Soaring above it all

On perspective and peregrine falcons | skiing at the the bottom of the world

Hello dear wild and wonderful readers,

In this letter, a short story to take you into the clouds and a flying poem - a gift of words. Scroll to the bottom for a video from Australia’s most southerly ski resort.

Thank you, as always, for reading Wild and Wonderful. I love sharing my words with you and my hope is that they inspire you to be adventurous and all that you dream to be.

With love and kindness,

Kate x

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Soaring above it all

The outlook is thrilling. Up here, where the clouds ravel and the air thins.

I am giddy with exposure.

Below me — hundreds of apartments, a swimming pool, a gym, a carpark, and a grey-black footpath, on a street across from a train station in the bustling city of Melbourne.

Above, thirty-eight levels, some made homely, others waiting in concrete silence for someone to move in, and a shining gold lid that scrapes the blue rim of the sky.

On the thirty-second floor of Tower C, in apartment number 302, a storm rages inside my body. Part viral (common cold I think) and part vertigo. Five centimetres of blue-black glass, ten thousand round-headed bolts, and metre thick columns of toughened-steel — a showcase of human achievement and expansion — are all that hold me from the void.

The building groans, as if in answer to my discomfort. Wind lashes the glass, gnashing with invisible teeth. Let me in, let me in, it huffs.

And at night it does.

Stealing in through the seals around the window, which open just enough to place your hand in the squalling air, cradle the outside in your palm, and hush your thrashing heart — you are not falling, you are not falling.

I barely sleep in my bed in the sky. The city below dazzles, the lights so bright it tricks my animal brain in thinking the sun has risen, over and over again, in a great circling that never ends.

I wonder what the creatures of the sky — the insects, birds, microbes, and mythological beings — think of all this human up-dwelling? Of all this blinding light?

Let there be darkness, I say to the night, as I fall under my eye lids. But when morning burns over the horizon and cracks open with light, I do not wake. I do not even notice the dawning.

*

Yesterday my family¹ and I had flown to Melbourne² (did you guess?) from our home in Tasmania, a small Island at the bottom of Australia. A short getaway to see big city things. Shiny things. Lustrous things.³

As we flew a ferocious storm flung itself at the west coast of Tasmania. In the coming days it would thunder across the Island pouring snow on the mountains, flooding rivers out of their banks, and ripping trees from the ground. The power would go out.

And a vigorous group of volunteers would dig out a rope tow on Mount Mawson, Australia’s most southerly ski resort. It was the first big snowfall this year in Tasmania. And all the while a heat wave sizzled in the centre of Australia.⁴

Melbourne, only 600 kilometres north of Hobart, was windy as hell. We sheltered in laneways and alleys, watching shop windows, puffer-jacket tourists, and purple-grey pigeons pecking crumbs. Down here, the city was alive and carjouling, like a creek after rain, or a rocky gorge in a vast red desert.

We look up through the narrow slit of brick, mortar, and glass to see a red balloon in flight.

There it goes, over there, my son shouts, as it rises above Melbourne’s highest buildings.

But my eldest daughter is upset. She worries that it will fall somewhere over the ocean, end up in the stomach of a turtle or the belly of a sea-bird. For her the flying balloon is a sight both wondrous and devastating. She points out a momentary flash in the sky which we discover is the sun reflecting off the hull of an aeroplane. And then dark wings and a white belly, a bird soaring.

*

On our last day we wander into the lobby of a sky scrapper, 367 Collins Street. At the back, next to a quiet cafe, is a Peregrine Flacon (Falco peregrinus)⁵ — a large and rare raptor, beautiful in its wildness, the fastest animal on earth.⁶

Not the real bird.

But rather, CCTV footage — digital frames brought to life in illustrious motion — of a bird, sitting on a nest, on the edge of the roof.⁷

My husband pulls up a chair, sits and casts his eyes at the television screen on the wall. Our children quieten, conscious of the majestic creature in front of them, even though it is just a video.

Here and there, the falcon turns his bonnet-black head and yellow-rimmed eyes to the sky. Puffs his cream and brown barred feathers. And we hold our breath, any minute now he’ll stand, unfurl his huge wings, and ready for flight.

But he stays.

His partner flying somewhere above the city, shopping for a pigeon, diving like a knife.⁸

And in the noise of this big city, a pulsing hubris of humanity, we find our place watching a wild bird on the roof. How grateful we are for this small hollowed-boned animal. And in homes across Australia, 50,000 fans tune in to the livestream.

Earlier I had stood at the window of our apartment and looked out. My children and husband were below in the tower’s swimming pool. I loosened my attention. Let my mind soar into the world of the wind. The sky like one gigantic cinema.⁹ Awe and transcendence.

But it does not feel like home. The soft animal of my body feels trapped, pieces of me are left below. I want the slick brown muck of the earth on my skin and the moist air of the forests in my lungs. Now I have lived up here in the sky, I know better.

A human being was not made to fly.

*

I see a green towel flapping from the railing of a balcony on the tower opposite. And small dark winged birds darting at the eaves of a sandstone house. I envied the birds then, how easily their wings spread and lifted their tiny bodies into the air.

I see clouds tumbling past in the reflection on the glass. Glass everywhere in this city. And I think about all the materials needed to build these high homes in the sky.

*

A peregrine falcon does not build a nest. The female lays her eggs in tree hollows, on cliff edges, or high city buildings.

The 367 Collins Street security guards in their black collared uniforms tell us that there are three dark-brown mottled eggs under the falcon’s breast. The third laid just hours before we arrived. Soon the female will begin incubating the eggs.¹⁰ They rewind the video to show us the footage.

The female flies in like a fat fluffed chicken dropping from its roost. She digs her beak into the nesting material. The guard tells us that the falcon vet brought it in. It’s a type of synthetic pebble. Helps to insulate the eggs, he says. She keeps digging. And I recognise the movements— repetitive, numbing, something to focus on perhaps?

Then she’s standing up. And looking at her handwork. The whole thing taking no more than 20 minutes.

*

My eldest son takes me outside. He points his finger to show me where the falcon nest is. I cannot see it. But the security guards with their 24 hour footage see everything. They will know the day the baby birds hatch. And will steady their hearts when the fledgings step off the roof into the swirling air.

They tell us a story — about a fledgling last year who took off and flew the length of a city block before dropping to the mall. They went out to collect the bird, carrying it to a vet in a cardboard box.

Perhaps something caught its eye? Human chaos on the ground, light reflected in a glass window? Or its flight malfunctioned, the lift of the wind not quite enough?

It lived for two days. Its wounds too great.

*

Our flight home is postponed. The wind in Tasmania is still howling.

We linger and watch the video a little longer. Then make our way back to our home in the sky. When our bags are full we ride the lift to the ground floor.

The chrome elevator doors slide open and we walk through the foyer, past the electric flames of a fire, the iridescent-green leaves of a plastic pot-plant, and the security guard with his double computer screen, and into the day spitting with rain. We zip our jackets as high as they will go and look up.

We think of wings opening to the sky, the way the heart wakes to the fresh hope of a new day.

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A beautiful poem for you

How to Fly (in Ten Thousand Easy Lessons)
By Barbara Kingsolver

Behold your body as water
and mineral worth, the selfsame
water that soon (from a tree’s)
way of thinking, soon) will be
lifted through elevator hearts
of a forest, returned to the sun
in a leaf-eyed gaze. And rest!
All wordless leavings, the perfect
bonewhite ash of you: light
as snowflakes, falling on updrafts
toward the unbodied breath of a bird.

Behold your elements reassembled
as pieces of sky, ascending
without regret, for you’ve been lucky
enough. Fallen for the last time not
a slump, the wrong crowd, love.
You’ve made the best deal.
You’ve summited the mountain
or you didn’t. Anything left undone
you can slip like a cloth bag of marbles
into the hands of a child
who will be none the wiser.

Imagine your joy on rising.
Repeat as necessary.

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Skiing at Australia’s most southerly ski resort

Mount Mawson¹¹ is a community ski field run by volunteers. Everyone helps — digging out tow lines, ski patrol duties, selling tickets, teaching beginners and kids. It’s not high (1,320 metres above sea level, which allows for a few good turns.

It’s quite the adventure — a 1½ hours drive from Hobart and a 45 minute hike up a rocky (sometimes snowy) track carrying all your skiing gear. There are no chair lifts here. To get to the top of the run you need to wear a belt and attach yourself to the tow rope using a nutcracker (a metal clasp) — persistence, patience and an old right-handed glove are required.

But it’s all we have down in southern Tasmania, on a small Island at the bottom of the world. And how wonderful it is to ski and play in the snow where the snow gums bow and the Black Currawong birds call across the valley. No cars, no lines of people. Just two sticks strapped to your feet, glowing cheeks, the fresh mountain air.

For the last five years the snow line has been rising — climate warming, changed precipitation patterns perhaps? I wrote about waiting for snow at Mount Mawson in the July edition. You can read it here.

Learning to ride the rope tow (Photo by Peter Davis)

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Things I have enjoyed reading on Substack

• Storm by Tasmanian author Fiona Stocker.

  ‘Tasmania crouches and blanches beneath nature's hand’.

• Winds of Change by Ali Parker.

  Ali writes about southern Australia’s ferocious weather, tornadoes and micro-bursts.

• A climate vocabulary of the future by Annabelle Lukin.

  Words can change the world!

• Redefining the word ‘Nature’ by Sally Gillespie

  What would happen if we change the dictionary definition of nature to include humans?

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Until next time,

wishing you winged dreams

and a cinema in the sky.

Kate xx

1. My husband, and four children aged between 10 and 4.

2. Melbourne is the capital and most populous city (aprox. 5.2 million people) of the Australian state of Victoria.

3. Egyptian Pharaoh exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, Beauty and the Beast musical, and to go ice-skating.

4. And in alpine Victoria, the snow melted and the ski resorts had to close a month early.

5. Peregrine Falcons are large, powerfully built raptors (birds of prey). Although widespread throughout the world, it is not a common species. They have adapted well to the urban environments, nesting on tall buildings and preying on smaller urban birds.

6. They can fly at extremely high speeds, in excess of 320km per hour, earning them the title of the fastest animal on earth.

7. Since 1991 (more than three decades) peregrine falcons have nested on the top of the Melbourne skyscraper, 367 Collins Street.

8. Peregrine falcons pair for life.

9. From Virginia Woolf’s essay On Being Ill in which she looks up at the sky while bedridden.

10. Incubation takes 32 days. The eggs could hatch in early October.

11. Mount Mawson is located within Mount Field National Park and is approx. 1½ hours drive from Hobart in southern Tasmania. Read more about this ski resort here.