WANDERING: FARM HUES


 photo blog6_zpsebfff6e5.jpg  photo blog1a_zps8c7442f9.jpg  photo blog2_zps74522f46.jpg  photo blog9_zpsa74b5261.jpg  photo blog1_zpsbe91a935.jpg  photo blog4_zpsdd9ab132.jpg
 photo blog8_zpsab972c65.jpg  photo blog3_zps203a8cb8.jpg  photo blog7_zpsbac6bb1b.jpg

On the last two times I've visited my parents' farm, I've found something that I didn't even believe existed there. First, it was the turtles in the river; which, in my 18 years haunting those riverbanks, I never saw. 

More recently, it was a tree-dweller I'd never even looked for. 

So, yesterday we were driving up the side of a mountain in my dad's 4WD. We headed through state forest and into National Parks' land, ricocheting along a washed-out fire trail, past grass trees and native orchids and towering eucalypts that made me feel vertiginous and insignificant and tied to the spiritus mundi all at once. 

I was staring out the opposite backseat window -- looking through the canopy onto the mountains below -- and thinking about how heights make me nervous and acknowledging that I'm an unequivocal valley/coastline dweller, when I spotted someone staring right back at me. 

A koala -- probably 200 metres away -- was sitting up on a branch of a giant, exposed gum, watching our white truck labouring up the mountainside track. And at first, I genuinely thought it was staring at me, personally. 

I yelled for dad to stop the truck, jumped out and ran to the edge of the track to watch the koala more closely. In all our time living with a back fence of bushland, we'd never seen a koala in our area or any neighbouring farms, so were considerably stoked and impressed as he clambered into a more leafy part of the tree and disappeared from view again. 

And while it might seem like just another weird and unexpected animal sighting, for me it underlined the thing I love most about the natural world: that every secret revealed, and every gift received is all blind luck. To me, seeing wild animals in their environment, or finding feathers or skulls or snakeskins, has always felt like finding something so rare and precious and privileged ... and I'm infinitely grateful that I was taught to feel that way about it. 




SKETCHBOOK: LOST IN PARADISE


 photo SKblog4_zpsa2c267cb.jpg  photo SKblog2_zps8462e6d5.jpg  photo SKblog3_zpsf52154a6.jpg  photo SKblog6_zpsb8038d53.jpg  photo SKblog7_zpsc3f78f62.jpg  photo SKblog8_zpsf56626f7.jpg  photo SKblog1_zpse761300c.jpg  photo Skblog1a_zps9fa91a85.jpg  photo SKblog11_zpsb8eb70b8.jpg  photo SKblog12_zps23219d05.jpg  photo SKblog13_zps5a530e25.jpg  photo SkblogLAST_zps9369a31d.jpg

What else do you do when you're lost in paradise?

Sit around looking at verdant expanses: watching for rain, for kingfishers, for visitors coming up the otherwise empty road. Spend time talking with old friends about love and expectations and how to identify birds, listen to playlists from when you were in high school, breathe the scent of the horses your neighbours rode over for drinks. Draw, pick hydrangeas, don't walk anywhere without first looking for snakes. Dive into the river -- just once -- without checking for submerged logs. Stand in the kitchen and think about how perfect are the wildflower weeds, the Warhol print, the ginger plants in the blown-glass vase, the pomegranates and the mangoes, the bottle emblazoned with the name of my dad's hometown.

   And I guess that's kinda it.

HOME, HOME, HOME


 photo 1flatlay_zpscd22f2d6.jpg  photo 2flatlay_zps0d7f08f5.jpg  photo 3flatlay_zps044a9b62.jpg  photo 4flatlay_zpsc3cf2247.jpg  photo 5flatlay_zpsc9ee3309.jpg  photo 6flatlay_zps66c1753e.jpg  photo 7flatlay_zpsf64aa3ec.jpg  photo 8flatlay_zpsd615d7e2.jpg

Here’s something I’m not proud of, but can at least be honest about: I love going on plane trips largely because it means I get to do sweet FA for a couple of hours. I told my partner this last time we were about to embark on a long-haul flight, and he looked mildly disgusted, maybe partly amused, but mostly, not at all impressed.

For most of my life, I was, by nature, a hugely lazy person. But I am now, by necessity, a hugely industrious person.

So the great thing about plane rides, for me, is that I get to indulge my latent lazy person with little-to-no-guilt. There is part of me that recognises that I could be using this air-time to work on my completely analogue profession: i.e., drawing. However, if I’m sitting next to someone I don’t know – which is likely – I don’t really feel comfortable with it.

So mostly I just sit, read, eat snacks, listen to Bowie, wriggle around impatiently, and have passive-elbow-battles for the arm rest.

And this afternoon, I am really, really looking forward to going through all that indulgent time-wasting. Because when I step off the plane it will just be going dark at the tiny regional airport that is edged on one side by a stand of low coastal scrub, and beyond that, the sea. And when I wake up customarily early the next morning, I’ll look straight out a full-height glass window, past a gumtree that changes colour in the rain of summer thunderstorms, onto a green valley, probably still thick with mist pending the rising sun, and I’ll know I’m home, home, home. 

THINGS STRANGE, BEAUTIFUL AND GONE FOR GOOD


 photo 1_zpsd5efd6da.jpg  photo 2_zps63861fa7.jpg  photo 3_zps4799a794.jpg  photo 3a_zpsa8379067.jpg  photo 4_zps62bcd1dc.jpg  photo 4a_zps097a3520.jpg  photo 5_zpse68b7378.jpg  photo 6_zps7dddf0a9.jpg  photo 7_zps79ad7438.gif  photo 8_zps29dddc1d.jpg  photo 8a_zpsd1257d72.jpg  photo 8b_zps1f6db702.jpg  photo 8c_zps28e9dd1b.jpg  photo 8d_zps8a91eea6.gif  photo 9_zpsd1830f43.jpg  photo 10Charleygreenfield_zpscf189074.jpg  photo 11_zpsee49d0c6.jpg  photo 12_zps2a0896f0.jpg  photo 13_zps398accd6.jpg  photo 14_zpsa5adf8d9.jpg  photo 15EmilyFaulstich_zps24e0264c.jpg  photo 16_zps47bd5760.png  photo 17_zpsa0da49c0.jpg
All lightly shimmering in the heat, these lifeforms, like wonders much reduced. Rough likenesses thrown up at hearsay after the things themselves had faded in men's minds.
- Cormac McCarthy

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...