by Robert McLean
Bushwalking once held my gaze.
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The experience of such printine wilderness
is common for bushwalkers in Tasmania. |
Much of my leisure time saw me a bush inspired-like trance
as I considered, prepared for and set off on many adventurous walks.
A friend, with rich and vast experience of life in the bush,
advised that autumn was the kindliest time to be outdoors as it generally had
the most stable weather in that there were fewer wet days; it was cooler than
the extremes of summer and warmer than the depths of winter, and the wind less
intense.
He was correct and beyond a few days when the weather was
somewhat less than what was hoped for, conditions for bushwalking were benign,
bordering on ideal.
Bushwalking is about experiencing and soaking up the world’s
wilderness areas, at least those in my corner.
Oddly, the more who visit those very areas in search of that
experience, the more eroded the wilderness becomes. Arrival of humans signals the
death of a wilderness.
And so it goes. Humans seek out the wilderness, but their
very behaviour destroys what they are looking for.
Having been to a few wilderness areas and adhering to the
bushwalking adage of taking only pictures and leaving only footprints – the
former has never been a practice and the latter can’t be avoided – the
wilderness, however, was a little less “wild” subsequent to my visit.
Therein rests the difficulty as the richness and the prodigiousness
of life, of which we are just one troublesome species, that some have likened
to a plague, finds much of its fertility in what we call wilderness, but what
nature considers “just right”.
Ever since standing upright it has been man’s endeavour to
master nature, to shape it in response to its wants and needs.
Untroubled for billions of years by mankind’s demands,
nature went about its business stocking its larder and burying, as it does, its
ancient sunlight and the plan, as erratic as it might seem to us, was evolving
smoothly until man stumbled on the code, unlocked the pantry to gorge itself on
the contents.
Those locked away fossils fuels and other resources were not
free, contrary to the view of many, and although there was no obvious checkout,
we are now being asked to pay.
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Floods recently devasted parts of
Victorai and New South Wales. |
And we are certainly are paying now with our troubled
climate producing notably unseasonable autumn weather – record rains and
subsequent floods, heat waves and coastal cyclones.
My friend was right, at the time, about the constancy of
autumn weather, but that seems to be slipping away even though that argument is
defied by glancing out the window to a beautiful, classic autumn day.
Despite that, my return to those halcyon bushwalking days is
unlikely, just as will be the return of predictable near ideal autumn weather.
