A photograph from Blanket Bay and thirteen things I have learned on walks
/
Self portrait with iphone leaning on a smooth stone and a ten-second-delay.
In the last four years I have been walking in wild places. It is easy to start doing and I would just start doing it if I were you, most especially if you are experiencing grief or asking big questions. And who isn’t? For me, it was both. New information came to me about my story after For a Girl was published. It stopped me writing, reading, and being in the world. The gifts walking in a wild place have given are great and the costs are small.
Here are thirteen things I’ve learned, in the order they came to me on my last walk.
There is a lyrebird in Gibraltar Range National Park who makes a car alarm noise.
Trees are neither kind nor cruel.
Lyrebirds are the loudest birds in the forest.
When you cry, even when you howl, trees will neither look at you nor look away.
At Grassy Creek campsite, on the night of the full moon, the mice will be illuminated as they run up and down the frame of your tent.
On the Great Ocean Walk, there are readers who want to know your name so they can buy your books and a librarian who has never heard of you. You are grateful for the librarian.
Blanket Bay is a place you might give a baby to strangers and feel all right.
The sound of a creek is like a mother’s song when you are falling asleep.
There is an Antarctic beech tree in Lamington National Park that is three thousand years old.
Some humans tow caravans.
Some humans do bad things.
Believing in goodness is easier if you are looking out from a forest.
The best humans have suffered.
