Tom M. Wilson

I don’t have time to write this blog right now, but I’ll expand on the comments below when I get back to Montreal on Friday or Saturday.

I’ve just come down from Montreal, through the Adirondacks briefly, and into Vermont, the most rural state in the US. This place is pretty harsh in winter, but at the moment I have to say this is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. I’m not going to make it to Walden Pond after all - too far - but this evening I’m heading to another pond in the wilderness - where loons are to be found. Finding one’s own ‘Walden Pond’ is much more in the spirit of the man anyway. And I’m in the right place to do so.

Standing on Mt. Joe in the north-east of the Adirondacks. The spruce, and white pine and hemlock blend with the birch trees, and carpet the mountains every which way you look.

One evening in southern Vermont I saw a fly fisherman cast his silvery line beneath one of Vermont’s famous covered bridges.

American beech… more soon.

Today I’m heading down over the Canadian border into the US, to New York State and Vermont, for a few days camping with a friend. All going well we will get down as far as Concord and pay our respects at Walden Pond, the location of Henry David Thoreau’s famous book.

I’m hoping that while camping beside a lake in the Adirondacks or in the farming country of Vermont I’ll hear the low, baleful call of a loon (a kind of bird) as did Thoreau over a hundred and fifty hears ago. Check this space in a week from now and you’ll find out about my trip.

A few weeks ago I recorded and podcasted a chat I had with George Seddon on my back verandah in Fremantle, Western Australia. He lived six or seven houses away from me, in another old, limestone house in central Freo. Now and again he’d come over for a cup of tea, and a talk about our mutually shared bioregion, and matters to do with culture and the environment. More than any other person in Fremantle, perhaps even more than any other person in the whole of the country, George was a wealth of knowledge when it came to the geological and biological identity of south-western Australia, and Australia more broadly. He loved to talk, and had a cultured accent, and a measured, yet good humoured approach to conversation. He’d written a large number of books and articles, something he didn’t mind letting people know about.

A couple of days later I bumped into George on the street walking up the street next to the playing field around the corner from our houses (below John Curtin high school). George always seemed a bit frail and preoccupied. We exchanged a few words, and said goodbye - he touched me on the shoulder in a rare show of physical affection. Three or four days later George died.

There were things that irritated me about George. Mainly his seeming lack of interest in the doings of others - most of his conversation was about himself, and his lack of humility when it came to talking about his own academic achievments - he was always telling me about various articles and books he’d published. We had different interests as well: he was much more interested in the scientific details of the natural world than I am, and had less of a clear interest in fighting environmental destruction. However, despite this I feel sad that I will never be able to walk around the corner and talk to George again. The finality of death has served to emphasise all that I did admire about the man and his intelligence. Through his books he more than anybody else has taught me about my home place, the soils and plants of the Swan Plain around Perth. Being 80 years old he was a bridge for me with the past. I feel like I’ve thought, read and lived a fair amount, but when George was my age it was the late 1950s! He carried a lived knowledge of a lot of the twentieth century to our conversations in 2007.

There is a radio show paying tribute to him next Thursday on Australia’s Radio National. If you live in Australia and take an interest in the environment you might have a listen, live or as a podcast at a later date.