Finding Resolution

The days can blur together as they slide towards the end of the calendar year.  For many years, my work often kept me busy over the Christmas/New Year period, but nowadays I enjoy a work-free fortnight, or so, and thus there is less need for me to watch the calendar and the diary.  Somewhere between Christmas Eve and New Years Day I am pretty well guaranteed to forget what day it is, and feel like I am inhabiting a perpetual weekend.

Somehow, it feels wrong to be celebrating New Year at the height of summer.  There is growth abundant in gardens and among the wild life, and it has been this way for several months.  The climax of my gardening year is still three or four months away, for that is when the apples will ripen, and the pumpkin vines wither and expose their gifts to me for the winter ahead.  Now is the season to work early and late, when the shadows are long and the air is cooler, and spend the warm day reading or listening to the cricket or dipping in the pool or the lake - it does not feel like the end of a year, or the beginning of another.

But still we will watch the New Year fireworks fly and fall in dazzling cascades of colour above the great arch of The Harbour Bridge, lighting up the graceful curves of The Opera House, and filling The Cumberland Plain with swirling clouds of gunsmoke.

We will kiss loved ones, toast the incoming year, and grope for a response every time someone asks  us "What are your New Year's Resolutions?"  But, my year began months ago, close to the (Southern Hemisphere) Spring Equinox, when waves of pink or white blossoms lit up the bare branches of the fruit trees around my gardens, and the gardens of my neighbours - a sight more beautiful and better scented than those fireworks.

Or did it?  For a gardener, the making of resolutions is more likely to be an Autumn task, in response to recognition of the mistakes made and jobs not done as the seasons of warmth and growth are swept away with the falling leaves by the first gales from the south.  By Mid-Winter, Blue Mountains time, I will be trying to carry out the resolutions made in Autumn, in the hope of a better and more productive growing season to come.

The cold weather and long nights offer plenty of time inside at my desk to reflect, plan, and write.  It is perfect for the making of resolutions and the formulating of plans, blue-prints, and lists intended to carry those resolutions to fruition.

Perhaps we in Australia need to shift our New Year to July so that the official calendar aligns with our instincts and the pattern of our seasons.  After all, Yule-Tide in July has been a regular thing here in the Moutains for many years.

What did the First Peoples do, I wonder?  Did they have or mark in some way a 'beginning' to the year?  If so, when did they do it?  Or did they roll with the cycle of the seasons?  From all that I have read and heard, they seem to have had a complex set of indicators - the flowering of various plants, the arrival or departure of different birds and animals, as well as all sorts of astronomical signs - by which to understand the seasonal changes, and plan their next move.

It would be a more flexible and adaptive way of noting the passage of time than the rigid calendar the modern world is driven by - that calendar which does not quite fit with the actual movement of our world around its star, and needs regular trimming and fine tuning to keep it more or less in synch with natural reality.

The New Year's Resolutions made under that calendar often do not seem to fit, either.  For many, the Ritual of Resolutions seems to lead inevitably to a Day of Disappointment, as the last wishful promise fails or is discarded as too hard.  It's a bit like all those resolutions made as Political Promises every few years by our politicians as they face re-election.  They often sound terribly familiar (usually because they are), and that Day of Disappointment seems to be arriving so much sooner now than it used to.

Indeed, here and in many parts of the world, such disappointment is becoming almost perpetual - not a good omen for civil society.  Yet resolutions can be an expression of hope and intent and, perhaps like my winter-born gardening resolutions, failure might be averted by the application of planning and determination, and regular reminders of those good intentions.

For without hope, what is there?  When the nights are long, and the days are dim, hopeful resolutions offer a path back to blossoming springtimes and bountiful summers and autumns. When ever you make your resolutions, I hope they take you and your world down a good road, to a better future.

Filling the Shoes.....

Another Man's Shoes - only a three word prompt, but it is always interesting to see where such a simple thing can take you, if you let the pen have its way.....  And, no, I have never been ordained, or even studied for such a vocation.

Edward hurried along the uneven paving stones towards the arched wooden door.  Ahead, Mrs Tompkins and Miss Bray were waiting stoically where the morning sum warmed the angle between the stone wall and its flying buttress.

Edward fossicked in his trouser pocket for his key ring, and had to snatch to stop his robes from sliding off his other arm.  He didn't need the ostentatiously neutral looks the two women hurled at him to know that he was late.

"Morning ladies; lovely morning, isn't it?  Too nice to be inside" 

He regretted saying it before the last syllable had passed his lips.  Mrs Tompkins's eyes narrowed.  The corners of Miss Bray's mouth turned downwards.

"Good Morning Father" was all the reply he got as he fumbled at the lock.  The key went home and he turned it.  The old wooden door seemed stiffer on its hinges than ever.

A bump from his shoulder set it moving.  He stood, feeling his ears burn, as two bundles of flowers were carried past him.  Both women had their noses ever so slightly in the air and Miss Bray's eyes had swept across him, lingering briefly on the shirt he knew was not tucked in properly, and the tie that was too loosely knotted.

He slipped into the vestry as the two old ladies began placing the flowers.  They were silent at the altar, but by the time they reached the middle pews, low murmurings were drifting back to him.

Father Jenkins had owned this church for almost four decades, and was now buried in the adjacent graveyard.  Edward felt certain that more than a few of his dour, aging congregation would happily sign up if the Devil offered to swap the old priest for the new.

By rights, he should have had a few years as an assistant curate to an experienced minister at some larger church.  He was finding out the hard way that Honours in Divinities and Theology did little to prepare a young priest for pastoral work.

"Hallooo?"  The round tones of Harald, the organist, echoed through a space meant for hundreds. The greying, stooped old man had come quietly in through the open door, wearing his usual shabby suit, and clutching an armful of sheet music.

Edward wondered if there would even be dozens to hear Harald's heavy handed renditions of the ancient hymns and psalms.

Not so ancient, Edward supposed, to someone as grey and antique as Harald.  He gave himself a mental rap over the knuckles.  How could he entertain such thoughts when he was about to present a sermon on charity?  And Harald at least brought a few extra bums on pews, a couple of them quite shapely – how did that man produce such pretty daughters?  Edward ordered himself to take a longer penance after the service was over, and waited for the organist to shuffle through his papers.

Which raised another question, would Harald have managed to pick the right music for this week's readings and lessons, or would he be a month out, again?  And, would asking to preview the music selection result in Edward having to endure another cloud of last night's whisky fumes?  Edward wondered, as the old man suddenly dropped half his papers on the floor, if there was a way to tell the difference between the whisky fumes of last night, and those of more recent origin.

Christmas Prompt - Sensing Christmas

Rhys woke to full alertness and complete silence.  He lay very still, straining to understand what had jerked him out of his dreams.  The house was still dark and, next to him, Lyssa's soft, steady breathing seemed to say that all was well.

A blissfully cool breeze was drifting in through the open window, carrying a faint whiff of eucalyptus smoke – a reminder of the illegal burn off he'd had to take his brigade to yesterday.  It had taken most of the afternoon of Christmas Eve to extinguish and black out.

He eased himself out of bed without waking his wife, and walked carefully through the darkness to the kitchen window.  He could see only starlight, and that was good – there was no orange glow to warn of a re-ignition of yesterday's fire beyond the west ridge.

He stood, luxuriating in the early morning chill – a chill that would evaporate when the cicadas woke.  The chooks and the livestock were silent, and the dog had not stirred, but something had woken him.

There was an unidentifiable whisper of sound that seemed to be coming from inside the house.  He tip-toed back to the bedroom and found the torch that lived beside his bed.  Without switching it on, he crept back into the living room.  Faint scents of last night's supper - bolognaise sauce, garlic bread, and souring red wine – reminded him that they had not cleaned up before retiring.

There was another smell lurking behind the rich perfume of the ripening mangoes that nested on the dining table.  It took a few seconds to work out what it was.  Chocolate – it was chocolate.  The soft noise came again, from the direction of William's bedroom.  He shuffled slowly across the open space, feeling carefully with his toes, dodging leftover toys, and almost walked into a closed door, only a shade less dark than the walls.

The smell of chocolate was stronger, and he could hear soft rustling from beyond the door.  For a minute he stood still, remembering his childhood Christmases – the intense efforts to quietly unpack the pillowcase full of Santa's gifts that hung from the end of each bed, and the surreptitious chocolate "breakfasts" before the parents arose.  Outside, a Kookaburra laughed, and Rhyss knew that the first hint of light was creeping up from the eastern horizon.  He opened the door and switched on the torch. 

"Merry Christmas" he whispered to the three lamp-lit, chocolate smeared faces.

In a Moment

Living in the Moment - it is advice I have encountered in so many ways and places over the decades.

It sounds simple enough, as so many proverbs and aphorisms do - but how long is a moment?  It depends who you ask, of course - ask someone to do something for you when they are immersed in the television of a video game, and the reply will often be "in a moment"

Ask me while I am writing, or deep in a good book, and a moment could turn out to be quite a while - why do some moments seem so brief, and some, so long?

A quantum physicist would probably take so long to explain to you why the question could not be accurately or definitively answered that you might come to wish that the moment in which you asked the question had been put to better use.

The gardener in me knows that moments are linked and can extend across seasons.  This morning, between other chores, came a moment when I could sow some seeds - beans, corn, squash, and zucchini - in a vacant bed.

 Sowing or planting moments are always moments of optimism

 That moment will come to fruition in late January or early February.

 These plants are the result of a moment almost a month ago

The cherries I picked a couple of days ago were the long-term result of an accumulation of moments - some going back five or ten years - as are the apples that are swelling upon their trees, though I have also to thank the bees for the brief moments they spent at each flower - as does each person who ladles honey into their tea, or onto their toast.

 The final word on moments could go to Kipling, who said in the final stanza of his poem "If"

"If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run
 The Earth is yours, and everything that's in it........"

Unravelling the Tangle

My writing is mostly in the form of short stories - anecdotes, in other words, that might once have been tossed out to entertain the customers on the other side of the bar, or friends at a family gathering.  They are usually set in a single location, and focused on the words or actions of only a few people - and almost always come to either a humorous or salutory ending.

Novels are a bit harder - at first I tried to work on them as a series of short stories, one chapter at a time, but the reader desires and expects more coherence and logic than that approach provides.

I am getting there though - a novel has been steadily ( well, at times) flowing from pen to paper and then onto the hard drive.  The thing that made the difference for me was the starting point - not the chronological beginning of the story, but the point from which I began working.

In the case of this novel the provocation was a well known internet meme that runs "Never upset a writer, lest he put you in his next story - and kill you"  I'd seen it before, on coffee cups and t-shirts, but this time it struck a chord.  I thought of people who had, over the decades, annoyed me in ways that might make them deserving of a fictional death - and within a few pages and half an hour of scribbling, a story had sprung to life, with that death at its core.

It took a quite a few more pages before I had settled on the place, time, and manner of death, as well as the identity of the perpetrator, but knowing the name and character of the victim, and of the protagonist who might solve the crime, that was enough to set me on course. Of course the names and certain other details have been changed to protect the guilty and the innocent alike, but once I had those two characters pinned down, the other characters, and the ensuing action, flowed more easily onto the page.

Once a good starting point has been found - it need only be a few words or a simple concept - the weaving of words can begin.  If you have been to a creative writing group and worked from prompts offered by the moderator or other members, you will know how apparently simple beginnings can lead to the construction of excellent stories, songs, or poems.

What about travelling in the opposite direction?  Have you ever been struck by a bit of poetry, or song lyrics, and wondered how the writer got the idea, and how they managed to find the words, concepts, rhymes, images, and so on, that, woven together, made such an interesting work?  How do you unravell what they have put together, and work your way back to their starting point?  You might ask 'why bother' but if you have been writing for a while, and intend to keep on doing so, the techniques of other writers becomes intriguing.  How did they do that, you find yourself asking.

It's not easy, and some would compare the process to deciphering a particularly difficult cryptic crossword - in fact, to me, it reminds me of my early years as an angler.  In Australian angling history there was a particularly revered local invention called The Alvey.  It was an odd looking reel that, attached to a long 'beach' rod, allowed very light baits or lures to be cast a long way out into the surf.

That was its good point - the down side of the technology was a tendency to create massive tangles in the fishing line; "birds nests" was what we called them.

When that happened, the impatient people cut the tangle out of the line (if there was enough left on their reel) and got back to fishing - the cheapskates among us would spend up to half an hour picking at the 'birds nest' of nylon line in the hope of saving it.  Success relied on finding the key point in the giant knot - the one that all the others were related to.

Trying to analyse and understand the core of someone else's writing is much like that - you can see the finished product, and get some general sense of the shape and inter-relationship of the various threads, but teasing them out so as to find that core point from which the story began, that's hard.

Why do it?  Once you are making your own stories, or songs, or poems, you see works by other people and can't help wondering - how did they do that?  What got them started on that particular idea or plot?  I know I feel that if I can understand how an excellent piece of work by another author was conceived and constructed, I might be able to improve my own work.

Take Umberto Eco, the author of The Name of The Rose - the central idea, he is supposed to have said, came from a momentary feeling.

"I felt like poisoning a monk" was his description of the inspiration behind the famous novel.  Is that true?  Was that all?  Probably not - Eco had encountered and been awed by the library of a Benedictine Monastery when only 16 years of age, and he may have been aware of the legands around St Benedict of Nursia.  Whatever he knew, or felt, there must have been a germ, a seed, a little core, from which, and around which, the whole great edifice was constructed.

Another place of inspiration for me has been the series of interviews conducted mainly by Richard Fidler, on ABC Sydney.  They are all available on podcast, and are worth a listen if you are interested in the creative process.  Fidler and other presenters have spoken with some great authors, poets, and songwriters, and their explanations as to the seeds that grew particular pieces are well worth listening too.

Blink and you'll miss it.

Is it a lonely grave on a flower strewn hillside?  It was, once, but the hillside has changed shape, as the railway line was pushed through, and the local roads were widened and built up.

The golden coreopsis flowers arrived after the trains, their seeds carried far and wide across NSW as the iron road pushed further out.

On the right hand side of this picture can be seen the abutments of an older bridge that carried Blaxland's Road across the tracks.  It is significantly lower than the new bridge, which would have been built at the new, higher level required to allow the electrification of the Blue Mountains line.

Part of the crowd commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the arrival of the first train at Wentworth Falls (or Weatherboard, as it was known) held in July 2017

 The plaque attached to the NW corner of the bridge that carries Blaxland's Road across the Main Western Line, just west of Wentworth Falls Station.

The lonely headstone is in memory of James Fergusson, who was struck and killed by lightning 158 years ago, while settling cattle and horses into the yards near the Weatherboard Inn.  Each year, close to the 21st of December, a group of people gather on the remains of the old road, opposite the site, to commemorate James and John, whose story is set out below by local historian Jon Low.

The following research by John Low has been published on the 'Simply Australia' website:
In the 19th century when you travelled the Western Road over the Blue Mountains you were in the bush. For over fifty years following its construction in 1814-15, the road was the conduit between the coastal settlement and the pasture lands of the west. It wound a precarious route along the top of a high ridge with deep, unexplored valleys on either side and its condition was subject to the vagaries of weather, heavy use and irregular maintenance. Travel by whatever means was fraught with difficulties, discomfort and sometimes danger as the sad little tale that follows illustrates.

While thousands journeyed across the Mountains in these early years, few chose to live here and minimal settlement took place until the railway arrived in 1867. Inns, military depots & convict stockades, tollhouses, camps and mounted police stations all hugged closely the edges of the road,while settlers, gold seekers, bullock and horse team drivers and all the restless human cargo of a growing colony drifted past.

Twenty-two year old James Fergusson, a carrier with a team of heavy horses, was a part of that incessant 19th century movement. In the early afternoon of 21st December 1859 he and another man, John Black, were among several teamsters setting up camp about 30 or 40 yards in front of the Weatherboard Inn. Christmas was only several days away and it's a safe bet they were looking forward to some merriment in the inn that evening. But, before they could enjoy themselves their horses had to be unharnessed, fed and watered and settled down for the night.

The story of what happened at the Weatherboard on that summer afternoon in 1859 was described in detail in The Empire, a popular Sydney newspaper of the time founded by Henry Parkes. Young Fergusson and his mate Black, it's journalist wrote, "had just unharnessed the horses, and were about to feed them, when a violent thunderstorm came on, and a flash of lightning of a most terrific character struck the two men, and the whole of the thirteen horses, killing both men and animals instantly. The lightning then passed through the inn without doing any further material damage. The bodies of the men and animals presented a most ghastly spectacle, the former turning almost black in a very short period."

Two other men were struck by "the electric fluid" but escaped serious injury, while several further members of the encampment and a number of horses were completely untouched. John Black, aged 28 and married with three young children, was interred in St. John's Burial Ground at Parramatta. James Fergusson, having no known relatives, was buried near the spot where he was killed. Perhaps it was his employer, Mr. R. Martin of Bowenfels, or maybe even his mates who paid for his burial and for his headstone and footstone, both clearly the work of a skilled tradesman. [Extract by John Low at http://simplyaustralia.net/article-jl-weatherboard.html, 17/08/2011]

Blaxland's Road is named after Gregory Blaxland, of the trio Blaxland, Lawson, and Wentworth, who set out from the Nepean River in 1813 to find a way for settlers to move cattle across the mountains from the Cumberland Plain to the open lands around Bathurst, and Wentworth Falls was named after, well, I'll leave you to guess.



Reference:  https://www.bluemountainshaveyoursay.com.au/22793/documents/62795

The Serendipitous Duckling Shows the Way

No story here, just some photos I took this morning, in the creek down the back.  The other day, a Pacific Black Duck was in our yard with her three ducklings.  This morning, one duckling had wandered up to fossick in the grass by the garden.

It fled back to the garden when I came out with my camera, and went scrambling down the bank and into the long pool above the rapids - not sure where mum and siblings were, and hope this one hasn't been left behind.

It is amazing how fast such a little ball of down and feathers can move.  Also amazing are the colours the camera captures when the ripples rearrange the light filtering down through the trees.

The camera is only a fairly old model Iphone, and none of these pictures have been edited or 'shopped - it is just the serendipity that so often offers amazing beauty, if we are able to look.

The world is full of beauty and grace, if only we go out into it and let it wash over us.

Cherax - Destructor, or Constructor?

Cherax Destructor - the common yabby of farm dams and creeks across a vast swathe of Australia, has made a home for itself in all sorts of odd places.  It is not a native of the upper Blue Mountains, but has been here for quite a while.  The grandkids and I have caught them on many occasions in Jamison Creek, beside the orchard, or in the Wentworth Falls Lake.  Recently I found a number of small specimens inside the stomach of a Redfin Perch caught in the lake, and I am sure they are one of the reasons that the cormorants hang around the lake, as well.

It surprised me though, when I found it lurking in a tiny little rill that runs down the back of our place.  I had seen an adult in there a while back, over 50 metres up from the main creek, and wondered if it was lost - and then the holes appeared in the banks of that miniature creek.

The first hole - angled down into the left hand bank of the stream, beneath the long blades of grass.

The debris from the excavation ended up strewn across the stream, just downstream.  Heavy rain washed leaves into the pool that had formed, and when I cleared the blockage, yabbies only a few centimetres long scurried back into the hole.  Within a day or two, the stream was blocked by another wall of sand and gravel.

Mixed in with the sand and mud was gravel up to 40mm in diameter - not bad work for a little creature that is often only 100 - 200 mm long itself

I cleared it again, and again, and each time it was back within a night or two (cherax are prey to kookaburras, currawongs, foxes, and who knows what else - darkness is their friend) and each rebuild was bigger and better than the last.  It took me a while to understand that this was no random construction - all the material excavated from the tunnel was neatly piled across the stream, forming a small lake around the tunnel entry.  Not only that, but the water in the little pool above the dam was running through the tunnel and re-entering the stream about 750 mm downstream.  Perfect for a female yabby nurturing eggs or babies.

At the beginning and end of the above video I focus on the point at which the water flows out of the downstream end of the tunnel and back into the stream.  I have never seen a yabby do anything like this before, and wonder if anyone else has seen such behaviour.