These are the clouds my friends

In my family, it's my sister Anna who is the cloud expert. From her studies in climatology she knows the names of all the different types, and she knows the science behind how they're formed and how each type behaves. She's even a card-carrying member of some dubious organisation called the Cloud Appreciation Society.

While I don't have any of these formal qualifications, I think that I too am a cloud lover. Not just the big fluffy white ones that look like animals or toasters or things - though these certainly are amazing (I'm pretty sure they're called cumulonimbus). I love too the dark layer way out over the ocean with diagonal lines coming down, where the rain is falling, though to my eyes it appears a stationary grey mass. I love the storm clouds advancing from the south on a summer afternoon; a swirling blackness devouring the sky, their arrival heralded by the mad delight of leaves and litter dancing in the street. I love it when there are two types of clouds in the sky at once - the low lying wispy ones scudding lightly along so close you feel you could grab hold of them, and the higher, more aloof ones which float by at their own dignified  pace. I love the collection of squiggles, lines and shapes stretching away to the horizon that can make a look up to the sky such a wonderfully distracting experience.

And then there's the way the clouds dance around with the sun, veiling and unveiling, changing colour and shape as I watch. Oh, the sunrises and sunsets I've seen made a thousand times more spectacular by the blushing and ever-changing clouds. A sky-show that kings and emperors could not but be impressed by.

Considering how much beauty and diversion clouds bring to the world, I think they've had a rough trot in the English language. The connotations of clouds are always negative. What's all this about people being "under a cloud of suspicion" when they've been implicated in bad behaviour? Why don't you hear of happy people, whose life is just falling into place described as being "under a cloud of contentment"? Clouded judgment- bad. Head in the clouds - bad. I suppose there is cloud nine, which is undoubtedly a good place to be, but that begs the question - are the other eight clouds all evil?

It seems like we've forgotten that clouds are the carriers of rain, a replenishing and vital part of the cycle of life on earth. Maybe it's got something to do with our simplistic black and white view of things. Sun is good, rain is bad, nothing in between. It could be that clouds, in their never ending, always changing complexity and diversity, give us all the shades of grey.

Rain in the distance, Grampians VIC

Wispy goodness, Grampians

A flock of sunset clouds, Grampians VIC

Mallacoota, VIC

Mallacoota

East coast Tassie

Sunset on the Nullarbor

Sunset, Lucky Bay WA

This is what happens when you camp alone.

Just after Easter I went up to Barrington Tops for a few days of exploring. The first day’s hike was all uphill, ascending a sharp escarpment. I went hard, sweating out the accumulated frustrations of a busy day to day life. By nightfall I was exhausted and slept dreamlessly.

The second day was mellower. The sky was clear, the air crisp and the trail meandered along the plateau, passing plains, circling swamps and crossing creeks. There was nobody around and I didn't mind that.

That chilly night after eating I sat by the campfire. The creek was bubbling quietly nearby and I gazed into the dancing flames. My thoughts wandered, following threads of memories, ponderings and whirling dreams. Like the flickering of the fire, my mind leapt from here to there following a course of no discernible meaning. I turned around to get the fire’s warmth on my back and looked up into the night sky, aglow with shimmering stars. Looking into the universe, looking through time.

I kept up this slow rotation, to stay warm front and back. Alternately looking down into the fire and up into the stars it occurred to me that whether you’re looking at the small scale world of the senses –  the here and now of this body walking the earth  – or you’re pondering the big picture of the universe, God and love, this life truly is a wondrous thing. 

Oh, the night sky. (Not my photo. From http://www.ozsky.org/Gallery.asp )

Even as I was writing the previous post, misgivings were forming in my mind. While my main point, about observing and appreciating all sorts of weather, was valid enough, my privileged position in the world was made apparent and I now want to add a few further thoughts.

Only someone living in the developed world, with the means to buy anything possibly needed, could have the luxury of seeing the weather simply as a phenomenon to be enjoyed.

There are many in a less fortunate position who know that the weather, in all its merciless forms, can have greater consequences, even being the difference between life and death.

In Malawi 85% of the population are subsistence farmers. A wet season which does not deliver enough rain will mean the family, the region, the whole country, will not harvest enough maize for the year, and before the next harvest is due hunger will take hold. Famine lurks that close.

Even rain at the wrong time can spell disaster. If the rains come early, before the crop has had time to dry, it will be ruined and there will be shortages.

I read recently about the Sundarban Wetlands between Bangladesh and India. The largest river delta in the world, it is home to four million people. During cyclones the area is inundated with salt water, rendering the normally fertile soil barren. Suddenly, four million hungry people.

Image from http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/agriculture/postaila-salinity-defeats-sunderbans-farmers/article2087079.ece

We in the developed nations rely more heavily on the natural world than we may perceive. From where does our food come? Our fresh water? If there is drought, if there is flood, then where will our food come from? Bushfires in Australia, unprecedented snowstorms in the north of the US, floods in Europe - they all show us that even the rich world's technology and infrastructure may be swept aside by the might of the planet's changing weather.

With the terrible spectre of climate change looming, it seems a little glib to write about loving and appreciating all sorts of different weather.

Instinct tells me there's nothing wrong with observing and enjoying the weather I wake up to each day, I think it's in my nature to do so. But herein lies one of the the paradoxes of living. How to hold a joyous wonder at this world of beauty, while remaining in unflinching awareness of the injustice and sadness that is everywhere, every day?

One of the things I love about being out in nature is how the same place can show so many different faces, depending on its mood at the time. Think of a beach on a lazy summer evening, when the sea breeze has calmed to a whisper and the last of the orange sun glistens off the water as breakers tumble in, inviting you to splash and dive in their healing playground. Then think of the same beach on a blustery winter’s day, with a sharp southerly wind whipping the ocean into a foamy whitewash, as seagulls squawk and struggle against the bitter wind, and an icy rain stings your face as you lean into the gale, hands in jacket pockets and eyes squinted.

I love both these scenes. Not for me is the complaining about the ‘bad weather’ any time it dares to rain. Give me variety. Give me roaring wind, give me thunderstorms, give me a week-long soaking. Give me a hot westerly, a cold southerly, give me sunny cicada-drenched heatwaves. Lay it all on me and let me notice and appreciate it all.

Different times of day can reveal different moods. Sunset near Lucky Bay, WA. 

On that Barrington Tops trip I had the chance to see a couple of different places in a couple of different moods...

On the way up the scarp there was a gap in the trees enabling a view over a deep valley whose curves and clefts wound around, their dense green walls rolling off into the distance. I sat to rest and admire the blissful view.

On the descent two days later I passed the same place. A grey mist shrouded the landscape. I could see the shadowy outlines of two or three of the nearest trees but apart from that, nothing. A mysterious blank slate. The only thing moving in the smothering stillness was the mist itself, gently wafting up towards me. From within came the melancholic screech of a single black cockatoo, like the Australian kin of Middle Earth's Nazgul. Better move on, I thought, before I'm turned to stone to pass the ages locked in stillness.

.....

A sunny afternoon lying on the grass by a bright bubbling creek. Hiking boots were off and feet dipped in the water in the afternoon warmth, as I read and dozed, listening to birds call and leaves rustle.

In the morning I woke up and saw my breath coming in thick clouds. The tent was covered in a thin layer of crackly ice, the grass was frosted white. As I waited for the water to boil I did star jumps to warm up. The sun finally emerged and glistened off the icy landscape, bringing the promise of life after all. 

Warm afternoon campsite

The creek in afternoon sun

Icy morning view

Yosemite VII

It had come to this. I was crawling on my hands on knees through the dirt around my half-constructed tent, dragging the hammer and bag of pegs, taking care to keep my damaged foot raised and muttering to myself about the injustice of it all.

All around me were happy families clustered around their Winnebagos, the kids riding bikes, laughing and ding-dinging their bells, the parents reclining in camp chairs with beers and peanuts at hand, there were people returning from the shower tousling their fresh clean hair, invigorated after a day hiking the trails of the spectacular Yosemite Valley.

And there was me like a modern-day Smeagol with bandaged foot, grovelling in the dirt.

The logistics were proving difficult. My food was stored in the bear locker which was a few metres from the camp table, which was in turn a few metres from the tent, which was a few metres from the car. Every movement required careful planning. Get all ingredients for dinner, got tea, got toothbrush...I couldn’t carry things by hand, so had to load it into bags or ditch the crutches and hop around. No fire because it was impossible to gather wood, no beer because I was on antibiotics, my tent smelled like pee because the tree I was camped under was dripping something weird down, and my thermarest had a leak that needed pumping a few times per night. I looked at other people sitting round the fire with their special someone, drinking and laughing, then I looked at me sitting in the dark with my crutches and John Muir book for company and my pee-smelling tent and flat mattress to look forward to.

This trip to the US had taken a sharp twist in tone when I was suddenly unable to hike. No longer would I be striding the trails, the sun on my face and a whistle on my lips as I traversed mountains and cupped my hands to drink cool, clear river water. Now I was one of the mob. I was on the park shuttle bus with the group of elderly tourists with name badges on their chests and they smiled knowingly at me and my crutches as they looked down at their own walking sticks. Welcome to our world they were thinking as they swayed back and forth in time with the movements of the bus. I was there at the lookout with the people in zip-off pants, many-pocketed vests and three hundred dollar boots who hike from their car to the lookout point (via the hotdog stall), on their five minute stop off at this vantage point of immense beauty.

I got myself to the lookout at Glacier Point. It was this kind of view that inspired John Muir to write “But no temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite. Every rock in its walls seems to glow with life...as if into this one mountain mansion Nature had gathered her choicest treasures.” It was a place that deserved a show of reverence.

Out of a house-sized campervan piled Brendan, Alex, Mum and Dad. The two boys wore matching polo shirts of blue, black and white horizontal stripes. They had snowy white hair and they ran this way and that, kicking rocks and pulling faces.

‘Alex! Brendan! Come here!’ mum screeched as she emerged from the behemoth. But they had quickly spotted the cafe and came racing back demanding candy.

‘Not now boys, let’s go and get some shots of the wilderness’ dad said.

They followed him over to the lookout where there was a jostling mob of tourists, politely shouldering each other out of the way so they could paint on an appropriately serene smile for the camera in front of the Yosemite Valley sprawled below them.

Dad had the camera jammed in their face and mum was at his shoulder saying ‘Brendan smile properly! ..no don’t do that thing with your eyebrows, this photo’s for Poppy so make it nice. Oh, Brendan!’

There was so much to look at – I surprised myself by realising I was having a great time.

Crazies in Yosemite in earlier times

Modern day madness

Yosemite, Part VI

I was close now. Waking up early on the third day there were about twelve miles to walk (all the maps and signs were in miles, so I’d converted my thinking). But the previous day I’d been limping along at only a mile an hour, the discomfort in my foot just wouldn’t allow for more. I got going before the sun rose to give myself time to get back to the car and medical attention.  In the shadow of the early morning I wound down the escarpment, surprising a family of deer on the way.

I was determined to get back, but also worried about what was to be done with this horrible cut on my foot, which was still oozing blood and throbbing relentlessly.

Reaching the valley floor the path followed the shallow, clear waters of the Tuolumne River as it snaked its way towards home. In the glowing sunshine I hobbled along, stopping now and again to catch my breath. I gazed around at the line of pine-covered mountains rising on either side of the river plain, the snowy peaks back from where I’d come, and the bubbling river flowing gently along, quietly doing what it was made to do.

Before long I began passing people with fishing rods, father and son out for a day in the wild. It looked like paradise, and I envied them for their lack of worry.  

In mid-afternoon, physically and mentally exhausted, I presented myself at the Ranger hut. I needed some help I told them and they called a first aid officer in to look at me.

‘Sorry if I’m a bit smelly’, I said as I unwound the manky, blood-soaked bandage from my foot, ‘it’s been a tough few days’.

‘That’s fine’, she said. Then, looking at the wound, ‘Yeah, you’re going to need to get to hospital for this one. Or there’s a medical centre in Yosemite village if that’s easier for you.’

I drove down to the busy Yosemite village and pulled up at the medical centre. I was waiting behind a Belgian guy who’d smashed his knee rock climbing, and when it was my turn I went in to see Andy the nurse. I took the bandage off.

‘Eeeeeergheeew’, he said. ‘Why didn’t you come in sooner? Hey Jen, come and look at this!’ he called.

In came Jen, another nurse. After looking with a delighted grimace at the gaping, festering wound which now seemed to take up most of the sole of my foot, she asked if I’d mind if she took a photo.

A doctor came in and poked around inside for a bit.

‘We don’t normally put in sutures after two days, but I don’t see any other options’, he said. ‘There’s a high chance of infection so you need to get straight back here if it gets sore and red’.

Up until now the pain had never been too terrible. But after flushing out the wound, it was time for the anaesthetic. I hate needles at the best of times, I really do. And I discovered that a needle in the foot is like no pain I’d ever come across. Six times they jabbed me with that little stick of fire and six times I writhed on the bed as though undergoing an exorcism.

Drained, lonely and sorry for myself, I hopped out of the medical centre to face the next question... how does a man on crutches go about setting up a tent? 

Looking back at the mountains I'd been exploring, the path home was flat and sunny.

In dappled sunshine I limped along beside the quiet river.

Paradise, but I was determined just to get back. 

Yosemite, Part IV

My heart was heavy and my stomach queasy as I gently pulled my boot on over the bulky bandage. I looked around at the wonderful mountain scenery I would no longer be exploring - but I had to get this foot looked at. It would be the end of my hiking for a while, I knew that much. I stood up and gingerly put some weight on the left foot. Surprisingly it didn’t feel too bad.

And so began several minutes of internal dialogue...You might never come back here, just keep going – No, it’s too risky, gotta get this foot fixed up – Come on, two days forward or one back, what’s the big difference? – What about blood loss, infection, amputation, slow death? – Look at these mountains, this sky – You’re all alone, don’t be crazy – It’s just a cut – It’s a big cut – I’m walking on – Don’t do it - I’m doing it.

I did it.

Some of the time it was fine, and the landscape was so incredible I was glad to have gone on. I filled my water bottle from cool, bubbling rivers. I hiked quiet paths with views over deep, wooded valleys. I ate simple, tasty food and I contemplated the world around me.

At other times, like when I unwrapped the bandage in the evening and saw blood still oozing insistently out , and I was further from help, I doubted the wisdom of my choice. As I woke in the morning the slow throbbing in my foot reminded me of the previous day’s mishap. It was more painful and I needed a stick to lean on as I hobbled along. I was making slow progress, and climbing over the final pass for the day, I needed to rest every fifty metres and then verbally talk myself into standing up and walking on.

The adventure continued. 

Barren highland landscape

The green Tuolomne Valley

Have you ever seen a river meander like this?

  

Yosemite, Part III

In the afternoon of the first day, after climbing a rocky pass, I came across a glittering pool. The water was emerald green and a waterfall was crashing down into it, bringing chilled mountain water replenishment. I’d been walking all day, building up a good sweat and hadn't seen anybody since crossing paths with a family going fishing early in the morning. It seemed like the perfect wild place for a cold mountain swim.

With my clothes lying in a pile on the bank I waded in. It was cold, but I was determined. All around was high Sierra scenery and empty space - I was living the dream. This was it.

After a couple of steps, my right foot slipped on a rock. I put my left foot down suddenly to stop my fall and it landed on the upturned edge of a knife-sharp rock lying on the lake floor. With all my weight on the foot it slid along the sharpened edge of the rock.

I looked down and saw red streamers of blood swirling into the cool, clear water.

Sitting back on the bank, I had a look. There was a deep gash along the arch of my foot, and inside I could see layers and colours and squishy bits moving around. Blood oozed out and ran onto the ground.

I moved quickly to bandage it up tight, and then the grim situation began to sink in. I’d come across the world for a hiking holiday and now I’d put a gaping wound in one half of my means of transport.

A long way from help - a long way from anyone at all, I sat in the sunshine on the bank of a clear mountain lake. Like a siren of the hiking world, it had lured this unsuspecting traveller in, to meet my demise on its razor teeth.

Though I always packed a basic first aid kit, I never really considered having to use anything except bandaids for blisters. I hadn't reckoned on spilling blood on Yosemite soil.

The question loomed...what was I to do now?

It wasn't any of these lakes, but one a bit smaller. I guess I wasn't in the mood for photos at that moment.  

Yosemite, Part II

The thing I love most about going on a hike for a few days is the simplicity of it all. Out of communication, away from advertising, away from traffic. And as I often tend to hike alone; away from people.

The rhythm of the day is broken down into the basics. Eat, walk, rest. There aren’t many decisions to be made, and there’s a whole lot of space and time for thinking. Everything I need for the few days I’m away is carried on my back. Simple.

I like to rely on my body, my own physical exertion, as a means of transport. 

I’m with Thoreau when he says “Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.”

Admittedly, it seems that simplicity is relative to time and place. When John Muir explored in the Sierra Nevada in the nineteenth century, his preparation went like this: "I rolled up some bread and tea in a pair of blankets with some sugar and a tin cup and set off."

In contrast, a quick tally of a typical hike for me revealed that – excluding food – I carry and wear at least thirty five items, worth well over two thousand dollars.

Still, life on a hike is definitely simpler. With a solid pair of boots on my feet, a map and compass in my pocket, a pack containing warm gear, sleeping gear, basic but healthy food and a book and journal, and with a few days and a few kilometres of path ahead of me, I’m about as happy as I can be.

That’s how it was that crisp sunny morning in Yosemite National Park. I’d mapped out a three day loop walk that would take me from Tuolomne Meadows over a couple of passes of around 11,000 feet, around the shore of several highland lakes and back beside a clear bubbling stream into Tuolomne on the famous John Muir trail.

I’d be walking through glacier-carved foreign lands, one of the world’s most famous and striking National Parks. The autumn weather was perfect for hiking, cool and sunny. It was bear country (black bears, not grizzlies), I might see deer, and the higher peaks were covered in snow. You can drink from the rivers, and camping is allowed anywhere along the way.

I felt a lucky man, light and free, as I shouldered my pack and set off up the track.

2011

Following a path into beautiful country, on a cool clear morning = happiness. 

Above the tree-line, the path continues.

On top of the first pass. 

Yosemite, Part I

I hired a little hatchback and rolled east out of San Francisco. Through flat sunny plains and towards the Sierra Nevada. The craggy mountains were just a name to me, I didn’t really know what to expect and even as I drew near there wasn’t much to prepare me for the sight.

Driving into Yosemite Valley I was overawed. The landforms are towering, there is a feel of the ancient and the powerful, the spiritual nature of the earth. Giant granite rockfaces climb heavenwards, standing watch over the coming of day and the coming of night, the changing of seasons, the passing of ages.

Waterfalls dropped from on high, vapors drifting off like steam. Squirrels and deer haunt the shadows. Snow lay thick on the high ground, but the sky was crisp and blue. Pine, spruce and fir trees, so foreign and lush to my Australian eyes, stood around clear quiet lakes.

Yosemite is rich in history. Until 1851 it was home to the Ahwahneechee tribe of indigenous Americans, but with white settlers flooding to California during the gold rush, they were routed and by 1855 tourists were arriving. In 1864 Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant, which entrusted the valley to the state “for public use, resort and recreation.”  This was eight years before Yellowstone became the world’s first official National Park.

I sensed it was a special place. And, I soon learned, I wasn’t alone. Yosemite National Park is the United States’ most popular and receives three and a half million visitors a year. Like busy little ants we shuttled around, from carpark to booking office to campsite.

On one hand, I thought it was fantastic that so many people were connecting with the real world, breathing the fresh air and walking the trails. On the other hand I really wouldn’t have minded if some of these people had buggered off to the shopping malls in the nearest city. 

The park covers over three thousand square kilometres, but the majority of visitors stay within the eighteen square kilometres of Yosemite Valley. The glacier-carved valley is spectacular, more than worthy of this attention. This is where the peaks with names like Half Dome, the Sentinel and El Capitan are found. With their stark, striking forms they have become recognisable, almost like a symbol you’d see on a tshirt.   

You need to book ahead for one of the four hundred daily passes to hike up Half Dome.

I’d planned to join the masses for some day hikes around the valley, but for the time being I was craving some space, so I waited in line at the visitor centre to arrange a pass for a three day hike in the quieter northern region. With the route mapped out and everything I needed with me, I was ready for a stroll through the backwoods.

2011

From Tunnel View lookout. El Capitan is in the foreground on the left, and Half Dome is in the background, just right of centre. 

Half Dome. 

El Capitan. Can you spot the rock climbers? No, neither can I, but they're bound to be there - the place was crawling with them.

Kings Of The Forest, Part II

How much have your eyes seen, if they've never seen the world’s tallest trees?

It was a question that had drifted in and out of my mind through the years, and it was there as I loaded my camping gear into the green Toyota and drove north out of San Francisco. Over the Golden Gate Bridge and through steady rain for a couple of days, into the countryside of Humboldt County.

On The Avenue of the Giants redwoods grow right by the road, which weaves and meanders like it was built in the time before the world was in a hurry. Though near midday, it was dark in the thick of the forest and cars had their headlights on as they scuttled like beetles along the forest floor.

The redwoods are the dominant tree of the area, and they stand straight and proud. Up to thirty storeys high, the tallest individuals grow in small groves where the soil and water are just right, often on flat alluvial plains. On a drizzly afternoon I took a walk through one of these groves.

There was mist floating round the upper portion of the trees, rain dripped from pine needles in slow fat drops, a creek was bubbling somewhere nearby and all around me the mighty redwoods shot skywards, like rockets paused mid-liftoff. I was slowly wandering through this ancient scene when for the first time in three days the sun broke through the clouds. Patches of golden light illuminated a mossy green limb, a breath of swirling mist. Beams of sunlight slanted through the forest, and raindrops were caught in the rays and briefly came alight like shooting stars plummeting earthwards.

The coast redwoods relish the winter rains and are able to capture the summer fog in their lofty heights to provide moisture during the dry months.

In the canopy of these trees, way up in the sky, lives an unlikely ecosystem. Species of plant such as ferns and huckleberry and even animals like worms and salamanders can live their entire lives in the redwood canopy.

The redwoods grow only in a narrow six hundred kilometre strip along the Pacific coast, from central California to southern Oregon.  Only five per cent of the original forest remains today, the timber being logged heavily since the gold rush of the nineteenth century. If left to live, they can stand for two thousand years.

In that forest of giants I wandered and pondered. My eyes’ thirst was slaked and I felt the kind of calm that comes at being reminded of my smallness and insignificance in this big old world. 

Kings of the forest, part I

I try to look for the beauty in the small things, the everyday and the mundane. It’s these things which fill our days, so I find that when I make the effort to appreciate the details of the here and now, I end up feeling better for it. Kind of unburdened and happy.

But sometimes I like to immerse myself in greatness. To leap into the extreme and to see firsthand what wonders this world holds.

It was a desire like this that broke me out of my everyday existence and took me across the seas to the redwood forests of California. The most gigantic trees on the planet.  

California is home to the tallest trees - the Coast Redwoods – and the most massive trees by volume, the closely related Giant Sequoias.

I visited a grove of Giant Sequoias in the small region they grow on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada. It’s hard to comprehend just how big these trees are. Like looking up at the night sky, my mind can't fully grasp what it's seeing. The base of the tree is like a massive dinosaur foot planted in the soil and the trunk hardly tapers off as it goes higher and higher – twenty five storeys up.  There was a branch lying on the ground, which had fallen from way up high, at least the tenth storey. The branch itself was a monster far thicker than the trunk of most trees I’d ever seen. 

Scientists estimate one of these trees has close to two billion leaves. They get so big because, unlike an animal, they don’t stop growing when they reach maturity. They just keep on growing year after year, and the big ones are around three thousand years old.  All these numbers help us to understand the trees but they are totally insufficient to really convey what it’s like to be near them.

In Sequoia National Park the biggest trees have names. It is agreed that the most massive tree is the one called General Sherman, and there’s a car park and a paved loop trail around it and a circus of people come daily with cameras bared.

I did the loop walk and admired the tree, and then watched the people for a while too.

I had recently injured my foot and was getting round on crutches, so that I couldn’t do the longer hikes I would normally have done. I was instead loaded up with books and a mellower holiday plan. I got out to a quieter grove of sequoias where I lay on my back and watched the afternoon sun move across the sky, as white clouds drifted past the crowns of these kings of the forest.

A couple of the books I had bought were written by John Muir, a mountaineering ecologist, geologist, conservationist and writer who had been instrumental in gaining protection for these trees in the late 1800s.

As well as having a brilliant scientific mind, Muir had a spiritual connection with the natural world. Some of his sentences stopped me in my tracks and set me to pondering. One of these was  The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.

Sometimes it’s better just to be quiet and in awe of it all.

2011

A Storm

I’d say everyone in Perth would remember where they were during the thunderstorm of March 22, 2010.

It was the most demonic in living memory.

The brutal weather marched into the city from the north, pelting the suburbs with giant hail stones, dumping around sixty millimetres of rain in half an hour, and ripping through the streets with winds that could have stripped paint from cars. The suddenness and violence of the storm, the drumbeat eruptions of thunder and the sight of the natural world in a mania had the inhabitants of the isolated city cowering.

I know that I remember, and I have a feeling the Ntumba-Mata family in Thornleigh will remember. They had only been in Australia for a couple of weeks and were in their Government-supplied temporary accommodation watching the dark arrive at four in the afternoon. After spending a dozen years in a refugee camp in Kenya you’d think it would be hard to shock the Congolese family with anything. But the deep purple cloud advancing on the skyline and the eerie dull glow of the afternoon light had them transfixed at the window. Something biblical was afoot and they knew it.

The diabolical rain and the wind and the hail descended upon their street, and the family were tense and anxious. Jojo, the four year old, whimpered. Obed ,ten, stared out silently at the scene and Annie said “Stevie, what this? No good, no good.”

The power went out and the safety we felt from being secure inside was eroded. The rain was heaving down with such force that it felt as though the roof may collapse, and then it looked like it did. From around the window and door frames, water came into the house. First it seeped down the wall, but in seconds it was gushing uninhibited like a waterfall following its natural course. It poured downwards and pooled, spreading wider and wider across the bare living room floor. Annie called out to Obed and he ran out of the room, returning in a second with a small towel – just a bathmat really. With this flimsy cloth he tried to stem the tide.

 

I tried asking Annie about more towels or a mop, but the language barrier and the shock that both she and I were feeling, made communication difficult. She had a dismayed, defeated air to her. She had dragged her family from the seat of misery and desperation in Africa, leaving her dead husband behind, to begin a life of light and hope in Australia. She was here with her teenage kids, her young boy Obed and grandson Jojo, they all relied on her. She thought she had turned a corner. But what was this, this violence sent from the devil himself to crush her and sweep her family away once more?

Without power there was nothing to eat. The only food in the cupboard was the maize flour and relish which needed to be cooked in boiling water. Jojo was crying and the house was in darkness, there was water everywhere.

The two older kids still weren’t home so I took Obed with me and went in search of some food.  The worst of the storm had passed but the streets were underwater, many impassable. Cars with windscreens smashed and panels dimpled by hail were ploughing through puddles of uncertain depth, others turning around where they could. Trees were fallen, power lines lay tangled and roofs were smashed. I found a way through to the shops but there was no power anywhere, nothing was open.

I felt shaken and couldn’t think straight. I could feel the chaos in the air, people driving on the wrong side of the road, some wandering out of their houses to stare at the damage. Without much of a plan, but knowing I wasn’t much help there, I dropped Obed back and drove down the Leach Highway towards home. I hoped that Guelor, Annie’s nineteen year old son would come home soon and take charge. He’d at least be able to communicate with her, which I couldn’t. I had only recently signed up as a volunteer to help the Ntumba-Matas learn English, and settle in to their new life in Australia. I wasn’t equipped to deal with this, and well I guess I freaked out and needed some space to think.

As I got near Fremantle the shops were lit up again, and when I got home I found the power on. I had a quick cup of tea, gathered my wits and grabbed a mop and bucket, some candles and drove the thirty minutes back down the Leach Highway. With these supplies and an armful of greasy fast food I arrived at the Thornleigh home to find that Guelor had arrived and had brought some reassurance. The storm had passed and they’d be alright, of course they would.

On a happier day with Jojo and Obed