On waking up

Reporting from the front line that it is still winter here.

Last week, we had a few benign spring-like days. The frogs started singing. The evergreen clematis budded up overnight. A new pair of swallows arrived to join the couple who overwinter here. They huddle on the clothesline and I imagine them arguing over whose idea it was to return so early. There’s a smattering of starlings. A little group of thornbills squabble near the apple trees. A pardalote perches briefly on the bare rose which snakes its way up the veranda post, its beak stuffed with corgi hair. I brush Frank and for the first time in months his thick coat is loose. Everywhere, tiny signs that winter is on the wane. All this and then last night the temperature plummeted.

Which is to be expected. August, the hardest of months. We’re worn down by cold, by constantly feeding the fire, by shivering in the mornings. Frozen nose. Ice block hands. Fingers that can barely type.

But August also offers hope. The mornings lighten earlier. The evenings don’t topple into dark quite so quickly. This world, this breathing, springing world exhales. It laughs at the cold.

On Friday I drove my horse Frank over the eastern tiers to our jumping lesson up north. I label it my great extravagance and guard it like a jewel.

I loaded him in the frost, drove north and arrived to a wind that sliced us in two. I saw his brown coat raised, felt his breath a wisp of warmth against my cheek, felt his back, cold under the saddle, hunch. We circled the arena, our blood warmed, above a wedge-tailed eagle circled. I negotiated fear. We trotted a cross pole. We were stuck in first gear. I rode with more determination. I rode to find my fearless self. Come on Frank. How hard to believe for both of us.

We finished on a high. I drove home thrumming with the thrill of small jumps strung together, mostly sweetly met. Next to me sat my 16 year-old self, was she smirking?

Nearly home, I slowed in the cold clear dusk for an echidna. There was no one else on the highway, just me, the horse in the float behind, and the ambling mammal.

Echidnas are ancient. They continue to confound scientists. They hibernate over winter, but wake briefly to dig up a mate (yes you read that correctly). A male echidna, fast asleep, his body temperature hovering around 3 to 9 degrees, will suddenly warm his blood to 30 degrees. A red orb in the cold world. The how of this is still a mystery. Awake, he will set out to find a female. If you were very lucky you might one winter day see a trudge of male echidnas, in search of a hidden partner.

Riding Frank I think I’m awakening from an hibernation. Parts of it are painful, parts of it are euphoric. I lurch between the two. A forty-nine year-old woman in search of her younger self. Some might seek that self in the mirror and perhaps that might be an easier goal, but I don’t want her taut skin or pert breasts, I just want her courage.

MM

Reading

The tributes for Archie Roach have kept me on the verge of tears, The Conversation. What an amazing man. This essay on living with skin cancer by Claire Cameron, a Canadian novelist, is so much more than an account of coming to grips with a diagnosis (via Lindsay Cameron Wilson who also has a gorgeous newsletter). I went on a shallow dive around Rebecca May Johnson who wrote The Recipe in Granta, which I loved. It’s (I think in front of the paywall) for anyone who has a crossover between food and philosophy. Also this short essay she wrote for LRB on weeds. This extraordinary essay by Daisy Hilyard in Emergence. It’s on the destruction, but read it anyway. Oh and this article by Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker on Joni Mitchell’s spine tingling return to the stage at the Newport Folk Festival. It’s got all the links to her performances too.

Listening

This total escapism of a novel The Keeper of the Lost Things. This is for those of you who need a little moment out of real life. There’s a ghost. A dog. A love story. Then there is Kasey Chambers covering Lose Yourself. This might be sacrilege to some. But I loved it. I love her.

Doing

Houseful of people. Have forgotten how quiet it is with just J and I here. Come back everyone!

mmx