The kitten climbs the rose arbour with grace and ease, legs around the upright wooden posts, claws dug in, much like the method olden day lumberjacks used (only with straps and spiked metal attachments on their boots in place of claws) to climb trees. Every now and then he pauses as if to allow his relatives below to see how clever and strong he has become before proceeding on ever upwards. In the great Karri forests of the Pemberton region in south western Western Australia back in the old days of early settlement, it is said that one of these lumberjacks had a party trick when a social group would gather in the forest for a Sunday tea. Hanging a sharp axe from his back, up and up he would go until, near the top, he would lean back, take hold of his axe, and deftly remove the top dozen or so feet of the tree. Next, no doubt to approving shouts and claps from below, he would scramble onto the flat surface and gaze out over vast forests that stretched away into the distance. Almost 300feet above the ground, his ‘topped’ tree would later become a fire watchers hut, and – later again – somewhere that tourists like myself, 40 years ago now, would scramble vertically up to and gratefully climb into the little hut through a trapdoor in its underside to get a similar, though undoubtedly by now a much diminished view of the forests that still remain. Through the clinging, branching rose he climbs, my intrepid friend, now visible, now out of sight, only the moving leaves betraying his presence. Finally he emerges atop the highest point and stands, proud, on a cross-pole looking out over his domain, casually turning to taste a leaf as he does so. Above, soaring ever higher in the invisible up-draught of a thermal, up, up, into the bluest of skies, three white Corella’s climb almost without effort turning in unison as if choreographed by some unseen player, up there, beyond human sight. Now, the little gleaming black kitten with the white blaze across his chest descends, jumping the final few feet or so, satisfied. A soft ‘whoop, whoop’ sound from on top a nearby Stobie pole announces the presence of a grey dove.
Did I die and go to heaven?
A blowfly lands on my journal, pausing briefly, before flying away just as quickly. Perhaps not then!
*
I’m reminded of a time, long ago now, sitting in a railway carriage in southern India, in Bangalore I think it was, with a bunch of grey-kurta clad smiling young Muslim men, my fellow passengers for the o/night trip to Goa on the Arabian Sea. They asked me about my journey, where had I been, why I was in India, and where I was going next (after Goa). One of them asked me if I was going to Kashmir. I didn’t know yet, I replied. Quickly he followed up with, “Oh you must go to Kashmir! It is paradise!” Smiling at his eager youthful earnestness, I asked him a question in return, “Are there mosquitos in Kashmir?” “Oh yes!” he responded, “Huge ones! Like B52’s” [For those who may be unfamiliar with or too young to remember, they were the giant American bombers ubiquitous during the Vietnam war where they dropped tens of thousands of tons of bombs on Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos].
“Ah!” I exclaimed, “I always suspected there would be mosquitos in Paradise!” There was general laughter and merriment from the young men at my response.
*
I wonder now what happened to all those eager young Muslim men from ‘paradise?’
Did they, are they enjoying long and happy lives, or are they caught up themselves now, with children, perhaps grandchildren of their own, engaged in the seemingly endless round of conflict which seems to periodically engulf their beautiful homelands?
*
Mathew Arnold, that serious and quintessentially English poet of the nineteenth century, caught-up himself, no-doubt, in the late 19th century debate about the ‘death of God,’ wrote this:
“…The sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full and round earth’s shore
Lay like folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
It’s melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating to the breath
Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! For the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flights
While ignorant armies clash by night.
(from: “On Dover Beach” 1887, by Mathew Arnold)
This Victorian era, considered so prosperous by some and with so many opportunities, was yet so devastating for so many, many, more, with the ending of any belief, or faith in the ultimate goodness of the world from which they scrapped a meagre living, but found little or no meaning in (other than claims of progress and prosperity that was enjoyed by some but not shared by the many). Much like today really, where ‘trickle-down’ economics has led to ‘syphon-up’ wealth for the few, at the expense of the many! And even the planet cries out in distress at this new rush to new futures that never come, or – if they do – just as quickly fade into emptiness.
*
Above the blue sky now is empty and the white birds and soft grey dove with its soft cooing presence are gone.
The Stobie pole, balanced by the lone pencil pine, awaits other occupants.
What is the price we must all bear for this thing, ‘progress?’ And what weight can our animal friends and fellow travellers carry before, they, too…
Flee away … “…swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight”?
*
Overhead now the sound of a ‘micro-light’ or ‘gyro-copter’ replaces the sight and sounds of the birds, briefly. Tourists on a joy-ride to see our beautiful lake from on high; their journeys end.
But the mighty river, once so full, now a ghost of its former glory days, its strength bled by irrigators upstream for commercial gain, creeps quietly to its final destination, the mighty Southern Ocean.
Tracks in a Pathless Land 