by Claire Dunn
I’ve got to get out of here. Jumping to my feet, I crash through the bush to where my bike is parked under a tree. Wind pushes my steel-wool hair back at sharp angles from my face as I careen down the hill, going anywhere but here. The wheels lurch between pot holes and wash-aways, but I don’t brake. I approach the bridge at speed. Three single planks of wood are spaced at car-tyre width. I tunnel my vision and mount a single plank smoothly. I’m halfway across when the handlebars wobble. The front wheel drops, catching between the planks. The bike squeals to a standstill, tipping violently to one side. I fly off the seat and over the edge. I fall as if in slow motion, watching the water gums above get smaller and further away, until I smash the surface with my back.
I sink quickly to the bottom, my head knocking hard against a flat rock. I momentarily black out. The cold creek infiltrates my wool layers, filling my many pockets and pinning me under. I’m aware this is happening but can’t seem to motivate my limbs into action. They do so on their own time, suddenly flailing with a violence that heaves me up onto the bank. I splutter and cough, my hand reaching instinctively for the rapidly swelling lump on the back of my head. What just happened? For a few moments, I can’t quite piece it together. There is no sequence of events, just an awareness that I’m very cold, and night is coming.
I need fire.
Shaking, I take the back path to my shelter. My fingers struggle to unpeel sodden clothes. I stand naked and stunned, shivering so hard I think my teeth might shatter. The coals in the fireplace are black. I look around in the hope that matches will miraculously appear. The cold drips ice through my bones. I need fire. Squatting, I scratch blueing fingers into the mound, blowing hopefully. Nothing. Against reason, I blow again, my face centimetres from the coals. A small red light shines a tiny spark. I pick my way to it with shaking hands. I whisper another breath. A blackened banksia cone lights up a window of red from deep within. My heart leaps.
I blow again and the light grows. Fire. I can’t believe it. It’s been here all the time, holding out for me, softly smouldering. It is the light of a single candle on a windowsill to a lost traveller on a dark night. One is all I need. I sprinkle it with bracken fern. It pulses and glows in time with my breath.
I’ve heard about the banksia cone carrying fire for a tribe across long distances, wrapped in lichen and mosses and paperbark to stay alight. There’s life in the ashes waiting for us to find them. The old ways are coming back.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” I mouth to fire as it bursts into flame. I blanket it with sticks. Wrapping a shawl around me, I curl up on my grass mat and fall into a deep sleep.
5.
“You’re right where you need to be,” Malcolm says with certainty, which is not the response I was expecting after the sorry tale I’ve just told him.
“Where, in the puddle on the floor, or the fireball of anger, or with the maniac dancing on the log?”
Malcolm laughs. I giggle too. It’s good to smile.
I shift my position on the front step of Kate and Sam’s shack. I’m glad Skype doesn’t have enough reception for video, if my black fingernails are any indication of the rest of my appearance.
“But Malcolm, I just feel like I’m going backwards. I thought the more I danced, the more I listened to my heart, the clearer I would become. I’m overwhelmed. It’s all just too hard, and possibly pointless.”
“Claire, you’re in the process of waking up your emotional body. As you tune into your feelings, all the emotional material from your life that has been unexpressed is cracking open and seeking release. As your awareness expands, so too does your capacity to feel. It can be joy, compassion and peace, but also grief, anger and suffering. As you chew through the undigested emotions from your past, the veil between you and your truth will lift.”
“That’s the problem,” I say. “I’ll have an inspiration to do something and then doubts will jump in, and I’ll question the whole thing and wonder what is actually motivating me, and then get paranoid I’m making the wrong decision.”
Skype crackles, and I press the headphones to my ears.
“The power of the feminine comes from responding to creative impulses as they arise, not from what you think you should be doing. Try catching the first impulse and going with it before your mind can jump in.”
I sigh. “It all sounds so easy talking to you, but as soon as I’m on my own, I just feel swamped and lose trust and feel like I’m … failing, I guess.” My voice cracks. “No matter what I do, it’s never quite enough.”
“That’s a very valuable realisation. Do you see how that belief has been driving you all these years?”
Malcolm hesitates, as if unsure whether to elaborate.
“Claire, you have chosen one of the most powerful environments for healing. By nature, the forest is in constant flow. When you immerse yourself in that fluidity, the parts of you that are stuck will quickly seek to shift.”
I’m struck by the image. It makes sense. The more I saturate myself in the rhythm of the forest, wandering and listening, the more the feelings arise, seemingly without a trigger. I’ve been judging myself for being out of sync, but perhaps I really am in the flow.
“But you’re resisting it,” Malcolm continues. “Your identity is crumbling around you, and the old you is clinging on, terrified of letting go.”
A sensation of vertigo comes over me, as if I’m leaning out over a great height. It’s true. I am scared.
“You’re dismantling your core operating system. It isn’t going to be easy. Transformation generally isn’t. Just keep leaning in to your sharp places.”
Leaning? I think I’ve been impaling myself on mine.
Malcolm thinks for a few seconds, his tone softening.
“Spend time near water. Watch how it moves, what its qualities are. Let it teach you what you need to know.”
“Water. Yeah, okay,” I say, happy for any suggestions.
“Claire, your boat has well and truly left the harbour. I know there’s no land in sight yet, but, as best you can, trust where the current is taking you and let go.”
With the clunk of the virtual phone, I take my first deep breath in weeks, my lungs expanding in relief that I’m not completely stuffing up. Gratitude for this cyber-elder pools in my eyes. I wish I could carry him around in my pocket.
*
I rest my back against a tree across from the swimming hole and bury my feet in the sandy bank. The water is still, bar the kaleidoscope of overlapping ripples where insects alight. A dragonfly hovers above the glassy surface, its image reflected back in pieces. A tea-tree branch submerged in the shallows releases a pungent scent of decay.
The billabong looks entirely different here at the neck, the wide banks tapering to a narrow channel, bunching the water in fistfuls before releasing them downstream in a mirror image of the place upriver where it funnels in. It’s like a giant heart, the trickling creek at either end the valves that pump life-giving waters in and out, the wide atrium accepting all that comes, warming the waters before sending them on their way.
How long does water rest here for? Minutes, days, weeks? It must be patient. On the far side where the bank curls in on itself, dust and stamens collect on the surface. But still there is no jostling movement, no unnecessary rapids. Water waits, knowing the time for change will come, when the rains will flush it clean again. Right now, water rests content in the task of holding so still that the blue-green arc of the swamp-mahogany leaves is reflected perfectly.
Downstream, the current skimming over stones tinkles a beckoning. Stripping off, I step in ankle-deep at the creek mouth. Tensing at the cold, I falter and grab onto to a clump of reeds. Allow, the water gurgles. I try to relax as it inches itself in painful increments over my thighs. Allow, water urges. Allow, allow, allow. I dissolve the rest of my body in the water until I’m floating
. Water cradles me with strong and gentle arms, spinning me slowly on the spot three times as if to loosen my grip on direction. Reeds tickle my back. Suspended webs hang centimetres above my nose. With half-closed eyes I let myself go ragdoll limp, drifting like a leaf on the surface. Currents dance around me, shifting my limbs to their flow. There is purpose and volition in their movement, but they follow no leader, responding in the moment to the obstacles and openings presented to them. The cold evaporates the more I surrender to it, the more I, too, become viscous and fluid, another trusting passenger on the journey back to the sea.
Afterwards, as I walk back to my shelter, I still feel like I’m swimming, my limbs light and jellied, my thoughts brief and passing. There is nothing but sensation, sun on goosepimpling skin, bare feet navigating the gravel trail. And then something shifts, slows, drops. I’m aware that I’m walking but don’t seem to be making any ground. The forest around me morphs, distorts, becomes brighter and closer. It’s like I’ve walked into a painting, no longer a two-dimensional landscape but a place of depth and colour and feeling. Trees that I have walked past every day jump out at me with individual detail – the birthmarks of burls, bark curling over like thick eyelashes. They stretch their long-armed branches towards me in greeting. I stop, open-mouthed. Look at this forest. Look at these trees! Not just biological systems but living, breathing beings – each with its own personality and presence – sentient creatures reaching tall towards the sky and gently swaying. My limbs involuntarily begin to move with them, frolicking in the watery playground. I look back on the pain of the last weeks and months, my lifetime even, with almost disbelief. So stilted, so rigid – I get it now. I’ve been splashing around in dirty puddles, and all the time the river of life was flowing around me. All I had to was let go of the bank.
I wander up to the edge of the quarry. The sun glints off the exposed scars of quartz. It is perhaps the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I throw back my head and laugh at the sky.
*
Ryan lifts the lid on the camp oven, a strong smell of cinnamon escaping with the steam.
“I see you’ve prepared something special,” I smile, knowing I am in for Ryan’s infamous one-pot wonder: baked vegetables with cinnamon and raisins.
“Dessert and dinner in one; you can’t go past it,” Ryan grins back.
This afternoon I found a note poking out from a tree near the entrance to my shelter, which read “dinner?” My acceptance was given with a tiny cairn of rocks near Ryan’s shelter trail. This is the first dinner I’ve shared with Ryan – well, with anyone – all winter. It was a serious relief not to have to think about fire this afternoon. I stretch out on the wooden floor and look up at the apex of the teepee.
“You’ve finished thatching?” I say incredulously, seeing that the tarp has been removed.
“Yeah!” he smiles and shakes his head. “Seven months later.”
He certainly seems chipper, more like the Ryan I’d first met in the breakfast queue at the tracker school, but he has done ever since he told me he was leaving after he returned from the Northern Territory. I assume tonight is our goodbye. I’m feeling a bit regretful that I haven’t spent more time with him, but then again … I’ve been busy.
“So … you’ve had a time of it lately?” Ryan prods.
“You could say that,” I laugh.
“D’ya reckon you’re done yet?”
“Hmm, not sure. For a time I hope. Wouldn’t mind a bit of a breather. How ’bout you?”
“Well, that’s kinda why I invited you over, apart from wanting to hang out, of course. Ever since I decided to leave, I’ve been having a great time. For the first week or so all I did was sit around and read and look at the bush, except this time without the guilty feeling that I should be doing something useful, you know?”
“Ha, yeah, I know.”
“I was seeing everything in a way I hadn’t before. It was all so beautiful. Every moment was precious, but not in a pressured way, just poignant or something.
“One morning I found some horse tracks and started following them, and ended up miles and miles from camp in someone’s backyard. It was hilarious. But, the thing was, I wasn’t trying to track, I was just having fun.”
I’m envious. A few days after my tree-inspired insight, I found myself slipping back into the old thought patterns, judging myself for the fall. I’ve tried everything I can to get the flow back again – lie in my hammock, dance, swim, but the more I want it, the more elusive it becomes. It might have something to do with a seemingly innocent list that I made during my brief enlightenment phase. Optimistically titled “Things I Am Inspired To Do”, the list nevertheless took on a taskmaster quality – goading me to place neat little red ticks next to the entries. Tracking. Trapping. Stag watch. Night stalking. Hide tanning. I watched, dismayed, as the trees shrank their heads back inside their bark shells.
“So, what’s your secret, Zen master?” I say.
“Quitting! I had to quit, to let go of the pressure to be here in a particular way before I could really be here … And that’s why I’ve decided to stay.”
“What?” I jump up and smother him with a hug.
“It’s crazy, isn’t it,” Ryan says. “All of us running around trying to get somewhere, and the place we really want to get to is right under our noses …”
“… and can only be found when we stop trying to find it,” I say, finishing his sentence.
“Yeah. When we quit all the bullshit – the judgments, the self-doubt, the striving.”
“So laziness as a spiritual practice, then?” I say, grinning.
“Something like that,” Ryan laughs.
He turns to retrieve two wooden bowls from a shelf.
“Oh, and Nikki and I are back together again. Just so you know. But that’s not the reason I’m staying.”
“No, of course it isn’t,” I grin.
“You ready for it?” asks Ryan, lifting up a raisin-dotted sweet potato.
I nod. “You have no idea how ready.”
*
As I walk back home in the dark, my mind contemplates the conundrum: how do I quit without giving up? If it was something I could just knuckle down and get done, then I would, but my usual tools – discipline, determination, willpower – are as good as useless here. This is not something that can be done, only allowed. It will arise only through not-doing. Through undoing. Through grace. I feel like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, scratching my head over a ridiculous riddle.
Once I’m tucked up in bed, I hunch over my journal, trying to work it out.
My pen pauses as I feel the magnitude of the shift I’m asking myself to make. I can sense myself on the edge of a threshold, yearning to step over and yet terrified of what I might need to sacrifice in order to live for even one moment in that glorious spaciousness, that vast open plain where everything is possible and where freedom is sweet on my tongue. Instead of answers, my pen offers a single question.
Can I give up an inch of the striving, without giving up the gifts of my longing, the ache that drives me onwards?
*
The next morning I head to the creek.
At snake bend I sit and wait for the trickle of the current over rocks to smooth and slow my thoughts. The earth under me is solid and still, seemingly opposed to the free-flowing river bumping up next to it. But isn’t this part of the river too? Without the banks, water would spill everywhere, losing momentum. It’s the very structure of the bank that directs and focuses water, gathering and channelling its power. A piece of debris teeters back and forth on a snag, the current massaging it free. Water is no passive receiver in this process, though. The push and pull it exerts simultaneously shapes the banks, carving out its chosen course.
Perhaps the bank is like the mind – able to shape the flow of creative energy into a
form that can manifest its potential. If the bank were to try and take over, straightening the twists and turns of water’s natural course, creating dams and causeways to control the flow, the river would lose vitality and stagnate. When they work together, each respecting the function of the other, they gain the ability to swell together into a large and powerful river.
Goals and intentions could be similar, a goal like a bank without a river, rigid and dry, gripping on to a premeditated route and outcome. An intention, however, is softened by water, flowing with the double-backs and S-bends of life; it allows the changes wrought by tributaries and fallen logs, all the while holding firm in its desire to move steadily downstream. I’ve been too long on the parched bank. I need to give up the effort of moving towards a goal, and dive into my intention of living in flow with my heart.
Releasing the contemplation, I watch as currents swirl and eddy over each other with ease. A burst of bubbles suddenly appears on the surface, shortly followed by another. A turtle, perhaps? A silky fur back appears. Could it be? Oh my God, it is – a platypus! I try to contain my shivery excitement. It dives down to nuzzle the bottom with its bill, and I crane my neck. It surfaces, this time closer to me. It’s a smaller one, and even more outrageously cute, than I remember ever seeing. When the platypus was first taken to Europe, the scientists thought it too odd to be true and declared it a hoax. I’m not surprised. In what strange mood did the Earth dream up this oily little creature? I drop a few giggly tears at the crazy beauty of it; it is slippery and silent as it disappears again.
*
Tonight, time has stopped, and whenever I wake from an epic dream, I feel like hours must have passed. I don’t mind. It’s a deliciously dark-chocolate night to hang out in. I picture what is around me, the laden tinder basket, the seaweed hanging from the roof stiff as bootlaces, the timber bowl caked with egg and sweet potato. My shelter shivers and creaks in a breeze. I imagine the hairs of the thatch standing up like goosebumps. Poor thing, it’s probably cold.