Nature's Place

 
Outside the Billinudgel pie shop I saw a flower nine inches across. As usual I can’t recall the name but it was a real beauty and obviously cared for – acknowledged – loved.

Beautiful shades of golden yellow and orange silk petals spread to the afternoon sun soaking up its light as the knowledge, from behind, of ‘flower’ – this flower. Radiating its colour, form and texture. Taking from the ground the matter necessary to hold the form, however fleeting, to converge at the centre to transmit its message up the totem into the world of passing insect sense. Love me! It cries.

To people too, deep inside.
 

 
Copyright Reserved / Mark Berkery
 

 
Mine is usually the only car at this entry to the NR but today there was another and it was lived in. The driver was sitting inside and we said hello as my door closed with a clunk and I was on my way down the trail.

Knowing the dark side of human nature there is a certain wariness when meeting a stranger in the bush. A certain openness usually allows space to gauge the other.
 
The sun was warm on my straw hat and the cool breeze blew through the vents in its side. I was aware of the easy gait of my body, the pleasure it is to walk, the sensation in my hips and down my legs as they took the weight. The ease with which the body balances when it isn’t misaligned.

The rough silky grain of the wooden walking stick, cut from a tree a long time ago, was apparent in my hand, the colour light to my eye. I don’t use it much walking in a straight line on a relatively flat surface so it was balanced on my shoulder some of the time, and in my hand. Nicely balanced.
 
Around noon the sun is high on the N to S trail and very quickly I felt it hot on my back, no shade yet. As I walked the cool wind rustled the light spring leaves in the treetops and caused the bigger branches to groan and squeak against each other as they swayed.

Every now and then, though it is always now, I heard the call of one bird or another in the distance through the bush. And sometimes not so distant. Birds talk a lot. If you listen without minding what might be said you can hear deep inside and the body smiles.

The truth of what bird says is in the sound of it. Some sounds go deeper than others and touch different places, as the notes of a piano only much vaster in scale, some are solemn and some may cause you to laugh. Some are stony grim and some are whispers of lightness in the shade of the bush. Some a warning and some an invite.

None are negative. All will take you inside. And it doesn’t serve to name them.
 
A dragonfly greeted me on the path, circled me a few times, and then darted up the trail zig-zagging ahead of me. This one was of the wood, its colour and patterning wouldn’t be seen against the bark of the trees that grow here. I was pleased to see him, or her.

The damselfly’s are out as well, lightly coloured blue, gossamer wings glistening in the sunlight. Beautiful little things.

And one grey grasshopper bouncing around the dusty, sandy, stony trail. Seemingly lost in that desert six feet wide.
 
I went down a side trail that is rarely used and is overgrown with fern and bushes and small trees hung with lichen and creepers in places. Occasionally speckled with yellow petals from the bush flower endings. Here and there a fallen tree closed the trail to form another going around it.

This is a very old forest, you can feel it, you can see it now and again in the rotting three foot diameter trunks lying on the earth, host to a host of plants and creatures. A forest in themselves, shades of green and brown riven with ancient tracks.

A startled wallaby bounded through the bush to my right. Off down a trail I know only leads to swamp, where I can’t go. A flash of light brown as it disappeared into the shadowed bush. There are a lot of them around here, usually seen crossing the trail at dusk.
 
When I got back to the car the other fellow was making a cup of tea and we talked for a few minutes. I could see his car was chock-a-block with stuff. He also has some automatic night photography equipment he uses in an attempt to capture an image of the local mythical wildlife, the marsupial dingo.

I hadn’t heard of this before but he was serious in his quest.
 
I think the rarest animal is the man content in his being.
 
Copyright Reserved / Mark Berkery
 

 
God said to a young boy; “Dig a hole for me son.”

And the boy was delighted, he loved digging holes, and he loved to help. So he set about digging the best hole he could with his boy’s tools.

The boy enjoyed his work and every now and again he would call out over his shoulder; “Is this a good hole?”

He enjoyed digging his hole so much he didn’t even notice the years go by and the boy grew into a man, at least on the outside.

Over time he stopped asking if the hole was any good because he never got an answer. He just focused on the hole.

And through the years he found bigger and better tools to dig his hole with until he had the biggest hole on Earth. And the biggest piles of rock and dirt.

Still he kept on digging, because he just loved digging holes.
 
When he couldn’t make the first hole any bigger he would just start another one somewhere else. And a third, the fourth and on and on he dug.

Before he knew it the man was old and grey and eventually he even forgot why he started digging the hole in the first place.

Along the way he had even invented this ginormous hole digging machine that was selling so well he could never want for anything should he live a thousand years.

Still he went on digging.
 
One day as the old man was sitting down after a hard days digging and wondering, not for the first time, “why the hell am I digging this damn hole?” God came up to him and asked him; “Have you had enough of digging holes yet son?”
 
Just then there was a mighty crash of mechanical force as the garbage man did his rounds outside the window and the young boy woke from his nap with a start. “Uh!”

He got up, dimly recollecting a dream of digging holes, and went to his mum who was preparing food in the kitchen and hugged her around the knees.

“M’goin owt back t’play ma”, he said. She smiled at her little boy. “Don’t ya go diggin no holes f’me t’fall’n owt dere, will ya?”

Just then a light flashed in his head. “N’way ma.” He said as he ran out into the garden.
 
Little Angels
 

 
Copyright Reserved / Mark Berkery
 

 
It’s that time of year when the weather can change in the blink of an eye. Sun, rain, hot, cold. Wild time of year. That time of life.

Right now I can’t hear anything but water hitting the roof of the house. It’s pouring down. Thunder rattling through the house.

God is pouring down the water of life to thunderous applause, how else could it be? Whatever dies is life to something.

And whatever lives dies. There’s only life left, or is it death.

The more one is inside the more whole the outside looks, inside.
 
Outside it all looks the same to the uninitiated, work is work, weather is weather, people are people.

But, really, one is the other. When I am less than two inside.

The passage is sometimes a deluge and you have to be careful not to get flooded or washed away.

Just stay out of the flow if you can. To the high ground where little lives. A hazardous climb. A slippery slope.

It’s where the sun shines first. Inside.
 
If you get to the top and the water keeps rising stand on your toes, look to the stars, breathe carefully and pray for help.

And if it still keeps rising? “Swim laddie!”
 

 
Copyright Reserved / Mark Berkery
 

 
No, just do and die – that may not be without difficulty.
 
At Brunswick Heads today I was watching some birds in the trees. One had a large something in its mouth and two others were trying to get a bit of it. They didn’t have any luck; the first one flew away to a nearby tree and bashed whatever it had in its mouth off a branch a few times. To soften it up or kill it, no doubt.

The bird ate alone. As I was watching I saw something drop from the bird to the ground and kept focus on the spot in order to see what it was. I got to the spot and for ages couldn’t see anything but dry leaves, twigs and the usual plants.

I knew something big had fallen so I went on looking. Then something moved and I saw it. It was the same colour as the dried leaves which explains why I couldn’t see it before. I could see it was a moth and it had a wingspan of about five inches. It was big.

The amazing thing was it had no body. Its body had been eaten by the bird and the rest of it discarded, I presume. But it was still very much alive and doing its best to stay that way, crawling along the ground and scrambling up any tufts of grass it came to.
 
Nothing alive wants to stay on the ground for long in Australia, it’s the ants – the ubiquitous ant. Though I did come across a noisy miner sand bathing, or was it ant bathing? So it would be more right to say nothing that can be hindered in its normal functioning by one would want an ant on it. The Black Wasp for instance.

The ants were out. They must have sensed potential food and they weren’t wrong. But, search as they did, they didn’t quite hit the spot while I was there. The moth still had its legs and head and its wings were dragging out and behind it. No ant on it.
 
It didn’t have long to live but it didn’t give up either, no despair at its plight in it, just the undeniable will to live.
 
Copyright Reserved / Mark Berkery
 

 
I am told by locals the recent cold spell is almost unprecedented for the area and it is telling on the frog and toad population. Everywhere I look I find dried out frogs and toads and not just around the house. In the rainforest I found a giant toad on the track that hadn’t been touched except by death.

As in a recent post in July, Just Doing What They Do, they are just stopping in their tracks and dying, in the grass on their way somewhere, under a water plant by the tanks, one died absorbing water through the skin of the belly, another climbing a stone, sheltering under some leaves. Everywhere.

Cold and hunger, the almost complete absence of insects as food, is killing them off at decimation rate.

Clearly, life, that which animates the structure, leaves the body.

And the bush flowers are blooming.
 

Walking in the nearby swamp yesterday I was observing the life forms at a few muddy pools of water in the ruts where 4WD’s had passed across the sodden earth. I only saw them when they were disturbed by my passing close by. Bees. They were taking water and nutrients from the wet earth.

If it was only water they were after they could have taken it direct from the pond, as some did. Bees get thirsty and need their vitamins, just like you and me. They were the same kind that stung me, last week?

They are not unlike me and you in their simple needs, just different. Creatures of sense, instinctive intelligence, in form.

The big difference is thought and emotion, they aren’t burdened with it.
 
Copyright Reserved / Mark Berkery
 

Back in the sixties when flower power was at its height I wondered what it actually meant besides being just a signature slogan of a subculture.

Now I know. The power of a flower is to reflect to me the world from whence it comes. A world of light and beauty behind this one where nothing dies. It reminds me from whence I come.

But only if I can truly listen. And I can only do that when the noise of mind is absent.

*

Drugs gave us an apparently miraculous shortcut to heaven but, as anyone who has taken them and is reading this knows, there was and is a terrible price to be paid in arrears. Just look at the aftermath.
 
Copyright Reserved / Mark Berkery
 

 
Billinudgel NR is almost open to walk in again, just two tracks still under water. For now. And no mozzies to bother me, significant that.

The NR runs right down to the beach at Wooyung which is where I went in from today. It’s a lovely meandering walk twisting this way and that so I can’t really see what’s coming up round the bend till I get to it. I enjoy that, the unfoldment of the trail, one bend at a time.

Expectation, knowing, takes the mystery out of it. And the trail without mystery is mere mechanics.
 

There are a number of pools on the track as wide as it in places and ruts, sand and mud. It is lined with all sorts of plants and flowers, wild ones. And really rough in places, pleasing to me. Natureful.

A ways in on the right is the old sand mine which is now a big hole in the ground filled with water and alive with plants and animals, lizards, birds, snakes and things. Though it is still too cold for much activity the birds are ever visible in their search for food. Tis a delight to watch the little ones when they get close enough to discern the action, seeking out the tiny creatures they often survive on.

Further on I turned right into a field of reeds, a boggy area with wallaby tracks criss-crossing it. I had to step carefully in places not to sink in the sodden soil, mud and peat. An open expanse of reeds and grass tufts bordered by trees of all kinds, the Aussie kind.

This is where I found the Violet, if that’s the right name. So far I have only found it in the one place, shaded and off the beaten track. You have to really look to find some of the flowers pictured here. They are often so small and quiet – is the word – and hidden, they are easy to overlook.
 
In another place I came across a bee reveling in a big yellow flower. I have never seen a bee spend so much time in one place. It went busily round and round the cluster of stamen and seemed to be just tucking in with wild abandon, oblivious to the observer. Scrambling, bumbling. Feasting in the afternoon sun.

Pollen, or honey heaven to a bee.

Another bee came along and tried to push his way into the flower but the first wasn’t having it. There was an exchange of loud buzzing and a bit of pushing until the newcomer buzzed off to another flower. It must have been a good one, flower that is.

It was delightful to see the vigorous engagement of the bee with the flower. Almost making love, you might say. Bees love flowers, especially fresh ones.
 

Later, as the sun was going down, I was returning home along the same trail and noticed a few small flowers I haven’t seen before. With a few tiny visitors, invisible to the unaided eye – mine anyway. The light was low enough to need the flash to capture the image.

All things have their place, an integrity that serves in the particular which serves the whole. Sometimes a little science enables a clearer, sharper reflection.

And balance is preserved no matter what.
 
Copyright Reserved / Mark Berkery
 

 
It has been dry for a while and the track into the forest was dusty. A very fine sandy coloured dust that rose in a cloud in the wake of the car.

I haven’t been to Mooball NP for a while and it was pleasant to be there. Sun streaming through tall gum trees, broad leaves of fern and palm and others fluttering in the mountain breeze, birds calling in the dark of the woods.

Not many insects, it has been cold for a while. But some plants are putting out flowers anyway. Nature knows best.

It was nice walking along the trails. Just me, the forest and its inhabitants. Not another person in sight or earshot. Quiet of mind. Silence? Sense.

Some things had changed, there were rocks on the track as if they had been falling from the steep hillsides and the slasher had been through recently clearing the firebreak trails.

There was some sign of the dry cold in the desiccated toad I found but the forest is well, you can see it. A clarity in the psyche.

I took it easy going up the steep trails. Taking time to look at the growth alongside. It takes time for the particular in nature to properly register so it’s important to be at ease and not in a hurry, giving attention. It is good to be at ease.

Some of the flowers are so small and blend with their background, or so it seems. Their gift is only for the relaxed of eye, the quiet of mind. Too quick and you miss them for they are not many or loud.
 
Copyright Reserved / Mark Berkery