel. The experiences of blissful reunion with nature and the cosmos that I expected were brief blips in an otherwise monotonous sea of tedium and physical pain. Perhaps like the selective memory of a woman after childbirth, the peak moments are the ones I remember most clearly: fearlessly dancing around my circle under the moonlight on the final evening, walking wobbly-legged back to the communal fire the next morning with the sense that I carried a precious jewel inside. For months afterwards, my life made perfect sense, the steps in front of me as clear as if I had already made them.
As soon as I’d heard Kate speak of that quest I’d known I had to do it, but for this one my decision was far less certain. It was the last scheduled group activity, marking the end of the workshops and the start of a calendar-free six months, an opportunity to align ourselves with our intentions for the final two seasons on the land. In the preceding days, I procrastinated about finding my site and organising the twelve litres of water and basics I’d need. It didn’t help when Dan pulled out a few days ago.
On the eve of the quest, I was still packing the last of my things inside my shelter. I held out my hands to the dying embers in my fireplace. They roused and flared up momentarily, as if they didn’t want me to leave. What am I doing? I thought. I don’t want to go out into the cold and starve; I just want to stay here. My heart was a constricted knot of confusion. I turned to gaze into two unblinking eyes. What would Wild Woman do?
I found her face recently, while on an excursion to the local Aboriginal Cultural Centre, where we learnt how to make primitive eel and crab traps. During a break, I wandered inside the art gallery. Our eyes met: hers were yellow and scorching and held mine unwaveringly. She was on all fours within tall golden grass, her shoulders naked, her face streaked with white ochre. I walked slowly over to her, as if hypnotised. Running with Wolves read the picture’s title. I took her home for twenty-five dollars and pegged her to a wall runner. I know I can never lie in front of this woman. She won’t put up with half truths or pretty imitations of wildness. She demands nothing less than unbending integrity, uncensored passion, and the scratchy raw truth of things I don’t always want to hear. She’s a perfect reminder of my real task this year. I want to look into her eyes every morning and see in them a mirror of my own.
Go. Her eyes blazed. Go to your quest. My shoulders sagged. Of course, it was just resistance to the ordeal that I knew
lay ahead. Last-minute jitters. No-one said it was easy to squeeze through the eye of the needle. No pain, no gain, right? I hadn’t come all this way for a stroll in the park.
We gathered for a communal meal that night. I scraped at the remaining specks of soup with my spoon, tipping up the bowl to my mouth to gather the last few drops. The sight of the empty bowl immediately made me hungry again. Four days. I wished I could walk in right then, get it over and done with. It was like waiting for the signal to go over the trenches. The others joked quietly, biding time before the evening’s ceremony that would commit us to silence. Sensing my turmoil, Chloe slipped me the pack of tarot. I slid a card out of the centre. A woman stood naked in a small circle by a fire in the desert, a rattle and drum in her hand. The vision quest card. I shook my head in disbelief. How much more confirmation did I need? The following day, as soon as it was light enough to see the trail in front of me, I walked to my site and stepped over the threshold into my quest circle.
*
The rock. You need to put the rock out. I groan as I unpeel myself from the sleeping bag, staying horizontal as I pull on wet-weather gear. Every muscle protests as I wobble to my feet. Rain thuds against the hood of my raincoat. My head clouds with dizziness and I lurch towards a tree, pressing my forehead against it until the spell passes. I stumble out to where a rectangular box bordered with bark lies on the edge of the main trail. Two rocks sit side by side within it, like bulging eyeballs. Another is heavy in my hand. Kate and Sam will check soon that it’s in the box. If it’s not they’ll come looking for me and pronounce my quest over. I contemplate throwing it at a tree. Instead, I place it neatly next to the other two. Three rocks make it look like I’m three-quarters there, but it’s a cruel trick. I’m only halfway. Halfway. Oh God, no, I can’t do this.
The first day was almost enjoyable. I’d been craving time alone since Shaun’s farewell. I had chosen a site with good sun and spent most of the day dozing and cloud watching. I sporadically got up and did the toe-heel stamp of the “quest dance” around my circle. I thought of Shaun. On his final evening, after we’d played a group game of sardines and cooked him tacos, he’d come looking for me. Cupping my face in his hands, he’d said he loved me and asked to stay the night. I’d sent him away with the first tears I had seen in his eyes. The next morning I’d found a note of apology written on paperbark under a rock near my trail. There was no need for him to be sorry. By dusk on my first day, the rain had closed in and I crouched under my flimsy tarp structure, shivering.
The second day blurred into endless, soggy misery. The steady rain was accompanied by a cutting wind, and despite the layers of clothes I was bundled into, I was cold, my body temperature dropping due to the fast. The blanket of clouds covered any indication of what time of day it was. Numerous times I was certain that the sky was darkening, and I stared at the horizon, praying for nightfall, but instead it brightened, as if laughing at me. The kookaburras colluded, several times prematurely announcing dusk. Most other birds avoided me altogether, my only visitors a family of wrens. I passed the time by building ant obstructions, weaving reams of string from the wet grass and imagining all the things I would like to eat. I contemplated stripping off and dancing in the rain, but I was starting to feel weak. Thoughts of leaving popped up, but I pushed them away. When I became bored, I got frustrated. I took issue with a large stringybark on the edge of my circle, barraging him with a litany of complaints. I slept fitfully, however, and woke this morning nauseated and so weak I could barely get up.
I look longingly down the path. My shelter is probably not even a kilometre away as the crow flies. I could be back by my fire within an hour. Just the thought makes my throat clog. I loiter at the box. Snapping twigs, I spell out Help! then scatter them.
I walk back to my circle, slow as a monk in meditation. The rain gets heavier, slanting in at the wrong angle. I wish I’d spent more time setting up my tarp. I’m shipwrecked on an island that is now smaller than my body and quickly shrinking. I scratch some shallow trenches around me and crawl back inside my increasingly damp sleeping bag. I read the washing instructions on the sleeping bag tag for the hundredth time. Halfway. What a detestable thought.
What am I doing here? What good is sitting in the rain being miserable? It certainly doesn’t feel like a road to spiritual enlightenment. Oh, I know, I know, every experience in the quest is a teacher: the sore bum, the tick bites, the cold. I got that sense in the first quest – even the boredom had some substance to it, some grist to grind through. Even when I wanted to leave, I knew I wasn’t going to. This is different. This just feels like wretched and unnecessary suffering.
Stringy is drenched, his bark creased and sagging like an old man’s neck. I thought we were friends on the first day, but now he seems to be glaring at me with disapproval from his one-eye burl, as if reading my thoughts.
“What are you looking at?” I snap.
He lets loose a loud creak as two branches rub up against each other in the wind.
You humans. Your minds are so restless. I stand here every day, rain, hail or shine, and you don’t see me complaining.
Cranky old thing. If you had legs, I bet you’d be outta here too. But then that’s the practice. Denial. Restraint. This is the sledgehammer, after all. How else does the peppercorn get crushed into spice?
But what if I just want to be a peppercorn? Isn’t it this year about learning to follow my heart? Doing what I want instead of what I should? The thought energises me. I sit up defiantly.
“Stringy, I think my heart is telling me to leave. What do you say about that?”
Stringy coughs and splutters in shock, as wind whips through his top branches.
Who dares leave the quest? Who thinks they know better than a tradition as old as dirt itself? Lazy is what you are! You just don’t want it bad enough.
I fall back onto the wet ground. I just want out. But what’s the difference between a passing desire and an impulse of the heart? And is the heart always right?
Stringy snorts a waterfall of sappy snot down his trunk.
Maybe he’s right. Isn’t sitting through interminable hours of physical discomfort and boredom the path of every mystic throughout history? I am lazy, a spiritual cop-out. Rain blows in and I huddle on my rapidly diminishing island, watching tree trunks turn into cascading rivers, until dark finally descends and I escape into sleep.
In my dream an anti-war protest is being waged outside a church. A V, for Virgin Mary, is carved large on the church door. The protestors grow increasingly angry, damaging a statue of the Virgin Mary as well as another sacred object called the “sacristy”. I am upset about it.
*
I wake to a subdued dawn. The rain has stopped but a thick cloud cover remains. I sit up and wrap myself in a blanket, closing my eyes in meditation. My breath rises and falls, long and even. My thoughts are as scattered and brief as the bird calls. I drop my blanket and step barefoot onto the track of flattened grass at the edge of my circle. Raising my right foot, I bring the ball down hard, followed shortly after by my heel. Toe-heel, toe-heel, stamp and stamp, around and around, perambulating my circle, my limbs feather-light. My arms rise above me and sway, the only visible movement in a still forest. A hum vibrates my lips, pursing to a high note, which rings out like a chime. I slow when I reach Stringy.
“I’m leaving,” I say.
Stringy’s burl watches me in disappointment. So, you’ve made your choice.
I stand tall and strong-faced in front of him, with all the appearance of assuredness.
I’m not sure at all, but I need to leave to find out. Something is in danger of being broken, or perhaps it already has been. Something sacred – something pure, feminine and essential.
Dropping my last rock into the box, I skirt the edge of the trail to hide my escape tracks. At the sight of my shelter through the trees, tears spring
to my eyes. I feel as if I am approaching a church. Slipping my sandals off at the door, I tiptoe into the quiet cavern. Everything is just as I left it. I’m surprised, as if three years might have passed. I breathe in the musty air with relief. Home. I begin at once to set a fireplace with the dry kindling stacked inside the door, placing one stick at a time into the teepee with care. Unhooking my bow from the rafters, I spread the kit out on an altar of paperbark. Despite my muscle weakness, a coal comes easily. Stripping off my damp clothes, I stand as close as I can get to the fire without getting burnt. The kindling sticks are bright candles of flame, to which I hold my outstretched palms. The warmth spreads over me in showers of shivering delight. Fetching some kitchen supplies, I chop a sweet potato, a carrot, seaweed and dried herbs into a billy of water, watching as they soften in the boil. Mixing in a spoonful of miso, I take a slow mouthful. Holy sacrament, sweet elixir of the gods. The warm liquid pools in my belly, hugging me from the inside, while the fire wraps its warm arms around my shoulders. I look over to Wild Woman from across the fire. She seems to be smiling, the hands I can’t see perhaps holding up two fingers in a V for peace.
The sphere of my home is my circle for this, the last day of the quest, and I explore it like a new lover’s body. Wrapping my mouth around mountain devil flower heads, I suck hungrily at the nectar, nuzzle my nose into fresh banksia flowers and pause to allow gum leaves to tickle the back of my neck. In the leaf litter, tiny ringlets of bark lie curled under gold-top mushrooms. I discover a red-legged spiky insect so unlikely that I wonder whether I am the first human to see it. A grasstree has pushed up an asparagus-like spear of new growth, the needles tenuously clinging together. I tease at them, plucking a few free before I break their hold with a single twist, and they spill out in a fountain of pale green. In my absence, the plant that I had spared in my shelter clearing has burst into sweet-smelling pink boronia flowers. I cradle them in my palm.