Heading straight into the grey emptiness where Bar Island ought to be, out on the river last weekend, I felt grateful that the cloud enfolding me wasn’t bushfire smoke.
We live in difficult times. Rainforests on fire, burning not just in the Amazon but up and down the Australian east coast. We knew this was coming, we’ve known for a long time. But it’s hard to believe it’s happening so soon. Too soon, too close, too damn sad. Unbearable to think about for more than a few moments.
So I headed back to beautiful Marramarra Creek, to salve that ache. What precisely is that feeling? Not quite solastalgia – the pain of losing a beloved landscape. Not here, not yet – at least not for me, though I guess the traditional owners of this part of the river feel just that. For me it’s a different kind of climate grief. The sadness of knowing the time is coming when this beautiful place will be changed, razed.
I find myself returning again and again to the same places, taking very similar pictures of the very same riverscapes.
There’s a comfort in doing something over and over again, repetition with infinite small variations. A lower tide, raising the oysterbeds. A jellyfish bloom. A flush of eucalyptus flowers across the hillside or a flock of honeyeaters swirling their way up river. The surprising sight of a juvenile sea eagle, quietly sitting in the dappled light of the mangroves
If my instagram feed is a little repetitive, I can console myself that by staying on my home patch at least I’m not spewing out carbon and clocking up the air miles.
Of course there’s another reason to return – “fog bathing”. Perhaps I could try to get some kind of wellness movement going. Surely time spent lingering on a misty river is just as healing as walks through the most pristine Japanese forest.
And then there’s remembering. Going back to the same scenes, taking photos over and over, to capture a time and place as you see it in front of you right now. The same compulsion to hoard pictures as parents have, knowing their toddler will soon be grown and gone.
Of course , the memories you’re harbouring aren’t always good. Two years ago, for instance, the much anticipated multi-family jaunt to the water-access only campsite at Twin Beaches. Fine still mornings and fireside yarns. But also engine failure, unexpected high winds, a swamped coracle and endless bickering over alcohol. Not to mention screaming, blood and an emergency visit to Hornsby Hospital, to have oystershell fragments with their scary bacterial payload scraped from the ten year old’s feet. What can I say but when heading out on the Hawkesbury check the weather, pack light and wear shoes!
Marramarra Creek has other memories I can only guess at. Every time I pass Friendly Island, I ponder on that name and the violence it hints at but hides.
But memories, even bad ones, can also guide you. As I put Bar Island behind me I found the fog stretching out in all directions. This line of oysterpoles retreating into white, I knew, would take me where I wanted to go.
If we’re lucky, maybe our stash of memories of beautiful places will tell us how to go forward, and maybe even show us a way back.
Other paddles in Marramarra Creek and thereabouts
Two sad islands, three whistling kites
