The Scrivener: Reminders
"Are wetland walks an attempt to escape from the darkness? Perhaps they are. They’re also a reminder that there is richness, beauty and purpose in life . . . somewhere...'' Brian Barratt enjoys the ducks, swifts, magpies, and all the other wild creatures he sees when he steps through the gate in the back fence.
Brian's wetland walks are an opportunity to meditate on the darkness in some humans hearts, and the goodness in others.
Brian's Web site, The Brain Rummager, provides lots of positive fun with words. Visit www.alphalink.com.au/~umbidas/
It's just a matter of stepping through the gate in the back fence. Depending on the time of year, there'll be a couple of duck families. Wood ducks might be feeding on the grass while their blue-billed cousins are fishing around in the water.
If you're lucky, you'll see the lone pied cormorant which comes to visit. Sometimes it's busily looking for food under the water of one of the lakes. Other times, it's sitting patiently on the rocks — not wasting time but busy looking for the next meal.
You don't have to flap around to prove that you're busy.
After heavy rain, when the water level rises, there will be a horde of tiny swifts doing their meals-on-wings thing. Feathery aerobatics. They dive almost close enough for you to feel the rush of air as they whizz past your head. It's amazing that they never bump into anything, not even each other.
Precisely who owns the property is a matter of argument rather than agreement. If a kookaburra chooses to sit on a low branch, hoping to espy a wriggling meal in the earth below, several noisy miners will immediately tell it to clear off. And they really are noisy.
Magpies — the large, handsome Australian variety — patrol their claims with vigour. Woe betide any human who happens to be too close to a nest which contains fledglings. A swooping magpie's clacking beak is a fearsome and dangerous weapon.
It's easy to see, in the fossil record, that birds are our closest living link to the dinosaurs. Thank goodness we don't have to contend with the clacking beaks of pterodactyls, too.
Things are a bit quieter on the tree trunks. The usual meandering marches of small black ants. Plus areas where much larger and threatening brown ants are in command. Small red insects, smaller brown insects, and even smaller green camouflaged insects are there too. They're all doing whatever it is that they do on the bark. A magnifying glass would be the only way of finding out what 'whatever' really is.
Last year, the frogs were calling in the creek at the eastern end. Earlier this year, some made their way to the lakes in the middle of the wetlands. And now they're heading further west. Their calls are perhaps the most satisfying thing you can hear out there. More than satisfying — exciting!
It's a pity that so many people who walk or cycle through the same wetland area don't hear of see any of these things.
It's nice to meet dogs and their accompanying humans. There's nothing like a kelpie's wafting tail and direct eye-to-eye greeting to make you feel wanted. Plenty of floor-mop dogs, too. You know the sort of thing — multiple variations of Maltese crossed with Shih Tzu or some other toy breed. And Cavalier King Charles spaniels, who have gone beyond the floor-mop stage to being Friends Of All The World, like their large and elegant cousins, Golden Retrievers.
Unfortunately, some of the humans attached to the dogs are less than caring about this beautiful place. At times of the day when a ranger isn't watching, they let their dogs, of all shapes and sizes, rush around in the water. That's nice for the dogs, but it's devastating for the lakes. They are, after all, mini-biospheres to be respected and nurtured. But it's another case of argument rather than negotiation, if you attempt to explain things to those dog-owners. They think the world belongs to them.
The world doesn't belong to anybody, does it? Well, if any creature has priority it's surely the tiniest of all, the bacterium. Without it, and its countless billions of companions, humans could not exist, let alone insects, birds and dogs.
Humans do exist, and they devastate more than lakes. On television the other night, a news reporter spoke of the most terrible sight he and his cameraman had seen. It was 50,000 corpses piled up in a school in Rwanda. He and his companion wanted to go away and vomit.
How did he hang on to his sanity, having witnessed such atrocities? He finds beauty and peace in places like Antarctica and tropical rain forests. He knows that goodness is still in human hearts, somewhere.
In the shattering conclusion of 'Lord of the Flies', William Golding's crowning achievement, the innocent boy Ralph '...wept for the darkness of man's heart'.
Are wetland walks an attempt to escape from the darkness? Perhaps they are. They’re also a reminder that there is richness, beauty and purpose in life . . . somewhere.
© Copyright 2005 Brian Barratt
