Nightcap yatra: A haiku
journey
As soon as the bookings opened
for the yatra, I sent in money and details. For a bushwalking
Buddhist from the Blue Mountains, it was right up my alley. Getting
there was a complicated adventure: lift to train - train - change
trains - plane - taxi - YHA - bus - lift with fellow yatra
person Helen.
On the steep hillside at Doon
Doon, it is a joy to greet old dharma buddies. In a circle, all
my new yatra companions introduce themselves, and in the morning,
our routine begins.
DAY 1
Morning yoga with Ronnie -
bliss! then breakfast, pack up everything to be loaded onto the
support vehicles, make lunch , then we all set off silently up
the hill. On the ridgeline you can see more clearly the bowl
shape of this exploded old volcanic cone. We are heading to the
other side through the Nightcap range.
Before white people, Aboriginal
people made the trail that we walk along. But it is a junction
of two different territories. Our group stops at a huge hollow
blackened blasted tree, which could fit a dozen people inside.
After white settlement, this tree was the meeting point where
one tribesman would pass the mail to another tribesman - it was
called the Postman's Tree.
A sweat-stained back:
the walker rests
her hat off
In this forest, of tall ancient
trees, the light is greenish, and when it begins to rain, nothing
matters except staying dry. We are all kinds of colours in our
rain gear, stepping carefully on the wet stones and shiny leaves.
The smells in the forest become more vivid. Logs provide a
perch at lunchtime, and we can talk. Some one gets a leech -
leech inspection! No-one freaks out, thank goodness they're
made of sterner stuff. In fact, as I am to discover this crew
is remarkably resilient and does not carry on over the difficulties
and hardships. Well - who can we complain to, when walking silently
except to ourselves? "Its hot, I'm really tired, I'm sick
of steep hills, I want chocolate, oh no not wind, I can't stand
wind".
After lunch, we walk fire trails
in Whian Whian state forest. This is not my country, so I cannot
recognise many of the plants or animals of the forest.
This scent
NZ childhood days -
wet wattle pods!
That afternoon at Whian Whian
camp ground, Maya and I do a spot of bird-watching while eating
cake and drinking tea. How good is this? The frogs in the creek
sound equally at peace. Later, in the evening another frog starts
up: " quaa…". It sounds like an interrupted duck.
These frogs, as spotted by other walkers later, are brown with
a stripe. That day I had been intrigued by a call in the forest,
which sounded very like a newborn lamb, or a kid. In New Zealand
last Christmas canoeing down the Wanganui river, this call came
from goats on the steep slopes. But as the days went by, in Nightcap
it morphed into a call by crickets or cicadas. It was an insect
sounding like a mammal.
DAY 2
Because our gear was wet, the
plan next day was to walk to Minyon Falls and back again. The
adventurous (most of us put ourselves in that category) would
walk to the pool at the bottom of the falls and back up again.
Ronnie is the 'Tail'. In the circle he is awarded a trowel and
a roll of toilet paper in ceremonious fashion.
We set off into the bush again,
silently. I thought of generations of indigenous people doing
this, setting off every morning in a group. Along the way is
an interpretive sign saying that the sub-group of the Bundjalung
nation, particular to this area, were the Bidjugal, clever people
known for sorcery and medicine. The quiet walking we were practising
would not be a common feature of indigenous walking parties.
In the early days, European surveyors like Govett recorded meeting
very talkative walking parties, consisting of the men carrying
spears, and the women carrying everything else in huge loads
on their backs. I have been told of a practise among Darug initiates,
who were given a pebble to place in their mouths, and told to
keep it there until the end of their march across the Jamison
valley. The pebble helps with thirst, but also, have you ever
tried talking with a pebble in your mouth? When you can't talk,
you take notice of your environment. You notice the sky, the
air, what is growing, where the sun is - a walker talker is
necessarily more in their head, focussing on the flow of words
rather than say, the flow of a creek.
Walking down the creek to the
falls, and then through rainforest to the waterhole is easy-ish.
The architecture created by the rhyolite substrate is like a
great stone hand , cupped and holding that precious thing. The
dark water is not as deep as expected - it hadn't rained for
a couple of months - but Rossco gets in, and so must I. Lying
on my back in the cool water, I watch drops fall from a great
distance above, to plink into a depression. It has taken millions
of years for these drops to carve out this kitchen -sized bowl
from a very hard igneous rock.
It isn't easy walking back
up and out. The Bangalow palms , the lianas and birds and strange
fruit and hollowed out strangler fig are lovely. There is another
falls, also very high, and deep pools leading to it with large
tadpoles. When I approach the edge I get down onto my tummy and
crawl forward until I can see down into the waterhole below and
across the tops of what we had just been walking through. I have
learned to do this in the Mountains where people regularly misjudge,
and fall off the sandstone cliffs to their doom. It's the best
way to get that bird's eye view.
I notice very little on the
walk back, except huge grasses or sedges along the escarpment
edge. I am tired. At a ford of the creek, my delight is about
still having some food to eat, especially little treats. Maybe
this would give me energy. Flaked out on the ford, we look like
a lot of rather large unwell lizards. We stay there for a long
time.
Not Basho
on the home stretch -
a cup of tea
When we get back the first
thing I do is crash into my tent. While I am resting all the
remains of the ginger cake are eaten up. Oh well, at least someone
is cooking my dinner. All I have to do is wash my bowl and eating
implements. Again, by the time I get to the washing up water
it is lukewarm and filthy. And I miss out on warm body washing
water too.
DAY 3
The next morning I feel grumpy.
I sit with Betsy and Jampa and grumble mightily.
We pack up all our gear, make lunch, grab fruit and scroggin
for morning and afternoon breaks, and off we go. Our destination
this day was Protestor's Falls, which was the scene of a major
confrontation about logging of old growth forest in the late
seventies and eighties. Ian Cohen gives an account of this in
"Green Fire" (1997).
The first beautiful thing
was the smell of crushed wattle seeds again. Ah, acacias - how
did they get so tall? The second beautiful thing was the deep
hollow call of the mysterious bird. Straight after that, is the
taste of a wild rasberry, given to me by David. The fourth beautiful
thing is another creek, this one part of a water catchment.
The fifth beautiful thing was the very expensive chocolate coated
bar that I eat, at this ford. And the sixth beautiful thing
- it happens every day - is a long lunch break. We stop by a
huge Eucalyptus regna - a survivor of the logging.
After lunch, we turn into
a side road, and then into a side side road. These are overgrown
logging roads, not negotiable by vehicles any more. There is
always something quite melancholy yet authentic, about a neglected
road. It is human effort and intent, all gone to rack and ruin.
It is the grand plans to exploit a 'resource', softening slowly
back into an ecosytem. Trees fall, and mostly begin their descent
into a death that gives life to other things. Weeds and all
the plants that were originally there reclaim it. That too, will
happen to us.
The cut
on the giant tree stump
softened by moss
The adventure of clambering
over and under the fallen trees lifts me out of my "this
is a slog" mentality. One beauty of roads is, the gradient
cannot be too steep. Up, down, up, down, through the afternoon.
And then I come upon the seventh beautiful thing, indistinguishable
from the dirt and leaves, beside the road.
Two bulges
in the python's coils -
small and middlin'
As I creep closer, it raises
its head , and begins to pull the top coil backwards. I take
pity on it and move off.
All is well when we arrive
at the camp ground, chai in the pot, and a small pool in the
creek to have another bathe. Up goes my tent, this time by the
creek - I'm getting good at this.
After Carol's talk this night,
she opens it up for discussion. A few points of view were expressed.
Interesting to notice the mind, being strongly attracted or repelled
by certain utterances:" No, I don't agree with that!"
The mind that forms opinions and debates and discussed is not
as fresh as the mind which bubbles up from a long period of silence
and quieting. Opinion-mind is like the water hole - the same
things being recycled, somewhat dark and dirty. The other mind
is like a spring: cleansed by a long period seeping through the
ground, then emerging clean and pure. I struggle with this. Our
world is besieged on so many levels, seems like a sheep up to
its knees in mud, action is urgent, speaking out a priority.
Carol calls a halt, and many
of us rise from the circle gathered around a fire. The eighth
beautiful thing was to notice that those who want to stay up,
gather the circle in around the fire, and then they simply sit
around it in silence.
DAY 4
The morning meditation is at
Protestors' Falls. That is now the official name given to these
falls, memorialising the people who decided on an action campaign
to prevent State Forests from 'harvesting a resource'. I have
a sense of sacred site to both blacks and whites. These falls
too, are dry - is that because of climate change? I don't know.
Our mission this day, is to
walk down the road, to disport ourselves in a frolicsome manner
at a magnificent swimming hole on Terania creek, to eat lunch
and snacks, to get to the Forest Meditation Centre via Dharmananda,
and to pay attention in each moment. The sense doors are wide
open by now.
Crunching the seed
of wild rasberries -
a vege patch
Come in, come in, heat, pigeons,
homes beside a dirt road. Welcome cars, weeds, litter - we are
a moving blob of mindfulness.
We stop at another ford, beside
a bridge for morning tea. I know that this creek has claimed
a number of lives when it floods.
Under the bridge
fragments of old floods
caught in the girders
Ah, it's hot. Plod ,plod,
plod. Hurrah, mulberry trees beside the road! Who cares if the
fruit are dusty. Another afternoon, and a long bout of lying
down meditation. To paraphrase the "Satipatthana sutra",
I lie down and I know I'm lying down.
Up on the hill, someone asks
a question about Dharmananda, and Carol answers that and the
fifty more that follow. This is what I found most interesting,
especially in relation to the Co-op that I'm involved with back
home, and which has convulsive fits of disagreement from time
to time:
Carol: "Hierarchies are
natural. They occur in nature all the time. At Dharmananda we
have hierarchies of expertise. Someone knows about soil. He naturally
has more say over what happens in the garden."
By now I am out of my underpants
comfort zone. I was looking forward to the amenities: washing
clothes in warm water, and especially, to resting for a day.
I'm tired. Tomorrow would be a static retreat day in complete
silence apart from dharma talks.
DAY 5
The forest centre is familiar
- I was here in 1982, on a zen samu (work) retreat, when we built
a tank made of bricks. And it's also changed. There is seating
around a fireplace! What bliss.
Quite silent
sitting around a fire:
someone gets up
adds a log -
the fire's conversation crackles along
but what poisons are burnt up
in our silence?
Hunger for any more
than warm companionship
and wind, doves, trees.
Victor gives a talk which spoke
directly to the things I've been pondering for a while. I
was a pure-bred zen student for many years, but I became restless
and began to sample other traditions. Maybe I'm like that snake,
eating a lot of variety, and now I have to slowly digest all
the different elements of dharma.
He likes lists, he said. He
had made a list or a typology of four types of meditation practice,
and outlined their benefits and shadow side. What was even better,
was his idea for a compass that could help one determine whether
one was off course or on. It related really, to the seven factors
of enlightenment: this gives me some kind of template as I wander
about in Australian buddhist practise.
DAY 6
Walking again felt good, since we were now quite fit and used
to walking. But today was a lot of uphill, we were warned. It
is the last full day.
Up the road, which gradually
tapers off, I was pleased to see a bike rider. That activity
is what made me fit. He and his mates had been doing repairs
on the track. We now make our way into the National park, uphill
, uphill, uphill.
The rocky tops
two tiny waterholes -
an ant peruses
This day I just have a huge
sense of gratitude , for everything. Berries, roadside flowers,
rustling trees, possum fur in the road, a dam. Before lunch we
turn a corner - a view of the caldera and the valley we had come
from - then blissful downhill walking.
Further along this ridgeline,
there are large rock outcrops, which I gather, have indigenous
significance. We stop at one of them. I bush-bash in for a closer
look and feel. If rocks can be said to look, this one looks out
at the caldera. I am not particularly sensitive when it comes
to paranormal phenomena, but I get a distinctly bad feeling from
this rock. Perhaps it is a male site.
We are finally back at a junction
we'd passed on the first day. I come up to a group who are all
looking down. Oh! an event!
Around the jumping ants
a worried circle
of previous victims
They seem pretty small. But
it's best not to annoy them. Then they get aggressive and jump
onto their enemy no matter it's size, and deliver a very painful
bite.
In passing on warnings, the
vow of silence breaks down. Also, there is a fantastic view
of the caldera, and I wanted to know what the volcanic plugs
and mountains are, and what their Aboriginal significance is.
This is what I am told: Mt Warning is called Wollumbin or weather
maker. The story is, that all the clouds go there and get told
where to go. The totem at the top is shark's tooth, and that
below, is a bush turkey: male at the top, female below. I hope
I have got that right.
There is a wild wind around
the final camp, which is in the saddle above Doon Doon. But we're
all in such good spirits, it's not a defeating force. I have
survived being out in it, so perhaps my strong aversion to wind
is exactly that: an aversion. Competition is intense for a tent
spot behind the bank, out of the wind. I put my tent over a rather
large hole in the ground, which proved to be the entrance way
for a gnawing animal , which wanted egress during the night.
Tonight is campfire concert night. The support crew erect tarps,
to provide protection from the wind, and after dinner, around
the fire, the concert begins.
DAY 7
Ben's tent blown to buggery
by the wind. My tent floor chewed through. The same old porridge
for breakfast.
Walking back down to Doon Doon
was sad.The next few days I felt out of sorts with modern life.
It's nice I suppose, to have a bit of extra energy at the end
of a day that is not gruelling physically. It's nice to be able
to make myself tea, the way I like it. Nice to see my daughter,
my friends, my garden. But that was my tribal time - we were
a temporary tribe. We had a set of shared understandings about
why we were walking silently, just what that ancient part of
us is, that grows when the chatter dies down. And it is a part
that says, I am just a small
part of this living organism, the Earth". To go back into
discrete lumps of life, is tough.
How refreshing!
a yatra mandarin
in the train tunnel
Diana Levy
Next year, 2010, I plan to
offer a one-day yatra in the Blue Mountains. I also teach the
art of writing haiku. If you'd like further details, get in touch
with me on 02-4751-3935.