The Lost and the Found

We are back in our home by the river now, where at midday the hot Summer light skitters over the water as if unable to settle - waiting till the sun slips lower and the colours soften, deepen.

We have been away for three months in our old home city though, catching up with family, and just before we left, on a day when M needed to rest, I myself was feeling anxious and rest-less, with that kind of nameless unease which is neither fear nor unhappiness but yet a close relative of both.

Thinking about it, I had the sense that I needed to get out - out of the city and into the trees - so I grabbed my mountain bike and headed for a place I had not been in 15 years - a little forested valley in the hills to the west where, until the 1980’s, an old underground coal mine once operated. It’s a strange place now. It was a strange place then - the last mine in Australia to still use horses underground (they retired in 1983), and the last place in Australia to use steam engines for commercial (non-tourism) purposes. (The steam trains were only retired in 1987).

As a child I had gone there with my parents in late Summer each year, because most of the valley was pleasant Eucalypt forest with here and there abandoned mine workings and buildings hidden amongst the trees (there have been several mines in the valley) - all by then overgrown with wild blackberry bushes. We went to harvest the berries as a family ritual - coming home scratched but happy, with buckets of glistening berries which Mum made into delicious blackberry pie. Any leftovers, Dad turned into home made blackberry ice-blocks.

So it’s a valley rich with childhood memory for me, but when the last mine there closed the road was closed too and nearly all the old buildings - and blackberry bushes - were bulldozed into oblivion. A silence fell, and a kind of local amnesia seeped out of the ground like a fog and it has become a mostly forgotten place.

Fifteen years ago I walked in, from quite a distant point, with our family dog for company. A red heeler/kelpie cross he was all working dog and needed daily “off leash” activity. I called him my exercise machine because we had to go somewhere most days and run or else he (and then I) would go crazy.

On that day we covered about 35kms (21 miles) cross country, mostly through dense bushland. By the end of it the poor dog could barely walk - he had covered far more ground than I had - and along the way we had discovered an abandoned wooden road bridge over a creek, overhung by trees - the road in and out completely overgrown and even the wooden deck of the bridge sprouting a garden of greenery from its decaying, rotten planks. With vast gaping holes all over, showing glimpses of the glistening dark water below, it was something from an Indiana Jones movie - but the creek was deep, the water cold and it was at least a potentially dry - if insane - option.

Irresistible.

In a fit of unreasonable stupidity I gingerly stepped across, hugging the left side because that edge was supported by the largest intact rotting log. The dog started to follow then very sensibly turned back, ran down the bank and swam the creek - appearing at the far end of the bridge a minute later, all wet and whining with anxiety.

I did - laughing to myself - successfully make the crossing. The dog jumped all over me with relief and I almost licked him back with my own.

So when I headed West two weeks ago, alone and on my bike this time, it was with a feeling of returning to somewhere familiar.

But of course - when I got there - it was a different place, and I am a different man. The memories I have do not live there any more - and the memories I have created by returning are of a different kind.

So this poem is about how that feels, and what it means, illustrated with my images from the day and ending with one from somewhat longer ago….

The Lost and the Found

To

be found,

what must be lost?

This question comes to me

as I’m searching - not knowing

what I’m looking for; not realising that I am

also letting go, discarding memories - relinquishing.

It was one of those days when you feel you should do something

without any clear idea of what that thing might be, so I just went hunting.

Finding a wing without a bird -

an object in a forest -

now a signpost,

pointing.

And an abandoned vehicle, showing

destiny and destination

somehow becoming

the same thing -

the loss of purpose

not without meaning;

the decay now almost… perfection.

Then two buildings nestled in the trees

nearby - a reminder that objects

designed to go together,

are sometimes best

kept safely apart.

The art is in the

knowing when,

the realising

why.

But life is mostly about coming together, about connecting.

Fifteen years ago I crossed a forgotten bridge joining

two river banks above a nameless water. Even then

it was collapsing - my clever dog swam over.

Returning today I remember this:

that life is a one way journey.

Some crossings cannot be

repeated, not

now, not

ever.

In the end there is stone, there is water, there is light, there is nature.

There is memory too - the lost and the found - the old

and the new. There is life there is love

there is image and word -

thought is the wing;

mind is the bird.


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Wild King Parrot - helping me write....

My former exercise machine….

Me in the middle (even younger than I am now) with my lovely Sister and wonderful Brother.