Fire and ice

experiencing a visceral sense of self and body in this strange world

As we drove back into our suburb one evening after five days away in Gariwerd/Grampions National Park, we were met by a light veil of silvery fog. I had to work the next two days, but it was still school holidays and the fog felt like an offering of sorts, allowing us to slide back into our home with a little less care and rush than if we were all headed off to our various institutions the next day. A momentary cocoon.

It always takes me a little while to acclimatise when I travel: a bit to settle in when we arrive at a new place, and a bit more to settle in when we return. This trip was a full but delightful one with two other families (9 kids, 6 adults!) and one of my daughters was on crutches meaning our hiking options were more limited than usual. On our search for some off-trail activities we visited the new WAMA Foundation, home to the Gariwerd/Grampians Endemic Botanic Garden and the National Centre for Environmental Art, described as ‘Australia’s first space dedicated to the exploration of environmental art’. Currently showing is artist Jacobus Capone’s exhibition End & Being which I found deeply moving.

Capone’s work is two-fold, questioning both our human interactions with the earth, and our impact on it. Capone does this through a performative work filmed and photographed at Bossons Glacier in France, a glacier that is anticipated to be completely melted by the year 2100. Capone’s visits to three locations on the glacier over 89 consecutive days were recorded¹.

My experience of this exhibition was visceral, and - to me - it was an incredibly moving reflection of the human body immersed on, under, and within the melting glacier. I am not an artist or art critic so I don’t feel I can make comment on the execution of this work other than by describing the impact it had on me personally, in an emotional and felt sense. The exhibition was displayed on four large screens, within a constant soundscape of the glacier, recorded by the artist. Sitting on the seats in the middle of the gallery with closed eyes, I felt submerged, liquified. The glacier loomed bigger than I could ever conceptualise in both size and sound, and yet its fragility was excrutiating. When I opened my eyes, Capone’s body was curved to the shapes of the ice, the melt water dripping over his hair, face, body, clothing.

It was a sense of being a human in the world, and what that means, that I carried from Capone’s exhibition. The interwearving plotlines of a melting glacier alongside the burnt landscapes of Gariwerd that I have had the privilege of visiting twice this year, were not lost on me. A few weeks later I’m still thinking about it, mulling over it, wondering how to word it.

I walked a recently opened section of burnt Gariwerd bushland, and all the rocks were white - different to rocks elsewhere in the area that I have seen. I couldn’t help but naively wonder if they were bleached by the heat of the fire, or already like this?

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Other things…

• Joanna Macy was a Buddhist and environmental activist, and until her recent death I have to admit I was not aware of her work. I enjoyed listening to this On Being interview: A wild love for the world.

• My family and I watched an online screening of this campaign film last week, which was powerful. I recommend taking a look, it further adds to this issue that I talked about a while back, as did

  Alia Parker
  in this post.

• On our way out of Gariwerd we pulled in to take a squiz at a trail I am hoping to walk at some point. In the carpark I saw a flash of red and then another and then, paused on a branch was the tiniest, fluffiest, reddest little scarlett robin.

• I’ve been loving this ABC podcast series: Saving the Franklin.

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One morning this fortnight I noticed the sky reflecting a rich pink off the side of a white gum in my garden, prompting me to look towards what I can see of the dawn from my morning coffee spot. Turning my head to the left I saw a sky that was a bright and true pink, a pink that I watched travel across the sphere above my house over the minutes that followed. Rainbow lorikeets were already busy, hanging upside down from blossoming gums and the purple coral pea (Hardenbergia, but purple coral pea sounds so much better, don’t you think?) wrapping itself around my decking was just about bursting into a fluorescent periwinkle, appearing desperately on the edge of bloom for days. Sometimes I am struck with sudden awe at the spectrum of colour available to my human eyes on this planet, and can only wonder at the hues unseen that must be glowing all around me.

Still, I have the fleeting reflection of a pink morning sky off the side of a eucalypt, a rainbow coloured bird, and an abundant purple pea to carry me through the coming fortnight.

And that’s quite enough for now.

Until next time, travel light.

1. Photos throughout are my own.