Destination SLOW

Pottering in the countryside

This morning my house smells like baking: butter, vanilla, rich home-made jam; an apricot jam crumble slice is cooling on the bench, and later we will cut thick squares to eat with our afternoon coffee. The window in my creative space is open, letting in fresh, cool air; clothes are swaying on the clothesline and my lemon tree is bursting with plump, aromatic fruit that I will harvest over the coming weeks. The mandarins are changing colour but sadly, with our extended summer and warmer autumn, it looks like the fruit fly has got to them. I’m hoping we can save some.

It is June and officially “winter” in Perth, and the weather is cooler, the days shorter, most nights perfect for snuggling under a woollen blanket. It feels more like autumn, with the days still reaching 19-22C, and I can’t quite break out my beloved winter jackets, boots, gloves and beanies. Still, this week, we finally welcomed rain, buckets of it that poured over gutters and our rain tanks. We need a lot more, of course, here in Western Australia (across the country, it’s a different story, with floods threatening entire communities), but it was lovely to see the hills greening up when we escaped to the country last weekend.

Let me take you there with a patchwork of pictures and words. But first, here are fifteen seconds of nature therapy recorded along the Blackwood River. Take a moment, slow your breathing, and feel nature loving you.

Destination slow

We leave mid-afternoon and drive south; the rain is heavy, our progress slow. When we arrive at the farm, we make tea and eat melt-in-the-mouth shortbread as the sun dips behind the hills and the red-tailed black cockatoos nestle into their trees. Later, we eat a simple dinner of chicken and avocado rolls and it is not long before A succumbs to sleep, while I read, curled up in an old armchair.

The next morning, we decide not to visit one of the other towns 30-45 minutes drive away, but to potter about the farm. Our only destination is to our slower, relaxed selves. And so, we drive into town for supplies and a coffee, walk along the river, then return to the farm. The afternoon is a delicious winding down, a long, deep exhale of a day: we pick apples, wander in the bush, watch birds dip and dive into the thinning foliage of the fig tree. A reads, I stitch one of the zero-waste pieces I assembled before we left; we drink hot tea while it rains, we walk after the rain and look for water jewels in the garden, the bush.

Whimsy and water jewels. Image: Monique Mulligan

Chasing fog

We wake inside a cloud; a dense white fog that obscures the hills and gives the surrounding bushland an ethereal quality. We pull on hiking boots and tread lightly through the farm gate and into the surrounding bushland, still wearing fluffy bathrobes over our pyjamas; fog is a fickle friend and we don’t want to lose our chance to meet.

Foggy bushland, Bridgetown, Western Australia. Images: Monique Mulligan

An hour later, the fog lingers around the farm, but as we drive along a deserted country road towards Bridgetown Jarrah Park, our hiking destination, it disappears without warning. There is no parting of the veil, just a sudden and surprising clarity of vision and distance. Now we see cows and sheep, tiny lambs frolicking, a stoic bull under a tree.

At the reserve, we are immersed in nature once more; we set off on a hike, following several trails to form a 6km loop through spectacular forest: regrowth Jarrah (Eucalyptus marginata), grass trees, honeybush, blushing Karri giants (Eucalyptus diversicolor), gnarled and mighty Blackbutt (Yarri or Eucalyptus patens). There is evidence of long-ago logging, with some massive, moss-carpeted stumps in situ, but still an exceptional number of forest giants rising from the thick, damp leaf and bark litter.

Bridgetown Jarrah Park. Images: Monique Mulligan

There are also a few ancient conifers, Podocarpus drouynianus, relics of the Gondwanan times, as well as a lush, fertile understory: banksias, bossiaea, and fungi, so many fungi! Amanita, honey fungi, chantarelles, bonnets, wax caps, boletes (and the parasitic bolete eater), earthstars, hairy stearum, scarlet bracket fungus, jelly fungi, coral fungi. We stop and pause countless times so I can photograph them, laughing that A is always looking up into the canopy while I am looking down at the forest floor. He walks ahead, bathing in the dappled light, while I linger, closing my eyes and breathing in the forest perfume, all earthy and woody with a touch of citrus, feeling the bark and lightly brushing fingertips over spongy hillocks of moss.

Fungi, Bridgetown Jarrah Park

As Mary Oliver wrote, “Attention is the beginning of devotion.”

Here in this magnificent forest, we pay attention.

We pause to notice. To wrap our arms around a giant trunk.

And we offer silent, urgent prayers that this forest, and other Jarrah forests down in this corner of our country will not be devastated by mining; as of now, multiple mining companies have applications in place. We’ve lost so much forest already in southwest Western Australia and what remains is precious and critical for wildlife, water and climate.

For us.

There is poetry here. Living art, something no machine will ever be able to replicate. Something no mining company’s rehabilitation will ever match.

Later, waiting for coffee and sourdough Reubens in the tiny town of Nannup, I read a passage in Oliver’s essay collection Upstream, where she urges us to “Teach the children”, to show them the flowers and grass, the herbs and the fungi, the fields and forests, so they too can “learn to love the green space they live in”. And I feel a tiny longing for the grandchildren I may never have, the ones I would encourage to look up and down and all around. To pay attention and love the land they are in.

To potter with no destination in mind.

Details, Bridgetown Jarrah Park. Images: Monique Mulligan

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Back at home, I slide back into my temporary routine: two days in a casual role, the rest of the time continuing to unlearn and un-busy and embrace my multi-passionate self. Already I am feeling changes in how I approach tasks and go about my day (hint, more slow, less busy), but that’s for another post. Now, it’s time for a slice of that jam crumble slice (the recipe is here, and you can substitute raspberry for any jam you have) and coffee.

P.S. This week I was delighted to be a guest writer in

Sarah Sadie

’s series The Practice Sessions and, if you’d like to read more about how I’m approaching my creative life, the link is below.

Until next time!

The Practice Sessions: Monique Mulligan of A Life (Extra) Ordinary

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