Waiting for snow
finding beauty in a changing world
Dear wild and wonderful readers,
I’m writing this newsletter in the early morning dark. In that thin time1 before my family wakes and needs me. It is the last day of the winter school holidays — two weeks at home (mostly) with my four children (aged 4, 6, 8, and 10 years).
And two giant cockroaches (let’s not forget about my birthday present), a red-tailed black cockatoo (who might as well be a toddler), and a wood fire with an insatiable appetite.
I am tired. Even the sun looks exhausted this morning. She was barely visible in the thick grey mist. Too many risings. The same old pattern. No spark left to warm the sky.
There have been some wonderful moments. But there have also been a series of unfortunate accidents, I won’t go into much detail here — carpet burn to a small face, a broken toe, bruised legs. Each could have been worse. All of this is to say, my children are limping to the end of the week. That’s my little update.
How about you? What have you been up to?
Thank you, as always, for reading and for your support. If you are new here, hello and welcome! There are lots more wonderfully wild stories to read here. Oh, and I have a sparkling new About Page, I’ve love you to have a look, link is here.
Kate x
Waiting for snow
With a wild heart beat the children rush to window. They pull back the curtain. Nothing. It is still dark.
But the littlest waits, her nose pressed to the double walled glass, her eyes opening to the tenderness of the morning. Don’t give up on me, the world whispers. And she listens. For snow is also a measurement of longing.2
And outside she sees a gentle landscape — the ground glowing and the sky falling. It’s ‘nowing, she shrieks, her eyes frozen full circle, her smile as high as her nose. Oh how I adore the way she skips the ‘s’ in snow.
The other children whoop and lift their hands above their heads in celebration.
*
The day before the snow it had rained. Heavy, wet water. In a hut on the shoulders of Mount Mawson3 (in Mount Field National Park, one and a half hours by car from our home and a 45 minute hike) we had watched the temperature gauge with eager eyes, our hopes melting as the snow line retreated to the safety of the clouds. Our heads not high enough to talk the sky down.
While we waited, we had walked in the swirling mist. Our feet sloshing in the brown muddy water cascading down the rocky track. We had watched the bark of the snow gums4 change colour in the rain — grey to yellow, brown to green. Their thick trunks growing sideways, their branches cupped in contemplation, like a vase waiting for a bouquet of flowers, or just the thought of them.5 Come down snow, they whispered, Come down.
The children found icicles next to the hut, as long as baguettes, clinging to the moss on the dolerite boulders. And put them in their mouths to suck. They found old snow deep inside a rocky cavern — tough and disappointing. And on the ground, chunks of ice the shape of gum leaves, long and pointy, shed by the trees in the rain.
I wandered further, listening to the water — gushing, gurgling, dripping. I stopped to peer at a small tarn6, a thin circle of water waving in the wind, and underneath ice dotted with tiny air bubbles. The sounds of change — creaking, groaning, trickling — joining with the rush of the wind and the thrum of the rain. I thought I heard the kar-week kar-week call of a Black currawong7, but perhaps I was just feeling lonely, the grey weather closing around my body.
Eventually, the rain soaked the children’s gloves and their hands grew cold. We retreated inside. They built cushion cubbies and hideouts with hands tingling for a snowball. All of them suffering from a strange condition — I’m bored. The adults drank tea like rum. And the hut shivered with fever. Waiting with hunger is not easy.8
What to do without snow?
That evening, tucked into our sleeping bags, we remembered — the winters when we would hike up to the hut under a sprinkling of stars and wake in the morning to find the world silent and white. And how we would play on toboggans and skis until our tummies rumbled and our cheeks burned.
And I could rest, sit for a while, and breathe in a landscape frozen in exquisite beauty. Time almost standing still. A rich blue-white sky bleeding into the white-blue below.
Snow dreams.
Those same deep feelings of want that I had felt a week ago, when Sybil, my mother’s cat had died. Pictures tingling in my mind. Memories prickling my skin — a tiny black and white kitten, eyes closed and murmuring in the bush at the edge of a remote car park. My husband bringing her home to my mother, who stayed up all night feeding her milk with a syringe and wiping her bottom.
She grew into a beautiful cat, always a little wild, but happy to wrap her body around your legs in the evenings.
Mum buried her in the garden overlooking the sea, with a sprig of catnip under her nose, snow drops on her fur, and a little pink rose from a bush that she loved to sleep under.
And the children and I found old photos and marvelled at the moving of time — Who is that?, the children asked pointing to a picture of me holding Sybil as a kitten, fifteen years ago now.
*
In the dark, my youngest child calls out to me. Mummy, I want to tell you something. I climb down the wooden bunk bed (grateful for all the years of rock climbing under my belt) and put my head next to hers. Mummy, in the morning, I’m going to make a ‘now baby.
I give her a kiss and tell her that I can’t wait. Though I haven’t the heart to say that the temperature is still too warm for snow. Here, on the side of an alpine mountain, on a small island at the bottom of the world, the tarns thaw and the snow-line rises and falls in despair.
I love the ‘now, she says.
Snow, the last word on her lips, as she closes her eyes.
At least the children still believe — clinging to hope, finding beauty, even though the climate is changing and the world is collapsing.
*
But in the morning, the snow does come.
Glorious and aching.
Our salvation.
It is not enough to cover the tracks and boulders. Not enough for skiing. But it is enough to make snow babies.
My youngest daughter carries three babies inside on a shovel. Two balls of snow, the size of an orange, stacked on top of each other. We put them in a pot in the cold box (cupboard with airflow to outside) to keep them frozen.
Next to the fire, I pick up a book about the history of the Mount Field National Park by Kevin Kiernan.9 It is a grand tale. Hopeful and sad. It tells of the stewardship of those who took on challenges to protect a wild and fragile place when others cared not. The boundaries of the park drawn to allow the maximum extraction of resources on the outside. And only the mountain tops, valleys and plateaus, with no economic value set aside. It is a familiar tale in Australia.
And I think how privileged we are to be here. To walk in alpine gardens and cross ridges shaped by the movement of water thousands of years ago. And I know then that showing my children this place, opening their eyes to its wonder, will not be enough to save it.
As Kiernan10 writes —
A finite place, whether scenic valley, an island or planet, cannot survive infinite demands being made upon it and hence nor can it survive the infinite agenda of commerce and materialism.
*
At morning tea time, my youngest daughter discovers that the snow babies have melted in their pot.
She cries, long and deep.
Snow is too brief, like beauty and cats.
I take her in my arms, and walk to the window.
Look outside, I say.
See the eucalyptus trees, the lichen11 pressed flat to the rocks, the pandani12 standing tall with her skirts of leaves.
Everything is waiting for you.
A winter poem
Today, I’m sharing a gorgeous poem about snow falling on a mountain in Tasmania, a gift of words. Enjoy.
Winter By Adrienne Eberhard Snow laced the lower slopes of the mountain today, trees hooked to filigrees of light, sky tethered to the mountain’s bulk, its table cloth of white. Possibility was everywhere, the embroidery of snow, illuminating. Out of the corners of our eyes we spied our own footsteps like animal spoor, faintly articulated in the white blanket, a trail to chase, all day.
I’ll end this letter with a short video clip from a walk to Mount Field East (in Mount Field National Park, Tasmania) with my eldest daughter, my dear friend N, and her eldest son. How wonderful it was to climb a wild mountain with our children out in front, leading the way.
*
What have you been up to?
With love and a little patience,
for all the things you are waiting for.
Kate x
What we Agreed to Call “Snow” by Yorùbá I.S. Jones
Mount Mawson is approximately 1320 metres (4,331 feet) above sea-level.
Snowgum, Eucalyptus coccifera, is a species of eucalyptus tree native to Tasmania, Australia. It is found in the high-altitude regions of the island and is perfectly adapted to cold environments.
Grace, by Esther Morgan
A tarn is a small alpine lake.
A Black currawong is a large crow-like bird native to Tasmania, Australia. It is entirely black with bright yellow eyes, and a thick hooked bill.
With special thanks to the Webber family, who were waiting for the snow with us!
Eroding the edges of nature : Mount Field and the Florentine Valley : Tasmania's first national park and a century of lessons by Kevin Kiernan, 2018.
Eroding the edges of nature, by Kevin Kiernan, 2018, pg. 424
A lichen is a complex life form — a symbiotic partnership of two separate organisms, a fungus and algae. They are pale or bright coloured and cling to rocks and plant material.
The pandani is the world's tallest heath plant. Found only in Tasmania's alpine areas, the pandani can grow up to 12 metres high. Its tough, serrated leaves can be up to 1 metre in length.
Beautiful Kate, I loved how you used footnotes too, and tapped on them for little insights as I moved through your piece. I really felt this one ❄️
Ooo sounds exciting to see the snow!!