Paradise lost

One fin or four…or three. Early morning, back of car decisions. Photo: ©Matthew Smeal

I am lying on my back deck, my reading place. Two pelicans glide above the palm trees on the freshening breeze but the swinging crane in the background and the noise from the neighbour’s lawn mower remind me that paradise is lost.

My wetsuit, hung over the rail to dry, speaks to the cooling temperatures of April. Still, I remain dogged, dressed only in my boardshorts as I lie on the sun lounge, grasping for every ray of sunshine that peeks out from behind the thickening clouds.

This morning’s surf was a disappointment, an unpleasant reminder that a shared paradise is nothing more than a shared place, a crowded place; any ‘paradise’ long forgotten amongst the high-rises, restaurants, and postcards. A fading swell from the recent storm brought nothing but anguish and crowds, and a closed beach from the pollution – itself a stark tell-tale of the nearby urban density and industrial inland. Manly has long been crowded – and polluted – but driving around at 6am trying to find a car space, only to end up in the ticketed underground carpark below Coles supermarket, shows how urbanised our surf lifestyle has become, and how far from my idyll I have landed.

Today too I met the curse of choice: which boardshorts do I wear? Which board will I surf? What fin set-up will I go for? Shall I wear boardshorts with my long-sleeve wetsuit top or shall I just wear a spring suit? What do I change into if my boardshorts are wet. I deliberated in the driveway and ran back inside to grab another pair of shorts…just in case. I now had three pairs of shorts with me. Ridiculous.

I brought two boards: my smaller wave board—a five-fin setup which can be run either as a quad or a thruster—and my single fin. A third board is currently being shaped for me. Yes, more choice to come. But what will suit today’s conditions? I love running my smaller board as a quad fin but maybe today it would be better as a thruster. I decide to leave it as it is.

I ran down to the beach, my small wave quad-fin under arm, stared a moment at the various peaks and bolted back to the car park to grab my single fin. A larger set had hit an outer bank. The set waves were still sizeable and had long clean walls. I pictured myself taking off outside and deep, a long, drawn-out soul-arching bottom turn to bring me back up the face where I would set my line, build speed, and race the wall through to the inside section.

It was the wrong choice, but anything would have been wrong this morning. If I watched the surf for a moment longer, I would have realised that it was a freak set, and that the storm had taken the sand out to sea leaving the vast majority of waves to surge over a deep gutter and struggle to break against the fickle backwash from the wave before. My first choice would have been better but not by much.

Choice means options, options mean paths, and some paths lead nowhere. I flashed back to when I was a grommet. I only had one board then (until it was stolen from the caravan park at Crescent Head when I was 18). It was a beat-up second-hand board with snapped fins that had been glassed back together; but I loved that board and paid it off over several months by mowing lawns and washing cars. And I had one wetsuit: a thick grey and light blue unbranded thing that I bought cheap from a local sports store. My choice then was to either surf or not to. There’s something in that.

I know where my current indecision comes from. It’s a complex story and perhaps one for another day, but my life this year has been turned on its head. Today is a forced day off – a ‘mental health day’ in the modern vernacular. Yet my phone keeps beeping, the messages I fear continue to arrive, but I am learning to ignore them. Some phone calls I need to take, but others I do not. I know I can let them go. And I do.

My greatest mistake today was surfing Manly – once again, spoiled for choice on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. I needed a beach where you can drive to the sand, where fewer people live and fewer people surf. I needed a place of solitude, a place to be alone where I could feel the ocean around me. I needed a place where I could leisurely park my car and watch the ocean calmly and in peace; to make a good decision and paddle towards the rising sun and sit nestled under the lee of a cliff. I needed to be part of the world around me, and I needed to breathe.

The desire to surf my single fin told me that. It’s my brain’s way of telling me to seek simplicity and return to fundamentals. That’s why single fins are so great; but they are also less forgiving than thrusters, and you don’t get the initial burst of speed that you do with a quad. A single fin to me equals time. You don’t surf a single fin in anger, or in frustration. You don’t surf a single fin in an unbearably crowded line-up at high tide with shot banks. But something had made me put it in the car this morning; and something had made me run back and get it.

*

My friends had paddled in and gone to work. I stayed for a moment or two longer, caught a wave in and walked down the beach. There was a quieter bank at South Steyne which I stared at and stared at and stared at in my continuing indecision. I eventually paddled out and spent the next half hour chatting to a surfer from Indiana (just consider that for a moment!). There were other surfers nearby, but it was really just me and ‘Indiana’ picking off a few waves in turn, checking to see if the other wanted the approaching wave; laughing about how dodgy the surf was, and chatting and relaxing. The guy put a smile on my face, and it reminded me that wherever you go as a surfer, you’ll always find someone to share a few waves with, a song to sing around a campfire, and a couple of whispered directions to a ‘secret’ spot. Surfers belong to a tribe, but as localised as it can be, it’s also a global one.

I don’t know the guy’s name, I don’t know what he does for a living, I don’t know how long he’s surfed for or how long he’s been in Australia, but I’d like to think he surfed today for a reason. I often wonder if people are ‘sent’; if they’re put in your path for a purpose, even if for only a few moments. I had stared at that second peak for way too long, lost in my morning’s indecision, but I eventually paddled out to try and put a shine on an otherwise disappointing session. I’m glad I did. I left the beach a lot happier than I otherwise would have. Paradise may be lost, but whatever is lost can also be found.

A Reading Place

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?

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

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

Away Again Part 1

Away Again Part 2

Away Again Part 3

The Outer Isles

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

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

Away Again Part 1

Away Again Part 2

Away Again Part 4

It’s four o’clock somewhere

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

Away Again Part 1

Away Again Part 3

Away Again Part 4

The wild man within

Lone swimmer getting in touch with his ‘wild man’. Manly Beach, Sydney, Australia ©Matthew Smeal

Few people would argue that connecting with the outdoors is essential for our mental health. Fresh air, nature, the environment, and being away from the usual four walls and nine-to-five monotony can only be good for us. But is there something deeper going on?

Few activities offer more complete connection to nature than ocean swimming. There is a vulnerability and risk: you are in the elements, you are in a wild marine environment with everything that that entails: sharks and dolphins; bluebottles and other stingers; turtles, fish, stingrays…they are all visible and close. There is nothing to hold on to. You rely solely on your own ability. There is cold water, large swells, strong rips, and pounding waves. All need to be understood and negotiated. And, there is warm water, flat seas, a true sense of accomplishment, and the laughter of friends.

‘The most creative men are close to the Wild Man and borrow his power’

Biddulph

But ocean swimming’s vulnerability and connection, speak to what Steve Biddulph referred to in his bestselling book Manhood as your wild man. It is equally applicable to women.

‘Abandoning yourself to wildness turns out to be the most harmonious and generative thing you can do. When we are good, we are okay, but when we are “wild” we are geniuses,’ he wrote.

‘Any man who makes or builds things, who creates a garden, who plays a jazz instrument, who has ever been a lover, knows that you are better when you “let go” and follow your impulses. Natural rhythms within us take over and bring out our real talents. Our love of trees, the outback, waves and water, animals, growing things, music, children and women, all stem from our wild nature. The most creative men are close to the Wild Man and borrow his power.’

Fascinating stuff!

According to poet, essayist, activist and Men’s Movement leader, Robert Bly, ‘The aim is not to be the wild man, but to be in touch with the wild man.’

My wild man swims beside me. I feel him, I sense him. I can touch him. But there is a pack of wild men and wild women all around me – the ocean is alive with an electric pulse of wildness: scores of men and women, each swimming alone but moving as one in the pre-dawn darkness, their wild person almost visible beside them as ethereal phosphorescence. There is something very profound, very natural, very primeval happening in that moment.

‘In the presence of nature a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows.’

Emerson

There is a lot that could be said here about ritual, initiation, tribal community, and acceptance. It is certainly worth exploring. Suffice to say that these are critical elements of humankind that if ignored or misunderstood, can play out in harmful ways. I am reminded of Thoreau’s concern that, ‘Most men lead lives of quiet desperation’ but also of Emerson who wrote, ‘In the presence of nature a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows.’

When we embrace that wildness, we tap into something that is hard-wired into each of us. In modern city life it can be too easily lost, ignored, forgotten, or covered up. Yet uncovering that primeval wildness is invigorating. It is life affirming. It is natural. Like staring into a log fire, it is just right and has been for millennia.

The modern life has killed the wild man and wild woman. Life today can be sterile and very contained as we move from comfortable home to comfortable office and back again via comfortable transport. Our ability to confront and mitigate risk in the ways of our ancestors is a dwindling enterprise; hunting and gathering food is a trip to the supermarket; staying warm or cooling down is only a remote control away. Entertainment is on the couch watching Netflix. Even a COVID-19 lockdown can be a mere inconvenience requiring a few work and lifestyle changes. Our need or desire to ‘live deliberately’, to quote Thoreau again, has become a desire to ‘live conveniently’ or perhaps, to do nothing more than to ‘live comfortably’.

But inside each of us is a wild man or wild woman yearning to get out. An inner desire to connect with the earth and be tested: to feel the ground under our feet, not office carpet; to feel the wind and the waves and the salt spray against our bodies, not air conditioning; to know vulnerability and fear, yet self-reliance and the ability to overcome.

‘Water—the ocean—is our most natural environment.’

Mayol

There is a reason Earth is called the ‘Blue Planet’ – it is mainly ocean. And without the ocean, there would be no life on Earth. The ocean produces more than half of the world’s oxygen and regulates our climate and weather patterns. It also stores 50 times more carbon dioxide than the atmosphere.

The ocean’s survival ensures our own.

Jacques Mayol, the legendary free diver and the central character in Luc Besson’s 1988 film The Big Blue, wrote about humans’ innate connection to the ocean. ‘Water—the ocean—is our most natural environment. We were born naked from the miniature ocean of the mother’s womb.’

The ocean is a good place to get to know.

So, why do we swim? Because the ocean is where we find our wild man; and it is where we find ourselves.

For you mate

A friend sent me something the other day. It was one of those well-meaning Facebook memes designed to comfort, encourage, and put a smile on people’s faces.

Why he sent it to me is perhaps a story for another time, so I won’t go into it now. But the message came with three simple words that meant so much more to me than what was in the meme: ‘For you mate’.

Where does this love of the sea come from?

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

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?

Away Again Part 2

Away Again Part 3

Away Again Part 4

Welcome!

Sojourner Creative Writing Blog

Above: On the road. Where all the good writing happens.

Welcome to my writing blog!

I have always loved the term ‘sojourner’ – someone who resides temporarily in a place. The word conjures up romantic imagery for me: the Western cowboy, the nomadic hunter, the solo sailor, the biker; someone who comes and goes, who never stays in a place for too long but is always on the move. But we are all sojourners: our time here on Earth is temporary.

The purpose of this blog is to capture some of that time through creative writing. I will share some smaller pieces, some longer, and I may even share some thoughts about the writing process as well.

Regardless of what this blog ends up being, I would love to engage with other writers and readers and lovers of nature.

So please follow along and let me know what you think!

Sincerely,

Matthew