Nothing but the truth...

The truth has a way of coming to light.

‘Frozen Throne’, Pentax MX, Ektar 100. July 2022.

In some cases the truth can remain hidden, but it comes at a great cost to the person who does the hiding.

‘Dawn, Mt Field West’. Pentax MX, Ektar 100. July 2022.

Truth does not assert itself; but it has a way of making itself known at the least convenient moment for the truth withholder. People can bend the truth, but it has a way of bending back towards its origin. If it’s been twisted, it returns to its original shape. And though it may return to its original state, the truth remembers. It remembers all the knots, twists and turns in itself, as it’s been retold, altered; coerced into moulds it was never meant for.

‘Wind patterns in snow’. Pentax MX, Ektar 100. July 2022.

The truth is not slippery, it is solid. It doesn’t change. It stays the same.

What we believe to be truth can change though. What we hold to be true is different among cultures and across the ages. The truth has always been the same, but our perception of it has certainly changed and is indeed changing in this very moment.

Truth is difficult to pin down, yet it is always there, present. Waiting to be found.

‘Stack of frozen boulders’. Pentax MX, Ektar 100. July 2022.

Truth; what a curious thing it is.

-A.S. 27/8/22 -Lenah Valley

Patching the Patch

Is it broken if it has a big crack in it?

Whale rock and snowgum on kunanyi. Pentax MX, Ektar 100, August 2022.

Well, if it is a bone in the body and it has a crack in it, it is said to be broken, fractured. But there are many different kinds of fractures. Some are hairline cracks in our bones, which heal on their own, given sufficient rest and support. Other fractures need surgical help. Most breaks in our bones heal with time. However, the broken bone that’s healed is not the same bone as before. Forever there will remain a line of weakness in it.

Most things that break in the bush are not bones, but personal items people carry with them. Buckles, straps, stitching, plastic clips can all break, glue can give way with time. Things that are deemed essential items wear with use and one day, fail. Often, the problems these failures cause are tragic and hilarious at the same time.

Mossy boulder field, kunanyi. Pentax MX, Ektar 100, August 2022.

When an essential part of our kit breaks in the bush, whether it’s our stove conking out or our tent pole snapping in the wind, it can be a great cause of frustration to the user of the essential item, and potentially quite a bit of mirth for the surrounding party members. I’ll never forget the day when my friend David forgot to bring his tent pole to a bush doof and instead he used a supple branch with the leaves on it as substitute. His tent didn’t look quite right, and there was quite a bit of foliage in the vestibule, but it was a whole lot better than it would have been without the branch. At least the tent was standing.

I’ve seen soles of boots peel off, to be held on for the remaining five days of the trip through the wilderness with duct tape and cable ties. I have broken the bolt on the waistbelt of my pack by overloading my WE Lost World with 42 kg on our way out to Federation Peak and watched in amazement as my friend Dan Pan the handy-man lashed the waistbelt back on with metres of 3mm cord. Other times, I’ve been grateful for adhesive patches to repair my broken sleeping mattress so I could get a good night’s rest.

A basic repair kit containing knife, lighter, tape, cord, cable-ties, patches and glue will go a long way to solve a lot of unexpected problems we may encounter out in the bush.

Snowgum forest and boulder field, kunanyi. Pentax MX, Ektar 100, August 2022.

The most susceptible item to break in the Tassie bush is our clothing.

The scrub in the sub-alpine regions tends to be woody and it doesn’t break and it doesn’t bend. And most of it is rather sharp and prickly. Things tend to get snagged on it. Woolen long johns will get shredded within hours. Gaiters, boots and sturdy pants are essential. Although there is a story of Olegas Truchanas walking out from the Serpentine River after he lost his kayak and all his gear including his pants down a waterfall, by stepping through the arms of his raincoat. So pants are not essential but come highly recommended.

Pants tend to wear out on the bottom and the knees. These are the places that are most likely to get holes in them. So if we can reinforce, or patch these areas on our garments, we can extend the lifetime of our clothing many times over.

Scoparia, the bushwalkers friend and foe. Pentax MX, Ektar 100, February 2022.

So if our item has a hole in it, it’s worth having a crack at patching it. Tears in puffy jackets can be repaired by applying an adhesive patch, or silicon gel and a patch. A jumper can be darned or knitted, and pants can have patches sewn on them. It’s a bit of work, but I wear my patches with pride. Just because something has a hole in it, it doesn’t mean it’s broken. Just how our bone can heal after a fracture, our clothes can heal too, they just need our help.

Mist on kunanyi… Pentax MX, Ektar 100, August 2022.

But there comes a time when the patch, no matter how resilient, gets a hole in it.

In this case, should we patch the patch?

The answer is up to you, my dear reader. In theory there is no limit to how many patches we can put over each other to cover a hole. However, if a garment contains more patches than original material, it might be time to let go.

Or it might be time to find another patch.

-A.S. Lenah Valley, 21/8/22.

Afternoon light across the Cracroft Plains (burnt in 2019). Pentax MX, Ektar 100, Feb 2022.

Accumulation

A rolling stone gathers no moss. But if a stone is rolling, it has gathered momentum.

It is hard to go through life without a process of accumulating possessions, habits, knowledge, experience, among other things. Some people accumulate wealth, some accumulate junk in their backyard, some people accumulate cars, others bikes. Some people accumulate friends, others enemies. Some people accumulate healthy habits, others destructive habits. Regardless of what it is, we all accumulate.  

We gather the things and habits that we want to have in our lives and discard the things and habits we do not wish to have. This slow process, although taken in little steps and gradually over time, has a lot to say about who we are and what we have become.

Our actions result in an accumulation of momentum that carries us forward. The gymnast will be flexible, strong and agile, as a result of their training. The musician will notice when someone is singing out of tune. The accountant will know when the numbers don’t add up. The mother knows when her baby is hungry. As our experience accumulates, it shapes our character and comes to define how we respond to certain situations.

The nature of accumulation is that it occurs in incremental steps that are barely noticeable. Cancer, the chronic disease of our age does not grow overnight. It’s a response that develops in our bodies after a trigger has been consistently present for a long time. Or take one of the great addictions of this ‘Great Southern Land’: alcoholism. It’s not going to destroy our liver if we get on it every now and then. But if we drink a considerable amount of alcohol every day, we are working our liver a bit harder than it needs to, every day. And with time, this may take its toll.

We are not immune to our habits. It’s easy to think that our daily actions have minimal effect in our overall trajectory. But this belief ignores the concept of accumulation. Lots of little steps lead to big steps.

 The idea is easy enough to understand, but can prove difficult to take into consideration day to day, because the consequences of our habits are not immediately obvious. This is why accumulation is the invisible governor of our lives.

-A.S. 9/8/22, Lenah Valley

When there are no words left

Sometimes, our words run out. We wish to say more, but we have no words left. This doesn’t mean that there are no words, simply that we cannot voice them in that particular moment. But with a bit of persistence, and the appropriate intent, the words can eventually be found.

Some weeks, the content for the Scribbleton Post pours out of my head and into my fingertips, click, click, click and away I type on the keyboard. The words appear on the screen and they spell out a clear and coherent story. There is minimal need for further edits. The post is scheduled and goes out on Sunday, and I get to relax for about five days, until it’s time to write the next Scribbleton Post (previously ‘Mountains of Tasmania’).

Other weeks, the words that appear are in total disarray. They are jumbled up, multiple ideas entwined, entrenched, inseparable. It’s a bit like untangling the Gordian Knot. The only way to do it is to cut through it. This is when I scrap the post and start again. Thankfully, this doesn’t happen very often.

Regardless of what kind of a week it is, there is only one rule I have given myself.

And the rule is, The Scribbleton Post goes out every Sunday morning. That is my commitment to you, my dear readers, and to myself as a writer. Even if this means that The Post is a bit scraggly from time to time. It’s better if it goes out a bit scraggly than if it doesn’t go out at all.

Earlier this year, when we were away on a bike tour with Patty K. and I had no access to my computer for four weeks, I scheduled the Post six weeks ahead and I asked a friendly bot to send the post out for me. It wasn’t me. I was bike touring! But the Post still went out.

Bon Apetit, to this week’s photographs, taken on the Pentax MX, on our trip to the Central Plateau in August 2020 with my good friend, Patty K.

-A.S. Lenah Valley, 6/8/22

Underworld

“Chaos, confusion, darkness,
Into the underworld I go.”

The underworld is a fascinating place. As the name implies, it is the world below the one we usually inhabit. We know the world. But the underworld is the land of the hidden, the place where our waking self cannot go. The underworld holds all that is unknown.

In popular culture, to be an underworld figure means to be part of a crime syndicate. In mythology, the underworld refers to hell, or the closest equivalent of, depending on the culture in question. The underworld gives home to all that is unthinkable, all the traits in human consciousness that contain darkness. In the underworld lies all that is hidden.

What does it mean then, to travel to the underworld?

It means acceptance of the chaos, confusion and darkness that exist in our world. These qualities are present, just as harmony, clarity and light are present.

To travel to the underworld, we must accept that we cannot have a light and that we cannot see ahead. There is no path, there is no destination.

But there is a way. Both to the underworld, then back again.

-A.S. Lenah Valley, 28/7/22

The Great Unraveling

We are living in the age of the Great Unraveling*.

We have reached the limits of our current paradigm and are in the process of transitioning to a new one. Humanity isn’t doing this willingly, and the less willing we are in accomplishing this transition, the more difficult things are going to get for us.

Eventually, the Great Unraveling will take us through to the Great Turning and it is here that we will begin a new phase in the Earth’s history.

-A.S. 23/7/22

* See ‘World as Lover, World as Self’, by Joanna Macy.

Piecing it together...

A panorama is an image that has been ‘stitched together’ from multiple photographs.

In landscape photography, the subject often doesn’t fit into a single shot. In this case, multiple single images can be taken, slightly overlapped and with the wonder of digital processing, a single image may be created from our broken mosaic of photographs. There are a few tricks and a bit of wizardry sometimes, especially when the photographs were not taken correctly; but even then, sometimes the images simply don’t match and our panorama never appears. Other times, the result is seamless and beautiful.

Here is a collection of my favourite panoramic images I have taken over the last few years. These have all been shot on all-mechanical film cameras. No light meters, no electronics, just a little wind up arm and a roll of film.

The beauty of these images is that the full files are quite large, consisting of up to 12 individual shots in some cases. This means these images can be printed BIG!

Enjoy!

-A.S.

Mt Gell Panorama, Tasmania, 2019. Pentax MX, 50mm, Ektar 100.

Arrow Tarn Panorama, Central Highlands, Pentax MX, 50mm, 2021.

Freycinet Panorama, Pentax MX, 2021.

King William Saddle Panorama, Hasselblad 500C/M, 2020.

Wineglass Bay Panorama, 2019. Pentax MX, Ektar 100.

Lake St Clair Panorama, 2019, Pentax MX, Ektar 100. This image is currently displayed at the Lake St Clair Visitor Centre. It is nearly two metres wide.

Lake Pedder Panorama, 2021. Hasselblad 500C/M. This image might look familiar. If you could see through the tannin stained waters of the impoundment, you might be able to make out a beach, hidden below.

Voila! New and old together. The previous image has been merged with Lindsay Hope’s image from 50 years ago before Lake Pedder was flooded, taken from approximately the same location. Note the two different shorelines (old and new) in the image. The mountains just about overlap. The beach on the right hand of the image is 3.5km long and 800m wide. It is the equivalent of three hundred footy ovals in terms of area. It’s patiently waiting beneath the tannin stained waters of the South West.
One day, it will emerge.

This image was printed onto a 6x3m billboard in Hobart earlier this year with the phrase “What was once, will be again” in the middle of it.

If you wish to spend some time down by Lake Pedder this year, why not register for the 2022 Lake Pedder Bioblitz here?

Thought and Instinct

To think, or not to think,

That is the question.

River Derwent Estuary.

To think, to form words, to solve problems, to understand the complex mechanisms that govern our lives marks our humanity. Through thought, we have learnt how to manipulate our environment, to suit our needs and aspirations. As people, we have the ability to think things through, or to think about a problem, and come up with an appropriate solution. Thoughts can turn into actions and outcomes. This allows us to work smart, not hard. Modern economics is governed by numbers, and our ability to manipulate them. These days the wealth of the world is determined by numbers in a virtual world that is abstract, yet has incredible power over our lives. Our ability to think has allowed us to build abstract models of the world, and through our belief in these abstract models, we have allowed these models to rule our world.

The long dead sea creatures, held in rock.

What is easy to forget is that there is a world outside of human thought. “I think, therefore I am.” The quote by Descartes characterises western thought, where we identify with our thoughts and discount forms of experience that are less thought focused. Our culture places such importance on thought that we have become blind to other forms of experience like sensing, feeling and being. We can think, or not to think. And if we don’t think, we still are. We don’t vanish into a puff of smoke. In fact, thinking can only exist with its counterpart; not-thinking. We can ‘not-think’, and still remain human. I’m calling Descartes out. And I’m calling him out because every action that we take has a price associated with it. If we listen to our thoughts, it means we shut ourselves off to other modes of experiencing the world. We can get stuck in our head, our head that is governed by thought, and become oblivious to the obvious that’s staring us in the face.

Little swing over big sea.

We have a much older way of operating in the world, before our frontal cortex developed into the word and number processing machine that it is, and this way of being relies on our instincts. These are actions that we take without having to think about them. Instincts are less tangible and a bit harder to pin down than thoughts. But even in today’s brain governed culture, we have phrases that allude to the importance of instinct. If our thoughts originate in our brain, then our instinct originates in our ‘gut’. Our ‘gut-feeling’ can warn us of danger, and while western science may scoff at this idea, western science has often been wrong in the past. Our instincts have kept us alive for millions of years before we learnt how to think. Discounting them now spells trouble.

Double exposure of eucalypt and kunanyi.

We have learnt how to think. And now, in the 21st century, I think it’s finally time for humanity to learn how not to think. We need to learn how to collectively let go of thoughts and listen to the older part of our brain that is responsible for governing our basic bodily functions; in other words, our survival. We need to start trusting our gut again. The easiest way I have found of turning off my thoughts is by spending time in nature or by observing my own breath. There is something about being surrounded by other living things and paying attention to the process that sustains our existence that helps us reconnect with our own nature. Thinking is part of our humanity. Not thinking is also part of our humanity. We can’t have one without the other.

Two mathematicians walk into a bar…

Two mathematicians walk into a bar and decide to play a game to see which one of them can name the biggest number.

“One.” -says the first mathematician.

“Two.”- says the other mathematician.

“Ten.”- comes the response.

“One hundred.” -follows the other one.

“One thousand.” - comes the quick reply.

“One million.” - responds the other.

“One billion!”

At this, the other mathematician ponders for a while, then eventually answers.

“Infinity.” - he says with a smug grin.

For a brief moment they both think the game is over. But then, the other mathematician replies with a cheeky smile.

“Infinity, plus one”.

Mushrooms!

With the longest nights of the year having taken place this week, it seems an appropriate time to contemplate the life of fungi, organisms that can grow without any direct sunlight.

The great recyclers of nature: fungi. 2020, Hasselblad 500C/M, 70mm Planar, Ektar 100.

Mushrooms are the reproductive organ of a much larger organism called a fungus. A fungus mostly consists of a vast network of filaments in the soil, called mycelium. These filaments criss cross the forest floor and can be so fine and so plentiful that there can be kilometres of mycelium beneath a single footstep. When the conditions are ripe, and the fungus wishes to release its spores, a mushroom will rise up from the mycelium below, a miniature seed spreading tower. For many years we used to think that the mushroom was the fungus. In reality, a mushroom is a bit like the tip of an iceberg; it’s a very small portion of it!

Mushrooms are spore releasing towers. Olympus Em-1, 2018.

Fungi are nature’s recyclers; they break down decomposing organic matter, rotting wood for example and make the nutrients available for other life forms to take up and digest. The filaments of mycelium interact with the roots of plants, trading various nutrients in return for starches and sugars, which the plants acquire through photosynthesis. The combination of mycelium and roots interacting with each other create so called mycorrhizal networks. It is incredibly complex and crucial to the overall well-being of the forest. And most of it is invisible to the human eye.

Mushroom colony, SW National Park. 2018, Olympus Em-1, 12-40mm.

Some species of mushrooms contain psilocybin, a psychedelic drug that has profound effects on our state of consciousness. Australia’s peak scientific body, the CSIRO has been recently given the green light to collaborate with medical companies in developing new psychedelic products aimed at helping people through mental illness, including through the use of psilocybin. The use of this drug enables different parts of the brain to communicate with each other more easily by reducing the resistance between neural pathways. This can lead to the individual embracing new perspectives and alternative ways of looking at the world. For someone entrenched in deep depression, the use of psilocybin can have remarkable results by creating the shift in perspective required to break out of a mental rut.

The stinkhorn fungus smells like rotting flesh, appealing to wildlife that will eat it and poop out its spores somewhere else. Genious!

In a world where humanity is producing more waste than it can possibly deal with in a sustainable manner, perhaps we would be wise to learn more about nature’s recyclers: the fungi! Perhaps there is already a fungus that exists out there that can break down plastic, and turn it into something else. Our understanding of fungi is still rudimentary, so investigation into the how these organisms work is likely to yield new discoveries for generations to come.