tom m wilson

I’m just back from Rottnest, the island off the coast of Western Australia. This arid fragment of limestone floats in a scintillating blue and green sea. It is shored by finely ground shells and inland jagged, wind-blown and salt-tolerant plants make their home.

I’ve finally got a couple of reasonably good photographs of the place. So check my gallery – follow the link on the top right – to see the island’s colours.

Danger on Peaks (Washington: Shoemaker and Hoard, 2004) is a slim book of poems from a man who is now in his mid seventies. As usual the poems are spare and understated, and reach for the clarity of a summer morning in the high Sierras. The tone of the collection seems somewhat elegaic, largely due to the number of poems which recollect experiences Synder had in the fifties or later. As usual we are introduced to the quality of simple, hard work amongst the truckies and loggers of the US, and taken into simple and limpid moments amongst the granite of the Californian mountains. This isn’t Snyder’s best collection in my view, but it does contain a handful of poems worth reading.

The last two lines of the book are my favourite, and are translated from Chinese. You can almost hear the quiet, koan-like intonations of Synder’s voice behind these words:

hail all noble woke-up big-heart beings;

hail – great wisdom of the path that goes beyond

Sometimes life gets a bit too much. Too confusing or stressful or whatever the case may be.

Shelly’s sky lark, and Keats’ nightingale, were envied by those nineteenth century poets for the peace of unreflective sentience. Today I want to share with the world a poem by Wendell Berry, the English lecturer turned farmer from the east coast of the US. Like Shelly and Keats a century before him, Berry reminds us of the peace experienced by nonhuman lives. It is an instructive lesson:

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Amen.

This is one of the most memorable photographs in the history of the Australian conservation movement (thanks to the Terania Action Network). The year is 1979 and one of the last pockets of the subtropical rainforest of the central eastern Australian coast is about to be logged at Terania Creek. A hundred or so long haired hippy types arrive, and for the first time Australians see images in the media of direct confrontations between conservationists and police and loggers. This photo stand out though.

Here we see the power of physical affection to break down barriers. Authority is humanised through love, not further strengthened through the expression of hate. In this one moment caught on film, we see how the ‘pig’ in black and white can become the man with the beating heart. I think in contemplating the issue of climate change today we need to remember this image. Instead of become frustrated with the majority of our fellow citizens lethargy when it comes to becoming carbon neutral, we need to take a deep breath and talk to somebody about the issue you might not normally talk to. Instead of ‘shouting at the idiots for not doing enough’, remember that everybody is, as W. H. Auden said, ‘jealous of their privacy and easily hurt’. Everybody is human. Approach with the sentiment of brotherhood and unity and you’ll get more traction. The best tool in the skill kit of the active conservationist is to find something to love in that man or woman who doesn’t seem to care. And then to draw them forward with gentle prods and hints.

Ok all you young dudes, the hippies who are now in their fifties were right…

one love.

This is the south-east of France, in the hills north-west of Lyon that drain into the Soane River. At the start of 2001 I stood on a hill here, near the tiny village of St. Cyr le Chatoux. I was alone and I sat down on a grassy bank beside the road, and looked out into the valley before me. This is what I saw. The pastoral quiet and gentle sunshine still rise clearly from my memory.

Monet’s Poppies is a painting familiar to many. Take a look at this new take on that old painting. I saw this image recently and it made me think anew about the concept of pastoral in the rural landscape. The machine in the garden marks a turn for the pastoral idyll of literature past, and this painting is a kind of anti-pastoral spoof of Monet’s pastoral scene.

This photo is by Geoff Cuningham (published in The Best of Australian Geographic Photography). It is of a velvet gecko pausing on some Aboriginal rock art, and to me it is the perfect symbol of the intimate connection between Aboriginal culture and the natural world on this continent. I consider this to be one of the most memorable Australian nature photographs.

The Aboriginals weren’t saints when it came to environmental sustainability, but they were a lot more attuned to the textures, patterns and forms native to Australia than the Europeans who arrived after them. Part of this came from hunting native animals: the hunter perforce has a deep knowledge of the animals he hunts. Aboriginals also kept Australian animals as pets.

But white Australians can bring Australian life into their homes as well. Michael Archer, author of Going Native, has kept a quoll from infancy in his house, and reports that it makes a better pet than a cat or a dog. The Department of Environment and Conservation in Western Australia has, over the last few years, legalised the keeping of lizards, so that you can now have even a big monitor lizard. In the next few years they will hopefully get around to legalising the keeping of marsupials such as quolls. If a native pet industry grew up then conservation would have another ally. But more than this we would have little Australians in our houses, bringing us white people closer to having a bioregional consciousness.

With knowledge could come love.

My friend Dave is opening the doors of the studio in his back garden a week from this Friday. The currently roofless studio – thus the ‘weather pending’ bit above – will be full of art works and photographs of a bunch of local people, including four of my photographs. There will be music and the drinks policy is byo. I hope to see you there.

This morning I was on my way into King’s Park when I looked up into an old Wandoo tree and saw this galah sitting above me. I stopped and watched him for a while, and took this photo. When I clicked my tongue a bit he became more interested and seemed to engage a bit.

Parrots originated in this part of the world. Cockatoos are part of the parrot lineage, and more than half of all cockatoos come from Australia. We have plenty of hard nuts to crack on our trees, thus the big, powerful beaks of these birds for cracking nuts open. Eolophus roseicapillus is the latin name for this species, but most Australians call them galahs. Australian slang uses the phrase ‘playing the galah’ to indicate that somebody is fooling around, and it is true that these birds love to play (ok, I admit that only salt of the earth Aussies use the term!).

Play is a sign of intelligence, and parrots are amongst the most intelligent of animals. They can live to 80 years old – older than many people! – and they do plenty of stuff in groups. For example, these galahs often keep their fledglings in ‘creches’ of up to a hundred youngsters. An evolutionary history of cooperation like this has helped direct their increasing intelligence. It also means that they readily develop strong relationships with others, be they cockatoo, or be they human.

As I looked up into the tree from a suburban street I saw a stranger, not a friend. But as I looked up into the tree from the street it was salutory to be reminded that another intelligence was looking down at me from the wild, and wondering what the hell I was doing standing there.

Listen to a little chat I had recently with Riley Lee on the connection between his music and nature.

This is the first in an infrequent series of podcasts on the arts and the environment.

Roger Short, at a recent conference on science journalism at the University of Melboure, made the point that when we are cremated it has a negative effect on global warming, both because of our bodies becoming carbon dioxide pollution, and because the oven has to be heated up to 850 degrees for an hour and a half and uses massive amounts of fuel. Traditional burials are also no good as the places we use just have grass on them, and no biodiversity.

Smart thinks we should have vertical holes drilled, and we should be lowered down amongst leaves as a kind of padding. And then a tree should be planted over that. Over a century a tree sequesters one metric ton of CO2.

I love Short’s idea, not just because his science is so spot on and because he has thought of an important change for us to make in our burial rituals, but because of the associated symbolism of returning to the ecosystem. Edward Munsch’s painting ‘Metabolism’ springs to mind…

Today I really want to share with the world a Mary Oliver poem:

Black Oaks

Okay, not one can write a symphony, or a dictionary,

or even a letter to an old friend, full of remembrance
and comfort. 

Not one can manage a single sound though the blue jays
carp and whistle all day in the branches, without
the push of the wind. 

But to tell the truth after a while I'm pale with longing
for their thick bodies ruckled with lichen

and you can't keep me from the woods, from the tonnage

of their shoulders, and their shining green hair.

Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a
little sunshine, a little rain. 

Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from
one boot to another -- why don't you get going?

For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees.

And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists
of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money,

I don't even want to come in out of the rain.