A Reading Place
A dedicated place to read and think brings simple joy and reflections of times gone by.
I have a reading place. It’s a small corner of my back deck. I sit and lie on a cushioned sun lounge, a small table to one side is large enough to hold my coffee, my glasses, a pencil for underlining, a pen and notebook—for copying out those freshly underlined passages—and a pile of books. I always have a pile of books on the go: a main book supported by numerous others—poetry, philosophy, theology, or biography—that I flit between depending on my mood.
The deck faces east to catch the morning sun. I sit early in desperate anticipation, a wilting flower awaiting the day’s first rays of light, warmth, and life after a long night of darkness.
Kookaburra’s laugh in the distance; their guffaws drowning out the polite songs of lorikeets and minors and the hungry moans of a young magpie impatient for its first meal of the day. A gentle breeze moves through the bamboo that was planted hastily to erase the growing grey monolith next door. My planting has been successful, and the once wall of windows has been transformed into a shimmering palisade of soothing green. The sound of wind through bamboo is a sound like no other: it is a swirling sound that washes back and forth, a steady rhythm keeping time with the swaying baton of the culms. It is the sound of the seashore. Perhaps that’s why I like it so much.
My windchime offers a soft melody. Its brass chimes are tuned modally to a scale evoking ‘Aqua’; its tune lifts high above the haunting wash of the bamboo and adds texture to the preferred seascape sounds, extending the real seascape which lies only a few hundred metres away. A larger bamboo chime adds percussion. Its chimes long since split and decayed, yet it remains hanging, dead, lifeless, unable to offer any note of melodic value, but in its surrender now beats a muffled rhythmic tattoo that anchors the loose swish and wash of swaying bamboo and sporadic birdsong.
There are no rays today; the sun lies lost behind thickening grey. The light breeze blows an occasional spritz of rain—almost a mist—onto my bare chest. The moist air passes through my krama—a traditional Khmer garment often worn as a sarong and well-suited to humid days lying in the heat. Its’ wearing an ardent reminder of my times photographing in Southeast Asia—and elsewhere—and my yearning to be back. They were important times spent amongst communities deeply connected to the earth around them, to the vagaries of the seasons and the mood of a changing climate. Our days lie in contrast to those times, in competition or opposition, where we seek only to dominate that which nourishes us. Yet to feel Nature, to see Nature, to hear Nature…that is what I enjoy.
What’s in a name?
As a writer, I’ve found certain words jump off a page and conjure up alluring imagery that form the basis for all I write. But no single word has enticed me more than ‘sojourner’.
Above: The Adirondack Guide by Winslow Homer.
I often wonder when I first stumbled across the word sojourner. It somehow got into my consciousness more than 20 years ago and has since become the name of my film company, the title of a song I once wrote, the title of a book I have written; it is the title of this creative writing blog, and if I ever own a small sailboat big enough to warrant a name, then I suspect I too will name it Sojourner. The word has a deep meaning for me, but why?
Sojourner means ‘a person who resides temporarily in a place’. It’s a romantic and carefree notion to be sure: wandering from town to town, staying a while, and moving on. The Western genre is full of sojourners: cowboys riding into town, saving the day, and riding off into the sunset. And of course cruising sailors are the epitome of sojourners, gliding from island to island or from sea to sea seeking new ports and new experiences.
The word also conjures thoughts of pilgrimage and solitude, of deep thought and reflection. They are thoughts of living outside the box and seeing what lies around the next corner, and then the next, of uncommon experiences and a life full of stories.
But we are all sojourners aren’t we? We are only on this planet for a short time, we will reside temporarily in this place and then move on. Others have been before, and others will come after, so what we do during our time here—how we spend it and how we leave the planet for those to come after—matters. Along with being sojourners, we are also stewards.
That freedom to move is what appeals to me: of not being tied down but of being in control of your own decisions – of having agency. Some may consider that selfish, but freedom, true freedom, is vital to our wellbeing yet lost to our modern lives.
Whenever I have had the freedom to accept full time work, I have been both excited for the opportunity, yet terrified by the conditions. Yes, I will earn money. Yes, I will have financial security for a time. Yes, I will have prestige. And yes, it will come at an unbearable cost. My days will not be my own. My hours will be dictated to me. My life will be governed: what I do, when I arrive, when I eat, and when I leave. And, I will need to ask permission for time away. My life will be determined by the whims, competencies, and calendars of others. My days will be filled with minutiae: the unimportant will become the important. Great stress will be placed on fleeting subjectivity; fine details of inconsequential projects bearing negligible outcomes that will be forgotten soon after launch day.
Some feel great relief at the security such busywork brings. Others like me bristle at the intensity placed on its mediocrity. But while sustainable employment is a good and necessary endeavour in any society, it is how we define employment and what societal expectations we place around it that I find interesting. In many cases modern employment exists merely to perpetuate our foundational belief in consumerism and materialism. Instead of working for necessity, we work to feed an insatiable appetite for more. Like Huxley’s soma, our consumerism exists only to placate our quiet desperation, while the principles underpinning that employment lie at odds with a deeper connection to the natural world around us and the spiritual world above and within us. As Thoreau said, ‘We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven.’ Our freedom and agency are expressed through a desire for more things, not more life.
Above: Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt (Chief Joseph) of the Wallowa Band of the Nez Perce.
Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, the Nez Perce chief more widely known as Chief Joseph, was quoted as saying, ‘You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who was born a free man should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases.’ Joseph’s land had been taken, his people killed, and his culture and way of life were disintegrating before his eyes. As one of the last Native Americans to have experienced the true freedom of a primitive life prior to the white man, his was a harrowing situation. But that cultural disintegration happened to make way for our modern Western society, for a new way of life that focussed on prosperity through enterprise and the acquisition of wealth, and not on necessity and a relationship to spiritual and emotional wellbeing. The connection to land, to people, and to place were deeply rooted in the Nez Perce culture, even Joseph’s name—Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt—means ‘thunder rolling from the mountains’, the poetic imagery and connection evident; but in this burgeoning new society, the land was merely a commodity, something to be exploited, to be torn up, sold, built upon, mined; the rivers too were dammed and diverted; the oceans emptied of life, and the air polluted – all in the name of progress and Manifest Destiny.
Above: A replica of Thoreau’s cabin near Walden Pond.
As someone who craves connection and simplicity, and who bristles at hollow enterprise, it is little wonder that the word sojourner holds such meaning. But when did the word pop into my thought space? Many years ago I read Walden, the quintessential work by Henry David Thoreau about his living alone in a cabin for two years in the woods outside of Concord, Massachusetts. My cheap Oxford University Press, World Classics edition of Walden is worn and dog-eared, sentences are underlined, and numerous Post-it notes have been torn into smaller strips and stuck to the many pages to mark something profound. The cover is adorned by The Adirondack Guide – a peaceful Winslow Homer watercolour of an old, bearded man glancing over his shoulder as he rows his skiff across a pond in a thick Appalachian wood – itself a study on solitude and simplicity that gives the reader a hint to the enchantment that lies within. I read Walden several times in my younger years, but it has been many years since I last entered the woods surrounding Walden Pond with Thoreau. Having just read another of Thoreau’s works—the essay Walking—I decided it was time to re-read Walden and seek solace in those regenerative woods once more.
In the very first paragraph I read, ‘At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again’.
I should have known.
Above: Anchored in a quiet bay, trying out my new fishing rod, and with my trusty copy of Walden to hand, I noticed a surreal coincidence between the book’s cover and my surrounds.
It’s raining again
Pouring rain means a day indoors but reminds me that a life connected to nature means the need to adapt.
Part 4 and final of the Away Again series (missed the others? Start here).
Wet and dreary. Not a day for beaches and bikes.
It’s raining. It rained quite heavily overnight, enough to wake me from time to time. But while there were small respites then, the rain has now settled in, along with a dreary melancholy and a chill in the air.
I am alone in my cabin, my skin brown from a few long days in the sun, but now covered and cold. My fading navy-blue cotton fisherman’s jumper gives me some comfort, but my shorts and bare feet remain in a dogged resistance to the inclemency. ‘I am away!’ they scream in late-Spring defiance. It is not a time for shoes, socks, jeans, and layers.
The usually wide-open windows and door are now closed against the incessant rain and wind. It is a small cabin, typical of any ‘o-nite cabin’ that adorn faceless van parks up and down the coast; cabins that bring their own melancholy of lost dreams and broken hearts, but flicker with delicate new life and dwindling hope as they teeter on the edge of renewal and despair.
The cold adds to the bleakness within and without. But as the morning crawls towards midday, I hope the cabin heats up. If not, I will concede and dress more appropriately. As a last resort, I will switch on the small column heater I found in the cupboard yesterday.
Travelling on a motorbike restricts me. In a car, I could escape the rain and go watch a movie or sit in a café, or park by the ocean and watch the rain on the water. But on a motorcycle, I would only get soaked through and be miserable. And, as I have found out too many times on a bike, once you’re wet, you’re wet – and Kevlar jeans and a thick leather motorcycle jacket can take days to dry out.
But I am on a bike, which is what I want. Today simply reveals the reality of riding – and it is a good reality: one that forces you to slow down, to have your decisions governed by the weather, to expand the range between high and low which today means being uncomfortable, bored, and cold.
‘Our cossetted, over-heated way of life may have robbed us of a natural ability, evident in most mammals, to enjoy both extremes of the spectrum of warm and cold,’ wrote environmentalist and writer, Roger Deakin.
The cold continues, and the rain shows no desire of abating. So today will be quiet: it will be a day for reading and writing, and for playing solitaire; of being alone with my thoughts and my own dwindling hope of clearing skies for tomorrow’s ride home.
Postscript: I turned on the heater.
* Deakin, Roger (2000) Waterlog
The Outer Isles
‘But it was the fly line rolling back and forth in the half-light of the valley that changed me; the only movement save for the running river and the wind through the trees.’
From the opening of a book I began writing some time ago. Perhaps I will continue…
Above: ‘The bank was where I would watch the line whizz back and forth; where I would watch it catch the light above and flick it down to me in the shadows of the valley.’ (Image courtesy of my mate Les who loved the story, put it into AI and sent me what came out).
When I go in for something, I go all the way. It was like that with fishing, fly fishing to be exact. It wasn’t going to be something I just did; it was going to be me – I was going to be a fly fisherman, a great fly fisherman. That’s how people would know me.
My father introduced me to it when I was a boy. I remember standing next to him on the bank of the river below our house. He would be waist-deep in the swift current, moving deeper, shallower, upriver, downriver – always moving, always looking, searching. I would edge closer, feet wet, knee-deep, until the subtle warning would come and the instruction to move back to the bank with it. I would sulk and go but the bank was where I could take it all in and my father knew it. The bank was where I would watch the line whizz back and forth; where I would watch it catch the light above and flick it down to me in the shadows of the valley. I would watch it come to rest among the ripples of the water. My father would do things with the line—mend it, he called it—moving it across or back, or he would gently tug the line, letting the fly look like an insect in trouble, he would keep the line taught and strip it in, or he would let it drift, always ready to strike when a fish took the fly.
And then one would. The line would race across the surface, spray would fly, the reel would spit and scream and hiss, my father would holler, and the light would bounce. And there it was: the fish. It would leap in the air, twisting and turning trying to get that thing out of its mouth, that thing it didn’t understand. It was an insect, like one of thousands it had eaten, but no insect had ever done this before. Nothing had pulled like this. Where did this insect get its strength? How could it have such control? At those moments I felt like the whole river could sense its panic. It was like all life in the valley, all eyes, all senses would stop and wait to see what would become of one of its own.
Soon the fish would tire and my father would reel it in. The momentary commotion forgotten as the river returned to normal and the eyes of the valley would turn away as quietness would descend once again. For we too were part of that place. Life and death were part of that place – the hunter and the hunted. The valley knew it and the river knew it; we knew it, and it was expected.
Watching my father fishing was mesmerising. There was something so graceful about it, so beautiful—the long thick fly line moving back and forth across the backdrop of the valley, glistening with sunlight; forwards, then backwards; forwards, then backwards; its tight loops opening and closing and rolling—it was dancing and I was watching. It was art, the way I understood art back then. There was technique, there was form; there was practice and patience. And there were times when everything came together and I felt like I was inside a masterpiece. If that moment could be captured, it would be known as a moment of perfection. Folks would talk about it for years; it would hang on gallery walls or be displayed in museums where people would queue for miles to catch a glimpse of it; it would be printed in books for others to study and teachers would present it to their students and say: “This! This is what you must strive for”.
Sometimes, when I was a little older, I would take the net and scoop up the fish my father caught, taking them back to my father like an obedient dog playing fetch. But it was the fly line rolling back and forth in the half-light of the valley that changed me; the only movement save for the running river and the wind through the trees. It seemed out of place, but not: something modern and immediate, disrupting a place where time meant nothing; yet it fit right in. It was natural. My father was meant to be there. I was meant to be there – and I wanted to be there more than anything.
Those were special days, those boyhood days on the river. And with every cast the hook was set deeper, and I knew that I too would become a fly fisherman – a great fly fisherman. People would know me by my skill; they would write books about me, they would make movies about me.
It’s strange what we learn from our fathers. It might be fishing or hunting. It might be motorcars or music, a head for figures or the way to swing a bat. It’s what dreams are built on, the dreams of the innocent, the dreams of the young. But sometimes things come along and snatch those dreams right out of your head. Unexpected things. Or they make you question whether it was ever a good dream. Sometimes the sins of the father make you forget your dreams altogether – or make you want to.
My father’s gone now. He’s not dead, just gone. I haven’t seen him in a long while. He lives in the Outer Isles.
The gifts of fortune
In Part 3 of the Away Again series, I take a somewhat philosophical dive into what makes us happy, agency, and the joys of a simple life.
Part 3 of the Away Again series
The simple pleasure of a sunrise. Nature, freedom, and it doesn’t cost a thing.
Possessions, I have a few. But then I am amongst the wealthiest people on the planet – just having running water and a flushing toilet in my home puts me there. In my work as a photojournalist I have certainly spent time with many people who do not have those things. And I have come to understand and witness that there are different levels of poverty.
Globally, we measure poverty in terms of US dollars earned in a day—the international poverty line is currently US$2.15/day—but when you are amongst extreme poverty, you learn that life has very little to do with money and everything to do with access: access to clean water, access to food, access to shelter, access to a latrine, access to health care, access to education, access to stable/sustainable employment. That access then influences agency – the freedom to make your own choice.
The choices we make and why we make them is an age-old question. When questioning Fate’s influence on human affairs, Tacitus spoke of two things: choice and possessions. He cited the Stoics whom he said believed in fate but as a result of ‘natural causality’. Tacitus’ point, or rather that of the Stoics, is that our lives—for those of us with agency—are a Choose your own adventure story: we have the freedom to choose but in doing so we set in motion a series of events which ‘cannot be altered’1.
Tacitus also considered the notion of good vs bad and the popular assumption that good = possessions = happiness. Again he cited the Stoics who disagreed with that assumption because in their experience those with many possessions were often miserable while the happiest people were those in ‘dire circumstances’. It is, as Tacitus said, because the miserable people with much ‘do not know how to use the gifts of fortune wisely’ while the happy people with little have learnt to ‘deal with their situation bravely’.1
* * *
I have experienced tremendous joy and received generous hospitality from people in places like Kenya, Uganda, India, Cambodia, Bangladesh, and Laos – from people who are dealing with their situation bravely. What little they have is gladly shared with much laughter and a sense of pride and from finding joy in simple pleasures.
My occasional motorbike trips away with their inherent simplicity are both a reminder of those times but also a desire to use my own ‘gifts of fortune wisely’. Brewing coffee on an empty beach while watching whales breach just offshore, having woken nearby in a swag under little more than a hootchie (a small Australian Army tarpaulin) and enjoying a roadside chat with a local shop owner is a peaceful reminder of how little we need to be happy. It is also a reminder of what solo sailor Robin Lee Graham wrote in Dove, his account of his five years at sea, ‘At sea, I learned how little a person needs, not how much.’2.
* * *
It’s amazing how much the ocean changes in a day. A calm, serene sea one morning can be quite tumultuous the next. Despite my better judgement, I checked Instagram this morning and knew something was up when my friend Guy—who writes the ocean temperature on the wall in Manly each day—had posted the temp, 19.2, along with the words, ‘Ocean restless’. That, and I could hear the ocean from where I slept.
I am sitting in my usual spot at the northwest end of Elizabeth Beach. Elizabeth is usually quite benign: protected in a loving hug by Charlotte Head and Seagull Point to the south, and by Booti Hill to the north. But today’s swell is coming straight in from the northeast while a smaller secondary swell is hitting it from the south, making conditions quite messy.
There is a lot of mist—mostly salt spray I suspect. There was some rain last night, and with the rising sun, increasing heat, and crashing seas, there is a lot of moisture in the air. There are no whales today, well not that I can see. It can be hard to see their spray amidst so much confusion; maybe they stay further out when conditions are rough, preferring deeper seas where the swell is less pronounced.
The swell has calmed a bit now. While it’s definitely there, the edge seems to have come off it and I feel that it will continue to drop as the warmth rises. Either way, today I have agency: I have the freedom to choose, so I will choose to use my gifts of fortune wisely: I will choose a life of simplicity.
It’s going to be a good day.
1. Dobbin, R. 2008, Epictetus: Discourses and Selected Writings, Penguin Classics, Introduction p.xi–ii
2. Graham, R.L. 1991, Dove, William Morrow Paperbacks
It’s four o’clock somewhere
Lying in the sun and living deliberately. Thinking about life and death and a life of purpose. Part 2 of the Away Again series.
Part 2 of the Away Again series
Lone swimmer. Photo: ©Matthew Smeal
It’s nearly four o’clock. The wind is easing, the swell is weakening, and I am lying naked on a beach. Oh, how I love to lie naked on a beach! To feel the sun on every pore, the salt drying on my skin, my still-damp hair from yet another swim brushing my shoulders and offering a soothing respite to the warmth now enveloping my body.
There have been many dolphins this afternoon: small pods, cruising languidly across the bay, their casualness broken by sudden outbursts as they chance upon unsuspecting fish. A rush, a swirl, and a splash and within moments the surface returns to an eerie calm, the just-gone commotion soon forgotten but for an occasional dorsal fin piercing the surface to reveal the pod’s course as it continues on its way.
A sea eagle came too: swirling, circling in unsteady arcs only twenty or so metres above the water. Its unsteadiness reminded me of two fledglings from a time before: young eagles desperate to improve, their inexperience contrasted by a larger adult that hung rocksteady in the heavy wind nearby. Is this one of those birds? Now a little older, its steadiness coming, its status growing? What a way to grow! To be left alone, to fend for yourself from an early age; to develop by instinct, by nature. Learn to fly. Learn to hunt. Learn to defend. But where is the other bird from that time? Did it not learn? Are the two birds now only one? Perhaps it is elsewhere, fishing further along the coast. It’s nicer to think that it is.
It is a stark reminder that nature is harsh. Maybe harsh is wrong, perhaps necessary is better. The only certainty to life is that it ends. ‘We must die,’ wrote Seneca. ‘Death is a law of nature; death is a contribution and an obligation required of mortals.’*
‘I did not wish to live what was not life.’
Henry David Thoreau
The sea eagle, like the dolphins, must eat fish or die; those fish must eat smaller fish or die. We too, must eat or die. Ecology, therefore, is a numbers game: an intricate balance of mathematical ratios as one population sustains another, which sustains yet another. But is it wrong to lose the emotion? To see life and death in such black and white numerical terms? I think not. If anything, I think it is healthier to accept what is finite and fickle. But I also think we should fill that stark canvas with as much love and colour as we can for the time given us.
‘I did not wish to live what was not life,’† wrote Henry David Thoreau on spending two years alone in the woods where he went to ‘live deliberately’. Our time here may be short, or it may be long, but let it not be dull! Let it be filled with purpose! Let it be deliberate!
* * *
The late afternoon warmth is reminiscent of winter’s apricity. The swell continues to drop, and the wind continues to ease, both loosening their grip on the day as the light too follows suit and begins its slow fade towards darkness. I will lie here for longer – an hour or so yet. If I’m lucky I will fall asleep to the faint sound of lapping waves, my entire body cocooned in a soft blanket of sunlight. How nice it would be to wake up naked and alone on a beach, veiled only in moonlight and a gentle sea breeze. I am reminded of Whitman, ‘To emerge and be of the sky, of the sun and moon and flying clouds, as one with them.’¡ That would make me smile, as I would amble back along the dark, silent bush track to the roadside where I parked my motorbike.
* Seneca, Lucius Annaeus Dialogues and Essays Oxford World’s Classics, Oxford University Press 2008 p247
† Thoreau, Henry David Walden Oxford World’s Classics, Oxford University Press 1997 p83
¡ Whitman, Walt ‘Song of Joys’ The Complete Poems, Penguin Classics 2004 p211
Where does this love of the sea come from?
A creative look back on childhood memories of boats, bays, and marinas. An excerpt from a much larger work that I hope one day to have published.
Blueys Beach, NSW ©Matthew Smeal
…even then,
A child, I held unconscious intercourse
With the eternal beauty, drinking in
A pure organic pleasure from the lines
Of working mist, or from the level plain
Of waters covered by the steady clouds.
William Wordsworth
‘Images of a Mighty Mind’
Where does this love of the sea come from? It has been there since I was a boy, I know that for certain.
I remember fondly the time spent on my father’s boat—most weekends and holidays—my feet dangling from the bowsprit catching spray in my toes as my eyes remained fixed on the bow wave being pushed ahead of the hull. It was my happy place. I loved to stare at the water below until my father, having spotted me, or allowing me there for as long as he could bear, would call me back concerned that in my daydream I would slip and go straight through the twin screws propelling us forward.
So, I would retreat to the stern and sit on the marlin platform to watch the wake—the beautiful and perfectly formed peeling waves—and dream of surfing them for miles at a time. But Dad always said no when I asked if I could try, and he would soon call me back when he found I had simply replaced hanging off the bow with hanging off the stern. He never said anything, but I think he was secretly pleased that at least one of his three sons had an obvious love of the sea. It was where he seemed most happy.
Those nights on board—falling asleep to the sound of water lapping against the hull only inches from my slumbering ears, and the smell of salt and oxygen rich air filling my senses and my formative years—were joined by the days. While the adults on board would peel prawns and drink Blue Nun, I would swim, diving from the fly bridge to emulate the sea eagles circling above; swimming to empty beaches imagining I was a shipwrecked sailor or a pirate digging for treasure; I’d be fishing from a quiet rock or rowing off in the dinghy to explore the next cove and to be alone.
I am often surprised, and somewhat disappointed, that my life didn’t involve the sea more. Surfing, swimming, and lifesaving have become my coastal pursuits – and photographing – and perhaps that is enough. I did own a small sailboat once; and I did write and photograph for several sailing and boating magazines for a time; and I have worked in a ship chandlery on occasion to bolster the finances during lean freelance years – but when I consider the ocean and the pull it has on me, I am surprised that my career is not on the sea, or that I didn’t scrimp and save my way into a tired old yacht and embrace a sea vagabond life.
But I am in the ocean most days. I live in a beachside suburb, and I have my childhood memories of running around marinas and clambering over rocks and sand and swimming in little bays looking for crabs and catching yellowtail. The cries of a seagull and the slap of a halyard against a mast are my music; wooden jetty planks and coarse wet sand are my shoes; the smell of diesel and two-stroke afloat on a salt air breeze are my cologne. These will take me back to that boy in a boat in a bay, to the time at dawn watching the mist roll off the crystal surface, like the blanket I would have drawn from my tired body only moments before so I could sneak onto the deck and be in the morning.
How I loved that stillness and the creeping morning light. How I loved the quietness, broken only by the gentle splash of a jumping mullet or a diving tern hunting an early breakfast. It was my time of peace and solitude; a time to watch the bay awaken to a new day, to listen to the rustle of animals in the surrounding bush and try to spot them among the steep sides of a ravine that would reach for the sky.
Away Again
I saw the sea eagle first, gliding low, searching for sleepy fish, riding the updraft from the small cliff face that rose above my chosen end of the beach.
Part 1 of the Away Again series
Above: My morning ritual: beach, sunrise, swim, coffee.
I saw the sea eagle first, gliding low, searching for sleepy fish, riding the updraft from the small cliff face that rose above my chosen end of the beach. Looking below the eagle I glanced a dolphin’s unmistakable dorsal fin, then another, and another; a small pod no doubt looking for the same fish as their circling friend. Between the two and several hundred metres further out was the blow of a humpback whale followed by the slap of its pectoral fins; moments later came a smaller blow and smaller fins – a mother and calf. It is my first morning, I had been on the beach for less than thirty seconds, and it made me smile.
I walked on in ever-shortening shadow, the sunlight racing towards me along the sand as the sun rose higher and edged around the cliff behind me. Two hippie van-life chicks sat high up on the beach, caught in a meditative morning yoga trance, wrapped in blankets, eyes closed, and facing the rising sun. They missed the sea eagle, dolphins, and whales, which is both ironic and a shame. I suspect they would have been into that.
I nestled into a favourite hollow—a spot I’d found on a previous trip—just above the waterline, where the rock face meets the sand. It is quiet and mostly out of sight. I set up my little camp—towel, coffee moka pot, billy, hand-carved wooden ‘kuksa’ cup, Trangia stove et al—and went for a swim, my second of this adventure: the first was had yesterday afternoon, soon after I arrived: a ritual cleansing after several hours on my motorbike, a baptism giving me entrée into the secret world that would become the next few days. The swim was fine: a morning saltwater bath really. Just enough to shake the sleep from my body, to dive under a few small waves, and bodysurf a few more, to feel the ocean around me and welcome the day.
My coffee is poured, and, like my van-life companions, I too am now facing the rising sun, listening to the gentle waves fall onto the sloping shore while feeling myself warming and drying by the minute.
The eagle has gone, and the dolphins have moved on, but the whales have eased in much closer now. They are ‘pec slapping’, the mother teaching her offspring some ocean rhythms, tapping out the family song on an ocean drumhead. The calf does a few beats then gets distracted and leaps, breaching as high as it can to tell mum that school is out and it’s time for recess. I was smart and brought my binoculars with me this time. They were a gift I’d asked for last year.
‘What would you like for your birthday?’
‘Binoculars.’
‘Seriously?’
My family thought it was a bit weird, like Dad has now entered into a birdwatching stage of life and will soon be looking at tweed jackets and walking sticks – which is partly true. But for those like me who enjoy sitting on beaches and scanning the horizon for signs of whale life and sea eagles, binoculars make perfect sense. Despite them taking up some much-prized room in my saddle bags, this morning has made me glad I brought them.
The humpbacks have nearly gone. I can still see them but they’re heading south so I am gazing increasingly into the sun as I swing my binoculars in an easterly arc from north to south as the whales round the point. The mother is getting in on the breaching act now too, offering a few leaps in a joyous spirit of ‘if-you-can’t-beat-them-join-them’ playfulness. It is a long way to Antarctica and this mother and calf will leap and splash and play their way south, bonding as only a mother and child can.
I can faintly make out some sails through the binoculars. They are shrouded in the morning mist, simple shapes pressed deep into the background, impossible to see with the naked eye. The scene is reminiscent of a Turner painting, and one that makes me think of a ghost ship: sinister, hiding eerily behind the morning’s misty curtain, waiting to spring an attack while the whales play unsuspectingly nearby. Too many whales have played in full view of lurking ships. But these are different times, right?