by Claire Dunn
Towards dusk the sun pierces the cloud cover in a long furrowed opening of soft pink. I stand and watch, swaying in time to the slow beat of the frame drum I’m holding. I recognise this woman standing alone on the earth within her circle. This is what she was trying to tell me. My vision quest doesn’t end at dawn tomorrow; the entire year is my vision quest. I don’t have to take myself away and starve to be within its circle of transformation, just like I don’t need to hammer down church doors and fight to find peace. Maybe all I need to do is knock.
Stoking the embers inside my shelter, I prepare for an all-night vigil but fall instead into a deep sleep. I dream of a baby boy lying beside me, sleeping. When I wake to first light, I reach for my journal, the lines I scribble more prayer than poem.
Perhaps grace too,
may one day tiptoe in under the cover of darkness,
wrapping a shawl of the softest fleece
around the sleeping one,
who, only yesterday,
gave up the storming.
WINTER
*
What is there, after all, besides memories and dreams and the way they mix with land and air and water to make us whole?
Robert Michael Pyle
*
The sacred order of survival:
1. Shelter
2. Water
3. Fire
4. Food
1.
I wake to the cry of a solitary currawong, muffled through the grass walls. It sounds marbled, a lament tinged with yearning. I close my eyes to the tendril of light reaching in for me and instead let the dream images hovering on the edge of my awareness pull me back. A kitten, playful and curious, lost inside a noisy nightclub. I’m looking for it. Where has it gone? My grandmother, smiling at me encouragingly.
The vine of light has wrapped around my ankle, tugging gently. Groaning, I obey, pulling on thermals, parka, boots, beanie, scarf and gloves. Strands of blady grass brush my hair as I stoop under the archway door and step out into an ethereal white mist.
Steam rises from the snaking stream my pee makes in the sand. A piece of scribbly bark makes good enough toilet paper. Shrouded in white, my shelter looks like a giant forest snail. Winter becomes this forest, the mist softening the sharp edges, air-brushing the scars. Everything is slowing, contracting, having been pruned back to its pure form: the thump of a swamp wallaby moving north along its breakfast route, the drop of nectar hanging from the single remaining blood-red mountain devil flower, my exposed brown wrists collecting a bracelet of damp. Sporadic bird calls punctuate the quiet, like bells in a monastery. I focus on the spaces in between. There is no absence of sound in these gaps, though. A hum grows loud in my chest and legs. My shoulders drop, as does my centre of gravity. I thrum in synchronicity with the forest.
My heart swells with the fullness of this precious moment. I send out a silent greeting along the spine of the currawong’s call to all who share in this dawn with me – the winged ones, the four-leggeds, the scaly creatures curled in hollow logs and burrows, the underwater dwellers in the cold creeks and billabongs, the invisible kingdom of insects, the soil munchers, the leafy green monks surrounding me, and the silent earth itself. The mist rises like a prayer, blessing everything it touches until it dissolves into the sea of blue above.
I didn’t include two-leggeds in my blessing because there aren’t any others. Just me. Kate, Sam, Nikki, Ryan and Dan left a week ago for the indigenous community of Mapuru in Arnhem land, the women to learn basket weaving and bush food, and the men hunting. I visited this community a couple of years back and had originally planned to join this expedition. But even the thought of reconnecting with my adopted family on their red-dirt homeland didn’t tempt me away from my four-season vigil on this patch of turf. I don’t want to miss a beat – not of bat or butterfly wings, nor of my own heart. It felt like a brave decision, going against my usual pattern of gobbling up every opportunity, but the chance to be here alone, finally – gloriously – alone, was far more appetising. Well, almost alone (why is there always a catch here?); Chloe stayed too, although she’s currently away on a one-on-one bird intensive with the amorous ornithologist.
But right now, it’s just me and wild nature for kilometres. Just me and this deep, deep quiet, this gossamer light inviting me to slow, to soften, to curl in on myself. Until now, my days and weeks have been hedged between shelter building, workshops, vision quests, group obligations. I’ve been holding back, hesitant, waiting. This is the season when time can roll and tumble unimpeded, can stretch until it’s thin as a veil, so thin it may disappear altogether. When I can finally let impulse and whim direct my days, follow the shadow and scent of things rather than the things themselves.
I yawn, stretch my arms as far as they’ll reach and let out a little squeal. The sound of my own voice surprises me. I shiver with excitement.
And cold.
To fire, or not to fire. That is the question. The promise of a hot cuppa overrides my reluctance to go through the rigmarole of rubbing sticks together, so I start gathering kindling, the sharp snap of twigs ringing through a forest still rubbing its eyes awake. A breaking stick glances off the blister on my palm and I yelp. Despite my breakthrough coal, most of the time the hand-drill still eludes me. If it wasn’t for the bow-drill, my no-matches commitment would have been sent to the rapidly filling glass cabinet labelled “ideals”.
The need to make fire is more palpable since the cold appeared, and the others disappeared. It’s my sticks or nothing. Although the worst that could really happen would be that I’m cold and miserable and eating raw rice for dinner, my limbic brain is acting as if I am stranded alone on the savannah with wild beasts waiting to devour me. Fire constantly flickers through my thoughts, generating a worry cycle of imminent failure and sending me scuttling back to my shelter long before dark to start preparations. I have been engaging in some serious fire insurance activities – carving bow-drill spindles and notching them onto boards; collecting grasstree stalks, dry bracken fern, whiskey-grass seed heads and stringybark shards. On my last town mission I stripped the fibrous mesh from a cabbage-tree palm in the street and plucked seed heads of bulrush from the highway verge for tinder.
Looking down at the tender bloody lumps on my palms, I reach instead for the bow-drill kit. I have made solid friends with this fire-making method, although I’m still using parachute cord for the bow string, so I’m no maestro yet. Another thing on the list.
Smoke starts to billow vigorously from the friction point almost immediately. I stop for a peek. The dust is coarse and brown, fraying out rather than knitting together. The notch has already chewed through half the board. Hmm, the casuarina spindle must be too hard for it. If it’s not one thing it’s another with fire; it’s as tempestuous as a two-year-old. I really don’t feel like carving a new notch and am not sure my half-frozen fingers could coordinate the action anyway. Damn, I just want a cup of tea. I launch back into the bow with a logger’s intensity, seesawing back and forth until the spindle breaks through the board into the dirt. With desperate hope I fan the clump of motionless wood dust. I’m about to stomp off when a tiny spiral of smoke erupts. A submarine coal. Crouching back down, I purse my lips close and whisper a breath. The coal gradually grows into a fiery orange marble, robust enough to be transferred to the blady grass tinder bundle and blown into flames. Soon I am sitting, smug as a Cheshire cat, under my paperbark lean-to, cuppa in hand and porridge bubbling away. The world is a wonderful place again, now there is fire.
Fire gurgles in baby talk, making self-satisfied crackling and popping sounds.
Happy now? It asks with a loud fart, as I poke a stick into its belly.
I smile and offer it a sprinkling of dry gum leaves. Fire claims the snack hungrily, thanking me with an explosion of bright orange sparks. I drip-feed it to keep it small, after discovering rece
ntly how easily fire can become overexcited if fed too much, the charred stain on the paperbark ceiling a constant reminder of this. I curl my legs around the rock fireplace and expose my belly to the flames. We rise and fall with purring breaths.
A flutter of wings in the banksia alerts me to the arrival of my breakfast companions – a flock of small birds that have banded together in some kind of food cooperative, seemingly using the power of (wing) numbers to flush out more insects. I reach for the binos hanging behind me on a hook. The brown thornbills have a strong showing this morning, feasting away in the mid-storey. A family of wrens bounces along the ground, a grey fantail fussing over it all from above. Eastern spinebills and white-cheeked honeyeaters are the other regulars in this core collective. This morning is quite a party, the grey shrike-thrush and white-naped honeyeaters joining in, even the scarlet honeyeater making an appearance. They aren’t at all dissuaded by my fire; in fact, they seem drawn to it. Perhaps passed down to them is the memory of insects swarming the fireplaces that once dotted this landscape on winter mornings. My kitchen fireplace is one of three dining areas I can now choose from, the latest an alfresco space out the front of my shelter, with a log backrest and a tripod to hang my billy on. It’s all part of the primitive IKEA binge I’m on – gathering, carving, whittling and weaving gadgets to feather my nest. If I’m going to hibernate, I want to do it in style and comfort. Like a true first-home owner, I’m fizzing with ideas for interior design improvements: baskets to hang my veggies in, as well as more intricately woven baskets and dillybags; coal-burnt wooden utensils and bowls; string hooks to suspend my pots over the fire; gourd water bottles. I’m keen to give pottery another go and can picture some naturally woven matting for my kitchen floor (which I’ve discovered floods in heavy rain). Then there’s tanning hides to make clothes, rawhide lamps and water containers. I also want to experiment with bulrush flower heads and hardened banksia cones dipped in animal fat to replace candles.
Shuffling through my mental list of “things to make and do” excites me enough to fetch the bangalow-palm-leaf sheath that has been soaking overnight. It’s great material, so far doing a stellar job of keeping rain out of my chimney. I’ve also had success with stripping it into ribbons and making a coarse cord. This piece is hopefully going to replace my plastic bucket. I fold one end in on itself like I’m wrapping a present, and pierce it with a wide-eyed needle threaded with gymea lily cord. Knotting the end, I tug the cord through in gentle pulses. Bone needle, I add to my mental list, as I cross-stitch down the fold. A warm contentment spreads through me, as my fingers find rhythm with the work. Like the palm made soft overnight, I become absorbed too, swelling and softening with the task in my hand.
The last week of crafty days has felt like one big pyjama party, indulging my desire to be a homebody and simply potter. The word itself is almost as pleasurable as the activity: pottering. The art of doing lots of little things with the feeling of doing nothing much at all. Or perhaps it is the art of doing nothing much at all with the feeling of doing lots. It doesn’t matter. The pleasure comes not from ticking things off a list, but from flowing between things on a whim, physically moving through a space, absorbed by the act of pottering itself. I know I’ve had a successful potter not by the number of things I’ve achieved, but by the sense that I too have been fluffed up, rearranged and adorned with fresh flowers.
When I was growing up, pottering was a luxury squeezed between more important activities such as competitive sport, study and part-time work. My occasional mornings of aimlessness felt stolen and decadent. Those weekend afternoons when tennis was washed out, and I could stay home and read or cook, were some of my happiest. But when the sun shone, life had to resume apace, and potterers who aspired to continue their shuffling became lazy – something you never, ever wanted to be.
My pottering pleasure has been tainted, therefore, by a sneaking guilt that trails me like a mangy dog. I’ve had to keep throwing it tidbits of productivity to stop it snapping at my heels. Even sitting here I can feel it stalking me, as if the enjoyment of coolamon making is momentarily bestowed upon me by an extraordinarily magnanimous part of myself, and is liable to be snatched away at any moment. I have three long winter months to do whatever I want, whatever my heart desires, I remind myself. I’m not sure if I believe it.
Fire grumbles with hunger and I nestle a log within the coals. Shy, fire hangs back at first, before leaping around it with fierce licks.
“You’re a bit high maintenance, aren’t you?” I joke.
Tending to this small being helps to absolve the nagging feeling that I should be somewhere else, doing something more useful. Fire is my pet, my responsibility. My lifeline.
*
The thin fingers of the sun are waving goodbye as the feeding flocks complete their supper alms round. It is a subdued dusk chorus. I look around to survey the results of my day. Looking like a miniature dragon boat, my bangalow bucket sits fat and full with water and cord. A shelf inside my shelter is a nature museum, adorned with shells, stones and bones, while underneath I’ve stashed candles, toilet paper and small tools. Whittled wooden hooks lashed to the main shelter frame hang with drying bunches of lomandra for basket weaving, and a hat rack fashioned from a many-forked branch sports my weathered Akubra and felt hat. I fiddle with the string loops of my most exciting addition: cobbled together from an old blanket and a branch, a shelter door that rolls up and down like a retractable awning. No more freezing nose in bed.
I should be pleased but instead I’m flat, restless. I poke at the remains of my morning fire, the coals cold and crumbly. While it’s not a feeling I have had to contend with much in my life, the scratchy yearning in the pit of my stomach is unmistakeable.
Loneliness.
What is it about this time of day that takes solitude and twists it into loneliness? It’s as if a primal instinct kicks in right on dusk, and I’m back out on the prairie searching wildly for my tribe before the lions can claim me. This afternoon it’s sharper, clutching tight at my guts and gnawing on them. How dare it! I’ve been hanging out to be alone for the last six months, and loneliness thinks it can just waltz in and stay for dinner.
The lone currawong bookends the day, pausing on the upward inflection as if waiting for an answer to its question. Not a breath of wind has moved through the forest all day. If it was still when I woke, it is positively statuesque now, a collective ear pricked and listening.
“Wheeeeeeee!” I yell defiantly, as I jump up and perform a little stamp and twirl, needing to prove that I have not turned to stone.
I busy myself with fire preparations, trying to ignore the gut twist. After I have exhausted all fussing, I sit as close to the fire as I can without burning myself. Cold currents tremor down my limbs. How long before Chloe returns, I wonder? How many kilometres between me and the next human? Come on, you’re finally alone by your fire. Enjoy it, for God’s sake.
The dark from outside is creeping in. I poke my head out the entrance and cast a quick glance around, glad to be able to roll down my blanket door. I’m in for the night.
Wetting some loose strands of native hibiscus on my tongue, I draw up my trousers and begin rolling them back and forth across my thigh like the women in Arnhem land showed me, adding in strands as necessary to make string. They would all be up there now, sitting around a fire together, the bright-eyed kids draping themselves over any available lap. I could be there too, but, no, this is where I want to be. At least I think I do. The back and forth action soothes me, the shivers slowly subsiding. A shaft of milky light lands on the crown of my head, the almost-full moon a single round eye looking in through the smoke hole. Good old Grandmother Moon, peeking in to check on me. Reminding me that I’m not alone.
It’s not being alone that worries me, but the company I keep sometimes when I am alone: the characters who come out to play in the empty rooms of solitude, the shadow walkers withi
n.
This is where I want to be, though. Here, with the moon on my shoulder and fire at my side. The last dregs of loneliness scatter under the moon’s gaze, and I smile up into her face. I watch as she dips below the chimney lip, then I put my head down and keep rolling.
2.
With a gasp, I lower myself into the envelope of icy water banked by fallen logs in Snake Creek and rub handfuls of small pebbles over my skin, an attempt to peel away a week’s worth of charcoal and grime. A few minutes is all I can bear. On a log, I catch shards of sunlight filtering through the trees. My skin tingles with a thousand pinpricks. I’m glad I made myself go in. I feel alive.
I wade upstream to check on the turtle trap hidden behind a clump of lomandra. The construction was a group effort during our trapping workshop in autumn. It’s mostly still intact, a semicircle of closely spaced sticks, driven a foot deep into the mud to prevent the turtle from digging its way out, and rising half a foot above the surface so it can’t climb over. A few days ago I baited it with some offal, propping the door open with a small stick, which I hoped the turtle I had seen sunning itself on a nearby log would dislodge on its way in. The beauty of this trap is that it’s non-lethal, the turtle swimming around in the enclosure while the trapper deliberates whether turtle soup is on the menu, or whether it’s too cute to eat. I’m not faced with that dilemma today – the meat is gone, and the door closed. I suspect the bait stick is too close to the door, allowing the munchkin to grab the prize and back out of there, licking its lips.