by Claire Dunn
I think back to my most recent conversation with Malcolm. He explained that, as children, we often absorb the message that love is conditional upon our doing something that gains others’ approval. The inner critic moves in to help us meet that perceived need. The problem is, the critic gets so comfortable in our psyche that it continues to bark orders at us long after it has worn out its welcome. I have a sense it’s not just the critic at work with Bob, though. I think he really does want to go to the glacier, but it’s getting all knotted up with his self-worth struggle.
My recent glacier was an overnight adventure on my bike into a state forest. What looked straightforward on the topographic map ended up being an absolute mission – I became lost and had to push my bike through deep sand for kilometres. When I finally limped it home, I crawled into my hammock, every muscle and bone unable to offer any resistance, thoughts too tired to even surface. I dropped into a kind of meditation, highly alert and yet deeply relaxed. Everything was amplified, softened, the single hum of a passing insect so vivid, so singular, and yet melting into a swelling sea of sound. My heart felt blown open. Did I have to push myself to the limit in order to experience this? I wondered. Or was it just another case of the critic pushing me onwards? I was too tired to expect answers, but they arose unbidden. There are many faces of the feminine, many voices within me, which all need expression. I followed the calling of the adventurer, the one who wants to explore, be tested, ford streams and scale mountains. And now I experience the one whose great heights are known only in pure receptivity and total surrender. Both are aspects of this complex being.
My fasting belly rumbles and I run my hands over my ribs. Bob is talking again about his fresh fish. It’s been ages since I’ve eaten meat. I’m pretty sure I’m low in iron, often dizzy when I stand up. I really should go and check the traps but can’t stop turning the pages. Yesterday I got there to discover that I’d left my knife at home. Carelessness. That is not the behaviour of a hunter, I chastised myself. Neither is this mid-morning lie-in. It’s yet another sign that I’m being half-arsed about the whole trap thing. Part of it is jitters about coming across a half-strangled wallaby and having to finish it off with my own hands. Mostly, though, it’s because the whole idea has slipped back into the realm of fantasy. I’m a helpless white girl in the bush, remember? Not someone with the boldness and skill to feed myself, to assert some measure of independence from consumer society. The thought of taking the traps down triggers an ache of disappointment. It’s something I really wanted out of this year. There’s been the bird on the beach and the snake and roadkill, but this is different. This is my mission. I want to know in all its visceral intensity what it means to take life, to be wholly responsibility for the meat on my plate. And not just any meat. I want to taste the flesh and blood of this country. To animate my body with the animate energy of this land.
I think back to Nikki’s possum stick and the idea of intention. Maybe it’s like it is with fire: you have to want it more than anything, and then let go of the trying. Take your arrows for a walk, but with an empty belly.
Dog-earing Bob’s book, I jump up into a squat, my hands raised like paws in front of my chest. I look left. I look right. I nuzzle the back of my hand with my nose. I hop forward onto my paws, my feet following in a single jump. I lean down until my hair falls on the ground and I nibble some grass. I poke my head back up and tip my ears again. With a giant leap I bound forward, legs like springs, feeling the weight of my invisible tail hitting the ground behind me.
My belly growls again. I rest my knuckles on the ground in front of me.
Wallaby family, I am hungry. My tribe is hungry. I send messages silently. I know it’s a big ask, but if you feel able to sacrifice one of your mob, I will do my best to honour its life.
But I totally understand if you don’t want to, I add, as an afterthought.
*
Threading my knife onto my belt, I head for the traps, a bit light-headed from fasting. Rain is sprinkling on Snake Creek when I rock-hop across, sprinkling in the pools of wallaby tracks in the sand. I follow them through the forest to the heath, past sunrise tree, taking a left onto trap trail. It’s quiet, with none of the usual thumps of disappearing wildlife. A willie wagtail hooks in front of me, landing on the wire above the first snare and swinging his tail from side to side. I approach slowly. Something has changed. A faded brown rope is sticking out of the grass. How did that get there? The rope is rusty and discoloured and … furry. I stiffen. It looks like a tail. I must be imagining it. I avert my gaze and walk on, calmly checking the other traps. They’re all empty. My heart leaps into my throat. It was a tail. Holy crap, it’s a whole wallaby. Please be dead. I crouch down and poke it. It doesn’t flinch. It takes two hands to roll it face up. Its eyes are milky, a noose pulled tightly around its neck. I scan for blood, but there’s none. It’s starting to stiffen.
I killed a wallaby. Oh my God, what do I do? Come on, this is your wallaby. You asked for this, remember? Cut the noose off, that’s right. Drag it under the fence. It’s dead, it’s fucking dead, and I killed it! Okay, calm down. I notice a pouch and my heart jumps. I peer in. Thank God, it’s empty. I burst into tears, wailing like a mourning mother. “I’m so sorry,” I blubber.
She’s starting to bloat, so I need to get her home. I edge my forearms under her body and strain to lift. Her head twists unnaturally to one side, leaning against my breast and staring at me with drunken eyes. I cringe and look away. I don’t want to do this. You have to. I juggle her until she’s cradled in my arms like a baby. Her mouth is open, the tongue lolling over my left arm. My right hand supports the rear, her tail arching over and bouncing in time with my step. The dead weight is so real. “I’m sorry, thank you” – I sob this mantra over and over as I walk, half-blinded by tears and rain. My arms begin to ache. I can’t believe this is the same three kilometres I just walked. My forearms go numb, and I hug the wallaby in closer to lessen the weight. It’s like I’m hugging a child. It is someone’s child. “I’m sorry, thank you.” My sobs subside into a soft cooing. I sing the lullaby my grandmother used to croon to me for the rest of the way home. By the time I reach the Gunyah and let out the loudest cooee I can muster, my arms are about to break.
“Oh my God, you’re joking. The snare?” Ryan calls out, jogging towards me with Nikki next to him. I nod. Thank Christ they’re here. Seeing the belly, Ryan starts flinging a rope over the top beam, Nikki helping me lower the wallaby to the ground.
“You okay?” she asks. I nod.
Following Ryan’s lead, I split open the skin between the ankle tendons, my own Achilles tingling in empathy. Feeding a rope through the incisions, Ryan pulls the rope until she is hanging upside down by the legs at head height. Blood starts a consistent drip from her mouth.
“Watch out!” Ryan calls, as a split breaks open and she swings towards us.
“Urrggh,” I say, ducking. I watch as Ryan attaches her again.
The others hang back to allow me the first cut. Her fur is still glistening from the rain.
“Thank you, girl. Thank you so much,” I whisper, stroking her side.
Pinching to raise the skin near the bumhole with my left hand, I inch the point of my knife in until it pierces the surface. Don’t cut through the sphincter, please. I screw up my nose, even though all I can smell so far is grass. The skin tears opens, like cloth ripping. Ryan and Nikki join me. Snip, snip, following an imagined dot-to-dot along the inside of the legs and arms, taking her apart at the seams.
Nikki starts up a dirge-like hum, slow and meandering. It helps to keep my hands steady as I nip away at the flesh holding the skin. I turn over her paws. The fingers are long and dainty, charcoal towards the tips, with dark nails. I spread them out on my palm, mimicking the way she would press them into the earth in a slow lope.
“Let’s keep them for tracking,” Nikki says.
The
wallaby is naked to the waist, the hide hanging over her head, as if she’s been caught in the middle of undressing. Her bare legs are pink and muscly. Grabbing fistfuls of separated skin, Nikki and I pull down hard. It doesn’t budge. We are almost swinging off it before the fat layers finally release their grip and the hide slides off with a suction slurp. Ryan helps to catch it, guiding it over the forearms and head as if unzipping the wallaby from a tight jumpsuit. Gloves of furred feet, paws and head are all that are left.
I brace myself for the next step – gutting. I circle her a few times, working my way up to the first cut, this time through the fat, revealing the first shocking glimpse of bright red blood. This is where she really comes unstitched, underwear and all. I slice as shallowly as I can. Snaking intestines bulge from the cavity. They are lumpy with pockets of greenery, dinner from last night, perhaps ingested moments before she was snared. I hope she died quickly. It looked like it, from the tight grab of the noose.
The first rank whiff of bodily fluids hits my nostrils with a wallop. I gag and look longingly at Ryan.
“It’s all yours, Ms Macbeth,” Ryan says, stepping aside. It’s just blood. This is you too, remember, just turned inside out. I turn away to take a deep breath and steel myself, then turn back and squelch my hand inside, fishing for the esophagus. I feel something like a corrugated pipe – that must be it. I pull it, the dripping throat of the wallaby lengthening as if choking.
“Okay, your turn,” I grimace. Ryan relents just in time to catch the guts, a writhing bag of giant worms.
“Gross,” I squeal and jump on the spot as they land with a splat on hessian bags. I’ve been trying not to be disgusted but this is the definition of the word.
“Well, you don’t get much more real than this,” I say, wiping my forehead with the back of my bloodied forearm, “Hung, drawn and nearly quartered.”
“They don’t show you this on the polystyrene packaging, do they?” Nik says wryly.
There’s a slight green tinge to some of the meat on the back. I admonish myself for not checking on the traps earlier. Ryan starts a fire to get the coal base going.
“Sorry, matey,” I say, as I lever my knife between hip bones, “They didn’t teach me butchering in school.”
It’s hardly quartering, more like a salvage operation. Still, we manage to collect the backstrap, most of the leg meat, the sinew for sewing, the paws for tracking practice, the tail for soup and the liver for tonight’s entree.
“What should we do with the guts?” Nikki asks.
“Well, we could make sausages … or a water pouch from the stomach?” Nikki makes a face. “Condoms?” I smile. I let Ryan saw off the head and bag it up, along with the intestines, for Jessie. Now would be a choice moment to have instant hot water.
I’m starting to feel nauseated, partly from lack of food, and partly from the sight of the carcass swinging from the beam. This wallaby was happily feeding on grass tips alongside its siblings a day ago, looking forward to easy summer days, to perhaps its first joey. What a sacrifice. How will I ever repay it?
I start chopping up the meat for the stew.
“You’ve forgotten something,” Ryan says. “The rule of your first successful hunt.”
“What’s that?” I ask dubiously.
“You have to eat the heart.”
It’s easily recognisable, a neat pink nugget amongst the offcuts. It fits like a slippery shell in my hand, a small fist enclosed within mine. I turn it over. It’s harder than I imagined. I lay it on the coals. It sizzles, quickly darkening in colour. I turn it until the coals no longer stick, the sign that it’s cooked through. I slice a corner off and take a nibble. It’s chewy and grassy, rich and dense. My appetite surges back. I bring it to my mouth and bite it in two. Almost instantaneously my lethargy disappears, as if my cells are already pulsing with new blood. I finish the second half in a few mouthfuls, my cheeks flushing red. Sitting back, I rest my hand over the place where the heart sits in my stomach, just centimetres from the surface. It pulses gently. I feel full, but not like I’ve eaten a heavy steak, just deeply sated. Nourished.
I look over at Nikki stirring the stew pot, her curls falling down over her face. How beautiful. Sensing my gaze, she looks up and smiles. That is how I repay the wallaby – by living a good life, a life of integrity and love, of service and meaning. This is what I owe everything that has given up its life for mine. It all seems so obvious, the responsibility of being alive and being fed by others, by the air and water and soil microbes. I have to live honourably, not because of some moral code I’ve come up with, but in order to honour life itself.
I send wallaby my last silent thanks for her sacrifice, for the opportunity she gave me to attend to death, and, therefore, to life. This is perhaps the best gift I’ve ever been offered.
4.
Nikki appears like a puff of smoke, a restless shadow in the willowy pre-dawn. Her wobble is almost imperceptible, a slight weave to her walk. I see that under her shawl she is wearing the same clothes she left in, one pant leg half-rolled, her feet bare. She glances once more back into the mist, then turns to lift her eyes to mine as she enters the sphere of firelight. Before she has gathered together words or gestures, before she has fully realised she is no longer out there in the shell-shocked silence of her vigil, her gaze takes me out there with her, into the excruciating rawness and emptiness, the beauty and terror of the moment-to-moment meeting of herself. I falter at the intensity of her presence, struggling to remember her as Nikki.
My hug brings her some of the way back, and I help her down by the fire. She sits and slowly extends her palms towards the flames. A small smile curls her lips upwards, as if she’s holding a secret, committing it to memory before the whirlwind of speech threatens to blow it away. Ryan wanders in next, soft and steadfast. They embrace wordlessly. Dan waits until the precipice of dawn to appear, perhaps relishing the last few moments of peace. Or perhaps he just slept in.
They sit quietly, staring at the flames, eyes wide, as if seeing fire for the first time. Small whispers of conversation emerge, scatters of laughter. Ryan gulps greedily at the bowl of miso soup Kate hands him, which revives him enough after a few minutes so that he notices the new hide top I’m wearing. He winks at me in approval. I grin. I have had fun playing primitive seamstress in the last few days. It was nerve-racking cutting into the hide with just a newspaper pattern to guide me. I left the naturally frilled edge to hang asymmetrically on one side and laced up the other with a thin ribbon of hide. I wore the top during my last visit to the quest area to check on the others’ marker boxes. They were my favourite times of the day, out there bobbing around in their bubble. By day four it was like riding waves of silence.
I hadn’t felt bad for not questing until now, when the results of my four days seem like a poor substitute for the internal handiwork they’ve been doing. I feel like a spiritual dole bludger, hitching a free ride on their enlightened coat-tails.
Stop the judgment. My task here is not to be the hardcore spiritual survivalist, it’s to follow my heart, which clearly did not want to quest. I have been enjoying my buckwheat pancakes immensely. Besides, I console myself, I’ve got something brewing of my own, something I want to do. A wandering walkabout. A quest of my own design.
It’s about time I set the terms and conditions for it. How long should I go for? What will I take? Maybe no food. Or just nuts and an apple? Two days might be enough; no, definitely three. Come on, this might be your last chance to do something spectacular. Just look at these questers – nothing gambled, nothing gained.
Whoa back, slow down. What do I really want out of this quest? I look around at the others, their faces still completely stripped of any masks. This is what I want. To live every day from such a place of connectedness, of grace. I know that getting to this place has probably been one of the hardest things they will ever do, every morning
waking and wondering how they would get through another sun cycle, at least once packing their belongings and standing on the edge of their circle with tears streaming down their faces. But they stayed. “Ask yourself,” Kate suggested to them for when things got tough, “how bad do you really want it?” My answer to that is with the longing of a lioness.
The smooth suede of my hide top brushes against my belly. Its softness didn’t happen through my sitting around wishing for it. It took elbow grease, tenacity, determination and patience. Perhaps this is the equation necessary for transformation. So, back to those walkabout quest terms. As I wrestle with the details, inspiration gives me the finger and promptly slips out the back door.
Dawn has long made invisible tracks back into the forest. Nikki and Ryan spoon each other by the fire. I start chopping zucchini for their first meal. By the time I have grated three beetroot and half my knuckles into the salad bowl, the terms of my contract have been decided. It is to be a wandering survival quest, taking only water and a knife, catching food opportunistically, leaving in four days and returning on the fifth morning. With a heavy heart, I sign my name in scribbly gum ink on the dotted line.
*
“Another slice please, extra cream,” I say to the waitress. She looks at me questioningly. “Actually, make that two slices and a latte.”
Like every other this morning this week, I woke with a sense of impending doom. The thought of yet another day on The Block, killing time before my quest, was more than I could bear. I caught a ride to town with Terri.
The waitress watches as I shovel the chocolate caramel slice into my mouth, the sugar and caffeine overriding one edge with their own – much more pleasant – spacey one.