RiverWalking

Sometimes at early morn and late evening a golden light spreads across the river valley. A shining luxurious glow hangs among the trees, gilding the branches, the leaves, and the watery avenue that is the Brisbane River. The mangrove leaves turn a bright lime green, the dew sparkles up the spiders' webs and the tree trunks gleam. It has hardly rained for months here, yet the sight of the glowing light reminds me of the light shed by the rainbow. I miss that. In the golden (de)light there is also a hint of that multi-coloured ribbon that spans the sky and a memory of the 'pot of gold' I once saw when the rainbow dropped straight into the forest of Mt Cootha. What a magical place. Sometimes the light comes just before it rains, but now, although there is the touch of light, no grey clouds form and no rain appears.

Parched. The land. The water seems to play tricks and gives the impression that there is no drought. The river rises and falls with the tides, and today, you can see that the tide is way way out. The banks of Sandy Creek are wide viscous chocolate filled with the breathing holes from crustaceans or other water creatures, and the upsidedown rootlets of the mangroves. Ducks waddle in the creek's brown water, stirring up the mud. The yellow light catches the swirling earth as it spirals beneath the ducks' feet, while the people walking their dogs and jogging are captured - and held - within the glow.

This is what you see when you go riverwalking in Brisbane. Riverwalking is also the title of the nature writer and philosopher, Kathleen Dean Moore. She is a marvellous writer. Her books Riverwalking and Pine Island Paradox are wonderfully evocative texts. They reveal her love of flowing places and her sensitivity and care for the land and her family. She is one of a handful of my favourite nature writers - Terry Tempest Williams, Richard Nelson, Barry Lopez, Scott Russell Sanders, Linda Hogan, as well as the writings reflected in the gorgeous journal Orion. I relish their words and their ability to harness the feelings exhibited by the natural world as if you, the reader, are also walking in their footsteps.

The other writer who has the same effect on me is the glorious poet Mary Oliver. The tapestry of her words stir the heart and compel the reader, me, to tell others of the generosity of her thread. Here is The Swan by Mary Oliver.

The Swan

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

If you would like to make a comment or add your own wonderful poem, click on Comments below.

In Search of Rain

Each day as I wake and look out at the sky and see its bright blueness and its clarity I wonder from whence cometh the rain. While parts of the country are still water-logged after heavy downpours and floods, here we cherish each drop, recycle the grey water onto the garden, bathe in less than a small bucket, and think about and pray for rain. Sometimes there are sights of grey skies, perhaps a hint of being overcast, but nothing or very little of the watery drop transpires.

The image of this tiny new branch with its luscious crimson and copper leaves emerged from the small eucalypt after the last rainfall a couple of weeks ago. It flushed the river and brought life-giving oxygen to the water. The river needs another bath.

Worshiping water, the water that flows in the river, through the ocean, in our bodies, through the blood, sweat, tears, urine and amniotic fluid, connects us to the lifeblood of the planet, to the element of 'Divine Water' (Arvigo & Epstein, 2003), to the gushing salty liquid that rises and falls on the tides of the river.

Rosita Arvigo and Nadine Epstein have written a generous homage to the Divine Water through their book called Spiritual Bathing: Healing Rituals and Traditions from Around the World (2003). Water is worshipped by many cultures still, and through the book gods and goddesses swim through mythologies, creation stories, religious histories, and is woven through rituals that revere the liquid bliss.

In the book they explore the spiritual significance of water rituals through ancient and modern religious practices, from Egyptian to Mayan, from Judaism to Islam, from Scandinavia to Africa. Cleansing rituals, rituals of purification, for protection or prosperity; water-based practices for scrying, healing and contemplation.

The spirit of water bubbles through the beautiful images, with the authors commenting: 'A spiritual bath usually combines water, prayer and ritual - and sometimes includes plants - to wash away the negative effects of ....[and here they list a stream of emotions such as 'anger, fear, grief and trauma, and a broken heart'](2003:3).

The earth, like the human, needs a spiritual bath, and the ground needs to be watered with 'aspersions' (meaning 'To scatter and sprinkle with water', 2003:2).

If you would like to make a comment, please click on 'Comments' below.

References:
Arvigo R & Epstein N, 2003, Spiritual Bathing: Healing Rituals and Traditions from Around the World, Berkeley & Toronto, Celestial Arts.

Awash, Aglow, Aflame

The river speaks ... ssshhhrrrrr .... ssshhrrrrr ... ssshhhrrrrr ...
One day's rain a couple of weeks ago, plus the slightly warmer weather and the sometimes biting wind, and the trees are awash with new growth and flitting birds. Silver-eyes dance from branch to branch while the Willie Wagtail chatters on the ground below. Mudlarks graze, a Cormorant waits on the dead tree just above the mangroves, the Grey teal family parades along the overhanging branches high in the tree's canopy, Parrots murmur through the eucalypt flowers, and the Galahs suddenly take off screeching with what sounds like delight, their pink wings aglow. The new growth on the trees is a mix of pinks, reds, coppers, aflame in the shining light. A raven and a currawong chase each other crazily through the trees - it's hard to tell who is chasing who or why. It's just another day on the river. But it's more.

In the book Sustainability and Spirituality - a journey through science, spirtuality and ecospiritual and ecotheological communities in the US - author John E Carroll (2004) cites the holistic perspective of mindfulness, kindness, joy and purposeful living, from Helen and Scott Nearing (1997), who list a number of qualities or attributes which underline living with true harmony among earth and community (human and otherwise). They write (and here I am summarising): 'Do the best you can; Be at peace; Find a job you enjoy; Live simply; Contact nature every day; Feel the earth under your feet; Take time to wonder at life and the world; Keep in close contact with social justice issues; Do research; Write, lecture and teach' (Carroll, 2004:17-18).

This is the world I seek, where social justice and eco-justice blurs, spirals and soars. It's the way the river speaks - as it flows through this evocative poem by Jeanne Lohman.

Rivertalk

is whatever comes along,
practice always here while we

keep on shore, all the time
saying we want to get wet.

But the river has ways
of sound and light, ripples

and waves that tell us:
don't be so serious, rumble in

where nothing is finished or broken
and nothing asks to be fixed.

Jeanne Lohman, Jan 27, 2006

If you want to make a comment, click on 'Comments' below.

References:
Carroll JE, 2004, Sustainability and Spirituality, Albany NY: State University of New York Press.

Breathing the River

Carbon dioxide, and its impact on the global ecosystem, has been the topic of media debate in Australia this week as the ABC airs the anti-'Inconvenient Truth'-global warming documentary. It's simply the sun's fault, the doco. says, not the fault of humans. This falls happily into the lap of those who seem unaware of the interconnected land, sea and sky ecosystem problems, or turn their backs on ecological devastation.

It was David Suzuki some years ago who pointed out that, often, the effect on the natural environment is not noticed as the incremental damage occurs little by little. Suddenly there are no trees in an area, or the air becomes over-polluted, or the traffic becomes clogged, or the water runs out. Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke (2004) in their book Blue Gold tells us that the water is under severe threat, globally, of running low and then, running out. A recent ABC program pointed out that, for example, that glaciers in Bolivia are melting at such as pace that the iced water from the Andes mountains that supplies the people, will disappear. Then where does the water come from?

Anita Roddick (2004:48) in the book 'Troubled Water: Saints, Sinners, Truths and Lies about the Global Water Crisis' (written with Brooke Shelby Biggs), tells us that 'water is a closed system'. What is fascinating about what they say next really brings home the water issue -
'All of the water that exists on earth today existed when the planet was first formed. The water in a dinosaur's drinking hole 250 million years ago may be the same water in your afternoon tea tomorrow.'

The book is filled with vignettes of water shortages, and water pollution globally. From scarcity to damming rivers, from sewerage outfall to privatisation, there is a thirst in the world; rivers are thirsting; rivers need 'cleaning'; rivers need to be healthy for the wellbeing of human and other-than-human.

Breathing the earth, the life giving oxygen, from trees and the oceans, supports our existence. The image of the mangroves at the beginning of this blog is a reminder of the sweet breath of the tree - to me - to the tree - to me - to the tree - to me. That's why caring for the precious ecological processes is so important. Being aware of the little-by-little removal of trees, especially in water catchments/watersheds, as well as whole-scale logging of rainforests and bulldozing of bushland, and the constant development which flattens the land, these things engender a world where nature is, sadly, in the descendent. Without the life giving processes of the dynamism of refreshing water exchange and clean air flow, our lives are .....well, you decide.

Here in my new home place, the chain saws are at work whereever you look/hear. The bats are losing their feeding trees, the possums are losing their tree houses, the birds are losing their trees to perch and search, and sadly, our lives become less full. But by the river there is life and a sense of wellbeing that the river gives. Thank you river.

If you would like to make a comment, please click on 'Comments' below.

References:
Roddick A with BS Biggs, 2004, Troubled Waters: Saints, Sinners, truths and Lies about the Global Water Crisis, Chichester, West Sussex, Anita Roddick Books.

Going Away and Coming Back

I walked in a different place. My former home place on the Bay. In the brisk morning not long after dawn the cold infected my fingers and toes. But the feel of cold was quickly displaced by the colour-changing sky which spread from mauve to mystic pink. And as I gazed towards the horizon watching for whales in the water, a pelican flew by above the small waves.

Whales had visited the Port Phillip Bay this year in increasing numbers. Humbacks. Magnificient leviathans. They are headed south to the place where the International Whaling Commission this year allows for numbers of them to be slaughtered. I can only cry and hope that the Sea Shepherd campaigners are able to stop the useless killing of these gorgeous creatures.

The Animal Freedom website tells the poignant story of how founder, Paul Watson, made the heartfelt decision to dedicate his life to saving sea creatures. It was 1975 and he and Robert Hunter, also founders of Greenpeace, were riding a Zodiac in front of a Russian whaling ship in an attempt to protect Sperm whales. It is such a powerful story of transformation that it is quoted in full.

'Paul Watson recounts how he looked into the eyes of the dying whale:

'With a shock, my eyes met the left eye of the whale like Odysseus facing the Cyclops. That one eye stared back, an eye the size of my fist, blackish brown and with a depth that astonished and gripped me. This was no brutish creature. This was no dumb animal. The eye that I saw reflected an intense intelligence. I read the pain and I read understanding. The whale knew what we were doing. This whale had discriminated. That message was beamed directly into my heart by a mere glance. Fear there never was, but apprehension vanished like a crest upon a wave. I felt love both from and for. I felt hope, not for himself but for his kind. I saw a selflessness of a spirit completely alien to our primate selves. This was a being with an intelligence that put us to shame, with an understanding that could only humble us. And the most shameful message of all passed over to me; forgiveness.

'In an instant, my life was transformed and a purpose for my life was reverently established.

'Contact lasted only a few seconds but it seemed like much longer. The whale became quiet and began to sink back into the cold embrace of the sea and death. As he slid slowly back, I could see the life fading from his eye. I followed that rapidly extinguishing sparkle of light as the cold briny waves doused the final spark and the soul of a majestic greatness departed, leaving only a mammoth corpse behind.

'Many whales had died during my lifetime, all victims of the ruthlessness of my species. It had all been academic. This was different. This was a death witnessed and attended by my shipmates and me. Between that one unknown whale and myself, a bond had been established. I would honour this great being with my service. I would side with his species in opposition to my own.

'That experience remains for me, to this day, my single greatest moment of revelation and the source of all my strength, courage, commitment and sadness. I was scarred and left with an accursed task. The experience robbed me of all sense of joy and wonder. Human happiness would never be completely possible for me. I had looked into the eye of God. I could never be the same again.'

This spiritual understanding and empathy between whale and human is profoundly moving. This kind of story is not uncommon amongst frontline activists. I have found that many environmental activists have had an experience of severe grief and trauma associated with nature destruction which, they say, has been the stimulus to their activism. For some like Watson, it is an immediate and sudden shocking scene - the death of the whale, the impact of clearfelling a forest or forest valley, the damaging effect of deep sea trawling with its huge catches, mega-bycatch, and devastation to the ocean floor.

For others, like the 2007 Australian of the Year, Tim Flannery, it was a slow and steady deterioration of the place where he grew up. The bushy beach suburb on the outskirts of Melbourne, and Flannery's place for play and exploration where his curiosity of science was spawned, was slowly whittled away through development and infrastructure. He felt it deeply; it was vandalism. In a speech a few years ago Flannery (2001) reminisces:

'When I was growing up in Sandringham it was a magical place. It was on the edge of the suburbs. There was still plenty of bushland there and I still remember, just as a young child, being absolutely enchanted by the birds, the huge diversity of birds, making cubby houses in the tea tree, the lizards, the frogs, this wonderful biodiversity was there. ... I was becoming aware of even though I was very young and within a decade or so, all of that bush and all of the birds and all of the frogs and the lizards, plants and biodiversity and that wonderful ** flora at Sandringham had virtually all vanished.'

Accompanying ecological conversion of activists is an ethic of care. A land ethic. A sea ethic. A river ethic. A place ethic. Being awakened to the luminosity of nature engenders not only a sense of care for the earth, but a sense of care for others, and a drive to preserve the precious ecosystems and all creatures - great and small.

If you would like to make a comment, please click on Comments below.

References
Flannery T, 2001, Inaugural lecture: The Normal Wettenhall Foundation: Memorial Lecture Series. http://www.nwf.org.au/Resources/Tim%20Flannery%20speech.pdf

River Conversion

Today, as I walked with my friend Kumi, chatting to people and dogs along the trail, communing with the water and watching the treetops twittering with birds, it seemed to me that the river was working its magic. With the full moon still shining, the day's golden light flowed through the branches; the river glowed; the sky was radiant.

In this place the twin concepts of communitas and liminality interact in the connections between people, and between people and place, through the lanquid tidal movement of the river, the touch of the breeze and the solidity of the track's earth. An emotion - a tangible feeling - arises that sets the riverspace apart from the regularity of daily life. There's a sense of exhileration at watching the Brahminy kites take off and fly across the valley, a sense of exitement to see the sparkling jewelled tail of the tiny exquisite pardalote, a sense of joy as hearing the Grey teal high in the branches above. Its insistent call called me and made me aware that ducks can live on high. And so each day, I learn more about the valley and its inhabitants.

Getting to know place, feeling the land underfoot, smelling the dewed earth, hearing the birds and the voices of rowers in the distance, being touched by this place. Embedded in this emotionally-charged connection is an awakening of kinship, where the heart is immersed deeply in this watery place. Can this heartfelt encounter be likened to a spiritual or religious conversion?

In discourse on religious conversion, it was surmised in the early 1900s that conversion events tended to have a mystical quality. It was suggested the converted underwent a sudden intense subjective experience which lead to an immediate understanding of the divine, a feeling of elation, a sense of the presence of an other, and a change within the self (Christensen, 1963 cited in Loffland and Skonovd, 1981).

Connecting with the river, with the ebb and flow of the tides, the creatures who dwell here, there is, perhaps, more of a subtle change, a subtle awakening and opening as the relationship develops. Perhaps this is the 'river effect'. Robert Greenway (1995) talks about the shift in consciousness and attitude in wild places naming it the 'wilderness effect' - an awareness or perception that occurs in wild places as we recapture our wild selves which have become smothered in teh busy city-driven lives. Wild land, wild rivers and wild oceans work their magic - they shift into our understanding, get under our skin and transform our lives. We begin to fall in love with new terrains. We miss them when we leave.

Being attracted by, and feeling an affinity with special places encourages an ethic of care. Places gradually etch their way into consciousness and conscience. Today when Kumi and I heard the Grey teal ducks chattering from their tall tree vantage point, and when we observed the Brahminy kites carefully examining the waterspace then taking off and flying directly overhead, the river effect was enacted. Magical.

The evocative writer Barry Lopez (1999), in an article in the wondrous magazine Resurgence, outlines that intimacy with place breeds relationship, love, trust, and care.

'To know a place you must become intimate with it. You must open yourself to its textures, its colours in varying day and night lights, its sonic dimensions. You must in some way become vulnerable to it. In the end, there’s little difference between growing into the love of a place and growing into the love of a person. Love matures through intimacy and vulnerability, and it grows most vigorously in an atmosphere of trust. You learn, with regard to the land, the ways in which it is dependable. Where it has no strength to offer you, you do not insist on its support. When you yourself do not understand something, you trust the land might, and you defer.'

Love and trust are indeed part of the conversion process. Trust in the ecosystem, in the movement of the tides and the pull of the moon that activates the rise and fall of the Brisbane River. Caring for the river, trusting the flow, learning from the ecosytem and the river species, this becomes a moral, even a spiritual or religious obligation. Acting with the earth, and its watery consorts the river and the sea, deep in the heart. This is what can be defined as an ecological conversion.

If you would like to make a comment, please click on 'Comments' below.

References:
Greenway R, 1995, 'The Wilderness Effect and Ecopsychology', in T. Roszak, M. E. Gomes & A. D. Kanner (eds.) Ecopsychology. Restoring the Earth. Healing the Mind. San Francisco: Sierra Club.
Lofland J and N Skonovd, 1981, 'Conversion Motifs', Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 20,4, 373-85.
Lopez B, 1999, The Language of Animals, Resurgence, 192, http://www.resurgence.org/resurgence/issues/lopez192.htm

Tree Ducks and Other Surprises

High in the leafless branches of an old eucalypt tree overlooking the river are birds which initially I could not identify. As I walked past I would hear a persistent 'engh engh engh engh' and occasionally a loud 'waaaa' which echoes across the river. Peering closer I realise these birds are ducks. Tree ducks.

The bird book tells me they are the nomadic Grey teal which can nest in a wide range of sites including tree holes, rock crevices and even rabbit burrows. They are known to perch on dead trees in the waterway. And 'their sexual cycle is triggered by a sudden increase in water levels' (Reader's Digest Services, 1976:104). But these birds are hunted - and are described by the Victorian government's Department of Sustainability and Environment website as 'the most numerous game bird we have'. Who has it? Game bird? Sustainability? This narrow anthropocentric view gives rise to a sense of ownership. Once owned, the bird is deemed property and the hunter can treat the bird accordingly.

The effects of such a notion of common property was famously critiqued by Garrett Hardin in his analysis of the 'tragedy of the commons' where no one person cares for shared resources. This lack of care leads to the resulting tragedy. The natural environment, wild lands, wild rivers and wild seas are all such commonly shared resources which, to avert Hardin's tragedy, need obligation, responsibilty and reciprocity - and an end to hunting these gorgeous water birds.

But the river holds other surprises today. A steep muddy cliff overgrown with gnarled spikey shrubs reveals an old plaited rope and I lower myself to the mud and mangroves below. On the way down I disturb a cormorant drying its wings on a branch while a fantail dances in the trees above. This must be another good fishing spot; it's certainly a good vantage point to watch the rowers and kayakers glide by.

Reference: Reader's Digest Services, 1976, Reader's Digest Complete Book of Australian Birds, Sydney, Readers' Digest Services Pty Ltd.