stars and crows

We wake up in dense fog with eucalyptus trees leaning close, their branches shedding long tendrils of bark. It is a surprising warm morning, fragrant with their scent. Ah, and here is some soft daylight, too, so sweet after long dark hours spent in our small van. These are the shortest days of the year, racing toward the austral winter solstice not many days away. In the last week or so, dusk comes on the heels of dawn with almost no time in between, so we grab this brief daylight and try to fill it with what we want to do.

The soil here is sandy, as if the Southern Ocean was just beyond the eucalyptus grove instead a hundred miles away. We love these sandy farm fields we sometimes select for our camping spots, usually after much bumping around on unpaved country roads well after dark. Even after torrential rains which come in the middle of the night out of nowhere as far as our weather maps are concerned, our van does not get bogged down in a Wyoming-type gumbo, but drives out smoothly as if gliding on silk.

This morning we glide toward the sea, but the fog is beautiful and we spend hours trying to find our different objects of desire. I am chasing pale trees which pop out of the milky light, and John is after large spider webs, luminescent with dew and draped on farm fences like drying diapers. Whose diapers, though? We did read a mile long list of Australian snakes, ranging from some non-venomous giants to their smaller but highly poisonous kin whose fangs could lay us low in 5 minutes, but are there also "5-minute spiders" lurking in tall grass underfoot, ready to defend their lacy webs. These concerns bring me back to my python.

Some days ago, frustrated by elusive wild animals we manage to find only to watch them hop or fly away, I dragged John to a place which specialized in a rehab of reptiles, and persuaded the snakeman in charge to let me handle a beautiful olive python, whose high scale count made it iridescent as the animal moved. It was a mere 6-foot baby, with gloriously smooth, mother-of-pearl skin with a hint of green and an undulating, lively body of a bored youngster. When fully grown, this non-venomous constrictor may measure 12 feet and weight up to 50 pounds.

I allowed the python to glide along my arms and shoulders, and she (for I was sure it was a she) soon draped her muscular coil comfortably around my neck, investigated my ears and resting her head on top of my head as if it were the most comfortable rock in northern deserts of Kimberly or Arnheim Land, her ancestral home. I thought about the way she would hunt in the wild, secreted among hot rocks near a game trail, or submerged in a water hole and waiting for an unwary animal to come for a drink. Once fully grown, she could grab, slowly strangle and devour a whole rock wallaby, enough to sustain her for several months. She would deal death to animals large and small, but she would be vulnerable, too: unless the temperature was warm enough for her to digest her prey, the meat she swallowed may decompose in her stomach and poison her.

But this morning there are no snakes or spiders around. The fog burns off, and we drive to the sea near a small town of Denmark, where a collection of enormous boulders, called Elephant Rocks, crowds a cove. John gathers his equipment and descends down a narrow passage between the rocks to work with their large reddish bodies at close quarters, while I photograph aquamarine sea and red lichens decorating the Elephants.

Later the shadows deepen, and we head for the hills and their dense cover of eucalyptus to find another camping spot. We do not like commercial campgrounds for many reasons, but traditionally all trees drive us nuts, too. They obscure our views, cut off the light, and hide all animals. In many countries we know, there are forests, groves and single trees, but there are also many open clean places of light and possibilities. But not in southern Australia, where trees line most highways, obscure rural roadlets and even walking trails. And between many adult trunks grow young trees with their spindly clusters of branches, effectively sealing off all vistas and forcing us to drive or walk in endless leafy and twiggy tunnels.

But the eucalyptus trees have grown on us by now. There are more than 700 species of them in Australia, from a lemon-scented eucalyptus, to a broad-leaved peppermint kind and a blue gum. The eucalyptus range from rough stringybarks to red shiny Henry Moore sculptures and white-skinned "ghost gums" with iron-hard wood so smooth I sometimes rest my cheek on their glowing trunks and close my eyes: here is a tree I know I love. There are also giant karri trees, the second tallest in the world, whose wood -- this we learned from a karri forester we once met -- paved many London sidewalks.

Tonight we have a camping choice: it is either a patch of red earth encircled by trees, or a wheat field with its bright ceiling of stars and night calls of birds. We walk to meet the farmer who just finished his planting for the day, and ask his permission to spend the night in his field. We mention the stars we cannot see in the forest, and the birds.

"I know what you mean," he says. "Once they planted all these road strips of trees everywhere, I cannot see anything, either.

I drive, I want to look out and see what's out there, so I crook my neck and all I see is these trees. Then I find myself on the wrong side of the road. This is crazy."

The darkness is coming fast, and the birds are everywhere now, flying under the stars and calling into the night. "There are these two crows who have lived here for years," the farmer says. "I hear them every day, and always wonder: what are they saying to each other? I would just love to know."

©Yva Momatiuk