Remember The Living Earth?

Food for thought. The problem with clearing out my office is that the work expands exponentially; I pick up a box of photos, a pile of papers, a wad of drawings and deliberate on each one. I just came across a quotation I used when I was working in community environmental education. The quote is more potent now than it was 20 years ago and its message is more urgent than ever. We have lost the poetry as we argue in blunt scientific terms about whether or not we are in climate change. I have just retyped the piece and will place it on my newly cleared office wall. This is one thing I will not throw away. Read the words slowly, contemplate them and get the point!

The Living Earth

‘I am the living earth. I am the softened tissue of rocks baked by the sun, split by ice, carved by water and winnowed by the wind. I am interwoven by myriads of tiny plants and animals that pulse and breathe. I am the invisible universe of sparkling molecules in the infinity of living soils that bless the mantle of this globe.

I am the carpet of the biosphere; the floor of the forest, the seedbed of all plants; and my living substance nourishes all roots and all leaves that rely on the sun and rain to make green sculptures out of clay. In the tall dim damp rainforest I house the bulk of animal life and support the endless upward toiling of trees and coiling of vines. I am the bottom line of all grand symbiosis in forest biology. I am the source of mineral molecules in lovey flowers born high among the birds in the rainforest canopy; I am the energy sink, the lovely muddy frugal cemetery for recycling all the forest’s elements in the transitions between life and death.

Touch me, smell me. I am your ultimate quality of life in ecology’s profound cycles. See me, hear me, you humans who pass by me with your round computer heads rocking in the forest sky above me. Spare me a thought you humans who depend on me; remember me as I die before you, when you take away my forest coverings and still the microbes that give me life – me the Living Earth.

Take your shoes off, touch me with your fingers, let your skin tingle as it touches mine.

Shift your gaze sometimes from the stars and remember the heaven beneath your feet. Remember me when the sun burns and the waters gouge me, be kind to the forest that remain and protect them from seamless destruction. Remember this, like me you are already eroding. Know this; like me you are only dust when you are dead. Accept this; unlike you, I am closer to recreation as the living Earth, to Genesis’.

Len Webb, Rainforest Ecologist

October 28, 1920 November 25, 2008

	Footnote: Starting in the 1950s, the research of Len Webb and colleagues, from the Rainforest Ecology Section of the CSIRO Division of Plant Industry, identified the rainforests of northern Queensland as being the ancestral flora of the whole continent. They were unique, not merely the 'rag-end' of South-East Asian forests as had previously been surmised. Webb's surveys found evidence for rainforest in 75 million year-old sediments across southern Australia long before Australia drifted close to Asia estimated to be about twelve million years ago. Under Webb's patient scrutiny the northern forests were found to contain the world's greatest concentration of primitive flowering plant families, suggesting Australia may have been part of the region where flowering plant families first developed. His work subsequently made crucial advances in the understanding and management of Australian rainforests. He was a key figure in the crusade to protect Australia's rainforests as a non-renewable resource and heritage and frequently quoted from EJH Corner's The Life of Plants to impress upon people the sheer magic of these 'green cathedrals'. There is a giant tree, prominent in a forest that stretches to the skyline. On its canopy birds and butterflies sip nectar. On its branches orchids and mistletoes offer flowers to other birds and insects. Among them ferns creep, lichens encrust and centipedes and scorpions lurk. In the rubble that falls among the roots and stems, ants build nests and even earthworms and snails find homes. There is a minute munching of caterpillars and the silent sucking of plant bugs. Through the branches spread spiders' webs. Frogs wait for insects and a snake glides ...

From Superwoman to Supersloth in Four Moves

I just received an email from a friend and erstwhile colleague. After much deliberation she has decided not to assist me with a marketing plan; her mother is unwell, her daughter is doing a major exam this year and with funding (and therefore resource) cuts, her job has suddenly become even more demanding. Whatever happened to etype and superwoman? Remember those of us who managed fulltime careers, childrearing, housekeeping, gourmet cuisine and Ikebana and kept ourselves stimulating, sexy and slim! Perfection!

I know what happened. Some of us saw the light before the collapse, created new lives and our own businesses, went to rock concerts with the kids, dispatched the vacuum cleaner and Le Creuset, exchanged Kafka for kaftans, bras for bare breasts and gave away the size eights. There was enough money in being entrepreneurial and we had enough time to lie on the beach and eat ice cream without guilt.

My career as an artist and writer grew. I took the first byte of an apple in 1987 – a trendy Mac Plus, went back to university and scrolled unix codes on an ‘under construction’ information super highway until a dog called Fetch began retrieving for me. Smart bitch. Mosaic paved the way, software morphed and I gave up the easel for a Wacom and spent more time on my bum than on the beach. Screen time grew along with the waistline. Time passed. I wrote less on the creative edge and made art even less often.

And then what happened? I know what happened. Suddenly, and just as Terence McKenna predicted, the world wide web had spread its sticky filaments into every waking moment. Wetware was on the horizon - the connective tissue of the new world order and I had fallen into the wayside of chaos. The list of never ending things to do and all of them urgent and important kept me at the screen face until the small hours long after other tasks were left half done and cluttering house, heart and mind. I did not write a single greeting card at Christmas time although I did receive one from my only remaining (ninety year old) aunt. Making the fruitcake was a chore and the size sixteens gathered mould while I expanded ever outwards. It rained.

I had a meltdown. My life so creatively reinvented is on the edge of obscurity. I have no tour bookings on the horizon. My website languishes beneath the radar of any search engine – it is ‘under construction’. The ‘free range’ sustainable clothing range I designed for women just like me falters. The book I am writing stares at me accusingly from its folder on the desktop and my credit card threatens to swallow any income for the foreseeable future! All good non-sustainable fuel for any meltdown.

My life post Le Creuset has somehow missed the next move. The answer is simple. I am not i-friendly; I do not own an iphone, ipad, ipod or even have an ilife. Google is too big for my boots. I have fewer than one hundred friends on facebook (shame), I do not tweet and my blog no longer ‘shares’ seamlessly - it is now entirely dependent on circles that insidiously appeared one night and in ever expanding complexity.

The truth of it is that I do not have time to maintain or entertain more than the five friends with whom I am in contact somewhat irregularly. I could not begin to contemplate the 150 that evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar theorises is the maximum number of friendships that the human mind is capable of handling, let alone the thousands that some boast of on facebook. I do not have time to create circles or i-dle chat. I am too busy reordering my office, constructing a website, writing a book, promoting a business, designing the next range of clothes and attending to the ever expanding list of things to do – along with the waistline!

 

What happens next? Well today I will be slothful and hang by my toes, gaze on the half done, undone, not-ever-to-be done and dream of lying on the beach eating ice cream with the Jabberwocky. Thank you Lewis Carroll for landing in my hands as I cleared the bookshelf. This state of affairs is, after all, a nonsense of my own creation. Brillig! Enjoy!

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

'Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!'

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood a while in thought.

 

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One two! One two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

'And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Lewis Carroll

Fire and Plumstones

 January and it rained at last and the acrid stench of wet, newly burnt land, livestock, wildlife and property dulled any sense of relief. Each day television crews working at infernos’ edges reported new outbreaks burning out of control while thousands of fire fighters from across the country joined ranks to defend the vulnerable. And later we were witness to the awful plight of those returning to the charred ruins of homes and gardens, pets, stock and native animals as families picked through the ashes for signs of life before the flames. It is still sad beyond description.The reminder is constant in the new category added to our roadside fire gauges - CATASTROPHIC! Scary stuff? You bet.

On Friday January18^th, Sydney broke all records when the mercury topped 45.8 in the city and further west reached a scorching 46.5 degrees (115.7°F). During the day more than 200 people were treated for heat stroke; hundreds of commuters were stranded when steel buckled, signalling systems failed and overhead wires melted while beyond the city serious fires raged.  I was afraid, stayed at home, shut all the windows and doors and sweated out the blistering heat. Even our dogs were treated to a rare invitation to come inside where they lay panting on the tiles of the kitchen floor. Without air conditioning and fans that simply serve to push around the already warm air, not a lot of energy was exerted and our garden wilted as I watched. These days even backyard food production is trickier than it should be.

For commercial producers it is now more than tricky to bring crops to fruition in seasons such as this. At our local organic market I speak to producers who struggle with their crops. Jamie, from Windy Hill Orchard near Young on the southwestern slopes of New South Wales, has watched weather patterns change since his family established the business 26 years ago. Rain, once spread out evenly over the seasons, now falls sporadically and unpredictably as feast or famine weather patterns play out on the land. According to Jamie, the seasons have moved and he reckons they are now as much as two months out. Shorter, milder winters do not allow apricots, peaches, nectarines and plums to set, the constant lack of rain dries their flesh and sustained highs of 47^oC do not a stone fruit crop make! Yet weather is not the only threat.

‘What about open cast mining in your area?’ I ask him. Now a mere 60 km away from Windy Hill, mining activities threaten more than the natural landscape. ‘Those large holes in the earth’ Jamie informs me ‘create micro climates’ and micro-climates, as we know, disturb the larger patterns. It is a planetary given that ecosystems are interdependent. Groundwater consumption and contamination, air pollution and altered landscapes are but the tip of the melting iceberg. Just as we all do deep in our hearts, Jamie understands that the fossil fuels our country has in abundance are at the heart of climate change and, just as we all do, he feels powerless as an individual to bring back the balance. He is simply working too hard to make a living and hang onto his land.

I had an eerily similar conversation twelve years ago while sitting on baked earth in a remote village in India with a block printer who told me in no uncertain terms that the climate was changing. Ismail pointed to the overhead vault of sky and said ‘something is wrong up there and is making it wrong down here’. The river had already dried up, indigo crops failed and in recent years, encroaching industry, powered by plants fed on fossil fuels from Australia, continue to substantially lower the common water table.

No longer can we be guaranteed the usual. Yesterday, when I made a booking at Shaam e Sarhad Desert Camp in Kutch for my October tour, Paarth informed me that, after the late rains in September and October in the past two years, he could not guarantee the camp would be open. Rain in Kutch in October, November and even January? And today Sushma pushed that out to February when she told me via Skype that it rained again just three days ago. I have covered myself by double booking elsewhere just in case and wait and see.

Apart from making radical changes in our daily lives, banging on the walls of bureaucracy and signing AVAAZ petitions, wait and see is the name of the game in this small world we share.  My atmosphere is your atmosphere, my sea is your sea and my life is yours. Treat them with care.

 I have not yet mentioned the floods.