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Secret Wallaby Life... |
| December 30, 2005 by Stuart |
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A story by Stuart Camps. Pictured at right is a rock wallaby unrelated to the story. (Photo taken by k-girl; some rights reserved.)
They aren't very far from Bald Rock National Park (in Australia), on a long, high, ridge of a cattleman's property. There are two rocky outcroppings about 300 meters apart. Both outcrops comprise a dozen or so large granite boulders arranged in a lazy pile on the edge of a high bluff. Adorned with orchids, moss and the twisted, stone-breaking, roots and trunks of rock figs, the rounded grey boulders form a safe fortress for the shy family of rock wallabies who live here. The outcrops themselves are all but hidden amid the tall eucalyptus woodlands, which fan out over the slopes and ridges. You could easily walk right on by the towering fortress and never even see it, or its wallabies. The wallaby clan must have been inhabiting these rocks through untold time, generation upon generation.
The evening is coming down cool and slow. The valley air is thinning and the western sky is turning softly purple... there are some clouds. The wallabies know I am there, having watched me from their caves as I crept closer and closer, until I came to sit on my rock as motionless as they sit upon theirs. I watch and breath and let time fall away. They gradually accept my presence a little and begin to move about on the fortress again. Two sentries take up positions to keep a watch on me. They sit on their haunches, like small Buddhas, with furry tails plopped out between their padded feet.
One adult and another younger one, a fairly independent joey, sit on respective ledges gazing silently out over the dusky valley. Their stillness is the same deep calm that fills the early evening. Looking, looking, looking out over the rolling plains... transfixed, meditative, absorbed in the endless stretch of view, and timeless space. Occasionally one of the group hops up or down across the boulders to take up a new vantage.
Further up the ridge among the second outcrop of boulders another smaller group of wallabies reside, a handful of possibly un-attached males who have been "run off" from the larger clan perhaps. They probably keep to themselves for the most part.
After sitting with the larger group for a good while, what impresses me most about this tribe of wallabies is the contemplative, or meditative, nature of their culture. Their main occupation seems to be to spend as much time as they can just sitting, meditating, contemplating the mystery and moment of their small patch of existence. They are very aware and conscious of everything in their environment. The way they live and move together seems to be structured around their need and interest in living a contemplative, peaceful and unobtrusive life. Their sensitivity to my presence is acute. They are instantaneously responsive to my movements. And they always maintain themselves with calmness and depth. They can clearly become upset, or disturbed, momentarily, but they are not otherwise disturbed. Even the younger joey maintains a depth that feels profound, much more profound than myself. The rocks, trees, the very mountainside, all feel the same, and I sense that the wallabies are combined with this, sustained and informed by it.
This little family, community and culture of rock wallabies still remains untouched by man and unharmed... living as they have for centuries, holding their energy in this place, each generation passing the culture along just as one breath eases into the next... or how the breeze moves in over the ridge-tops as the sun drops behind the hills, wordlessly evolving, and involving, the timeless cycles of ancient wallaby life, and nature... |
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Even The Housefly |
| December 12, 2005 by Stuart |
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"Everything that lives, even the common domestic housefly, has something of value to share with you—whenever you are ready for the experience."
J. Allen Boone, The Language of Silence, Harper & Row, 1970. (Photo by freebird4; some rights reserved.) |
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"Planet Bytes" is a service mark of the Avataric Samrajya of Adidam Pty Ltd.
Original photos & writings are
© 2005-2006 The Avataric Samrajya of Adidam Pty Ltd, as trustee for The Avataric Samrajya of Adidam.
All rights reserved. Perpetual copyright claimed.
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