Standing Guard - The Sentinel Range, Tasmania

The adventure is over. The awildland team have come in, from their latest foray into the mountains. Shoes and socks are wet through; gaiters are muddy and thermal tops stink of sweaty armpits. The house is strewn with damp gear that needs to be aired and dried. Slowly, methodically, backpacks are emptied, gear sorted, everything returned to cupboards and draws and each item reminds me of the adventure just had: 

• Sleeping mat; my lumpy bed last night that turned out to be incredibly comfortable as the poor little plants beneath the tent bent under my weight and I settled into the dips and hollows between them. I remember the fragrance of the place, there was lemon-scented boronia nearby.
• The wet tent needs to be hung out; I woke at 5am, the tent covered in frost yet it felt mild outside. There was no cloud in any direction just fog down in the valleys below and a deep orange glow on the horizon, stars above. 
• Aluminium pots and our cups; There was time for a second morning cup of tea. The sun by then was clear and warm. In the low shrubs of the saddle, a crescent honey eater was smashing out a loud, beautiful percussion of varied notes.

Back at ‘home’, as we unpack, the radio is on in the background - this is what we have returned to: Koala-gate and Gas-gate, the Fitzroy River ready for a water-gate as bad as the Murray-Darling. So I choose a podcast instead. I get Bob Brown telling me how easy it is to be inspired, to aid change and why would I do anything different with my time. Then I’m listening to the poet, Mary Oliver, giving a rare interview and reading her poem Fourth Sign of the Zodiac Part 3.

“I know, you never intended to be in this world. 

But you’re in it all the same.

So why not get started immediately.

I mean, belonging to it.

There is so much to admire, to weep over.”

I really feel as if I belong back on the Sentinel Range, under the ‘T’ on the Lake Pedder topographic map. For this adventure, just gone, we walked up a ridge to the range. We called it Paraglider Ridge because we once saw a paraglider launch from its shoulder and cruise effortlessly an arms length from its quartzite outcrops and cliffs. Our trip was one of those walks born of Caz’s enquiring mind and eye for vantage points. We had driven by this range a dozen times and we had walked the known route at the eastern end of the range; a spectacular rocky fin of mountains that stops drivers in their tracks as they head out to Strathgordon. But he had always looked at the western end of the range and thought that would go, that looked good and possible. 

So we climbed it and explored. There was no track. It was steep. We spent the night. Admired the splendid view. He was right, of course, it was a cracker of a little walk. Then we returned down a different ridge. We named that one Raptor Ridge for the Wedgetail Eagle that circled overhead. At the bottom, we came across the old foot track to Lake Pedder. There is much to admire and to weep over there. Should we restore it? Why not? It is worth clicking on this “link”  to watch a short video exploring its past and future. 

sentinel

noun

1. a soldier or guard whose job is to stand and keep watch.

"environmentalists stood sentinel with their muskets”

verb

1. station a soldier or guard by (a place) to keep watch.

"a wide course had been roped off and sentinelled with mountains"

Coming in

Australia’s pastoral poets never spoke of coming in

For fear, perhaps, of tainting the beauty of being out 

Never paying homage to the small comforts of return:

the warmth of a dry, sheeted bed

rubbing clean the lens of my binoculars 

placing them back on the windowsill 

sitting instead at a table, in a chair

a fresh bandaid on a cut thumb

red wine in a warm glass

and they never wrote of the other side 

of coming in (from being out)

passing log trucks on the drive home 

as they haul out hardwoods

those regal delegates pulled from the wild

paraded in all their super feet of dead glory 

down the main street to the port

That poem is from me, but here is the point from Aldo Leopold: "Wilderness is a resource which can shrink but not grow". And a story about logging in Australia you should read, from beginning to end, is here. All these different viewpoints, stories, all these ideas and concepts and hopes swirling around and settling in me as I prepare to once again grab all those items I’ve just cleaned and put away, pull them off the shelves and out of cupboards, stuff them into dry sacks, cram them into my overnight pack as the awildland team prepares to walk out once more into our ever shrinking wilderness.