Fear and loathing
Trip Start
Sep 04, 2007
1
8
18
Trip End
Feb 08, 2008
Wallaby Creek,
Australia
Friday, October 5, 2007
Even in a modern world, to find yourself in a wild, untamed land such as my current place of inhabitance, is to encounter superstition and fear set newly aflame in recesses of your waking mind you thought had been well and thoroughly extinguished since adolescence. In the depths of night, leaps of blazing illogicality are made as the mind bumbles in the dark for some horrendous source of the sudden "Keeeyah keeeyah keeeyah!" that unexpectedly slices through the frog chorus. The inordinate and suddenly enlivened grumblings of a tarp at being disturbed by the wind illicit instant and, later, embarrassing cries of "Bleeeeaaaaaaah-I'vegottagun!"
And even just now, in the clear luminosity of early morning, sitting in my blind at the forest's edge, I became oddly aware of a curious rending of what was certainly tree matter of some size
a female bowerbird in flight
. I first thought it was an oafish currawong optimistically sitting in a branch too distal to support its weight. Then, as my ears focused on the sounds - the intermittent and seemingly forceful tearing of bark or branch - I thought that perhaps it was a koala. I eagerly snatched up my binoculars and surveyed the upper reaches of the trees in front of me for movement, for some cuddly lump of thick gray fur, of half-moon ears and a button nose. But suddenly my mind wrenched at the vision of a sprawling, nondescript mass of animal parts in the shadow of a great lizard, its mouth chomping arrhythmically on bits of severed flesh, its tail twitching at our approach to reveal the scalped cowl of what was irrefutably a koala. Whether it had died or been weakened from the Chlamydia infections which are rife among wild koala populations, or it fell prey to the monitor we witnessed feeding on its fetid carcass two days ago, the memory of it gave me no pleasure. And now, finding no living exemplar to reform my cuddly koala ideal, my mind began to perceive in the shadows in front of me giant repellant lizard forms clawing at the bark with savage, merciless claws, their incessant gnawing at the wholesome verdure of the trees threatening to bring it down right onto my frail little blind. As the crunching and tearing of bark intensified it somehow became linked to the approach of several long, black serpentine shapes encircling my shabby, windblown structure, just out of sight from the narrow mesh windows cut in the burlap walls
The luxurious cabin
.Now that the medieval torches of myth and fearful speculation were blazing in the Valhalla of my mind, and dangerous forces loomed in every shadowy pocket of the forest, every barely-perceived movement at my periphery, my eyes were awhir with motion. My head pivoting spastically in unison with my hands supporting the binoculars before my eyes, I twitched frantically with each new portentous sound with the growing concern of a die-hard tennis fan who is watching the final set of a match on which he has bet his last dollar, his dog, and a kidney.
And then I saw it. As my eyes strained from their sockets, threatening to tunnel right through the roof prisms of the field glasses and burst through the lenses at the other side, I beheld the creature that had incited my rapid regression to a Salem Village mentality. With a great chomp of its formidable beak it snapped the end off a dead twig and sidled its great white body farther along the branch on which it was perched. As if aware it had at last been spotted, it spread its expansive pearly wings and cawed a mighty caw, sounding remarkably similar to a cartoon pterodactyl. It then cocked its head ninety degrees in a very birdlike way to stare at me in profile, its Alfalfa-like yellow crest sticking up comically in mocking satire of my previous macabre dramatization. After no applause greeted this great farcical deception, the avian Little Rascal (a sulfur-crested cockatoo) nibbled a twig indignantly, cocked its head, issued forth an impressive mass of droppings, and winged off amid a strident onslaught of pterodactyl cries.
Though science can provide us with abundant knowledge of our surroundings, of the underlying principles governing the every day experience of life on this planet, there remains some innate and deeply seated creative function in the human psyche which can and often does overwhelm all other logical faculties. Perhaps it is a survival device, which makes us wary and rightfully fearful of that which is not completely perceived in our environment, or else has been a consistent source of pain and death throughout the development of our species. This may be the reason for an irrational (though often justified) fear of heights, arachnids, and sharks, though perhaps clowns are only scary because they resemble neurotic, possibly drugged-up lunatics with the uniquely threatening quality that seven of them could potentially hide in the back of your car.
Of course, this is all guesswork, and there is danger in attributing an adaptive function to every human behavioral trait, though I believe in this case there is very probably some merit to this idea. But regardless, we are not always subject to our various manias and phobias. After a time the sudden flit of wings and inimitably high-pitched chitter of bats hunting insects only inches from a tent ceiling cease to be startling in the bleary darkness of midnight, and become a reassuring brush with life, a comforting glance at the savage equity and balance of the natural world. With education and experience that thing once feared becomes redefined, reconceptualized in a sharper, more objective manner, and if not loved, at least respected and enveloped by that lovely human quality called empathy. Yes, I am saying I empathize with bats and grasshoppers, with goannas and koalas, and even cantankerous old bowerbirds that are only too happy to sharpen tooth and claw on an unwary finger. But having said that, I am suddenly faced with a challenging quandary. After much study, and a great many hikes in this wild Australia, I can still imagine one organism whose existence I cannot in the most fantastic reaches of my imagination come to view with anything resembling empathy.
So in light of this realization, I will attempt to right this seeming duplicity. If you come upon me unawares, I may be meditating. I may be sitting in some bone-warping stance, a copy of Yoga for Capitalist Pig-Dogs splayed open on a knee that is jutting awkwardly from my frontal lobe like an antler, and helping to counterbalance the rest of my limbs, neatly bow-knotted about the other leg. I will be in a deep introspective trance (so best not to bother me unless I happen to ask you to untie me). I will be searching for a way to understand, to love my enemy. I speak of a-no, surely the most terrible, terrifyingly awful, utterly repugnant creature in existence: the tick. I am not referring to the comically befuddled blue superhero of comicdom. No, I speak of the eight-legged, utterly unhumorous, disease-ridden, day-spoiling, sneaky little hide-in-your-waistband, blood-sucking fiend. So, until I have come to terms with my fellow creature, and fasted, and meditated for days on end - surely this is the greatest trial on the way to Nirvana and Inner Peace - when I will have finally learned to empathize with those loathsome bloodsuckers...er, ticks...I must meditate. In the words, I believe, of the great Buddha, Siddhartha Guatama, may you live long and prosper. For myself, I shall look for a shady tree...and some bug spray.
