25. WORLDVIEW OF THE WEDGETAIL EAGLE
i
the naming of the wedgetail eagle has assimilated us into its own expansive concerns, through this we have acquired profound landscape information, we have connected action with inaction, timeless and universal amongst eagles and travellers, we are the breeze that ruffles the huge brown back feathers of the inland hunting bird, we are the strike and the lift of the kill out of its character and into its universal suffering and into its inland australian silence, the claws of the wedgetail eagle drag down the sky and connect it to the land we belong to, like a blue mat being dragged down to cover an air strip of red dust, this is a catastrophic event, we grasp onto in a split second then it is gone, we have inhaled its moment, our lives are parallel to the eagle, our histories are interconnected, we are silent, standing by the holden, never far from the steering wheel, headlights and the sound of a well utilised ignition starting up
ii
initially there seemed to be a connection between us and the great birds, we had to stop the car every time we saw a wedgetail, but there were 540 wedgetail eagles along that stretch of the stuart highway, and the sun was setting into the darkness beyond our feeble headlights, so the car which had been gliding the land was forced to slow down to a crawl or a standstill, why do it perpetually and so often? for a start and through this action, our vehicle interrupted the birds hunting, thinking, feeding on carrion on the side of the roads, i am used to eagles and do not stop to look at every single one, often we are backdrop strangers to each other, in the end it seemed superficial just to slow down every time there was a wedgetail eagle, there was not enough of a pause to develop a feel for the territory of the bird and barely time to register its many activities from the dawn until dusk, all these 540 wedgetail eagles were individuals, it would have taken a long time to get to know them, that is assuming that they wanted to know us in return, soon we were all looking into the landscape blindly, following the feathers of big birds that don't mean anything, aside from a, 'look at the wedgy', flying off beyond sight of the road, like the sun so big, like the outback that seemed so empty
iii
since coming back from south australia i have developed desert eyes, my focus is on the sky that i look into, not on the people, buildings, shops and trams, if my eyes are wider and brighter it is because they are skybound, the house is cluttered and dully colourful, unlike the places i have been, expansive horizons that you stand on the edges of, there is rarely an obvious invitation in, you have to pick up the signs and find your own way out and back, unfiltered natural colouring that is harsh yet easy on the eye, leads the eye out into seeing, i have tried to return with knowledge, but now the salt from the salt lake at island lagoon and the creek stones i have brought back, seem strangely out of place, they appear to have lost their power, it was what surrounded them that affected me, i treasure them but souvenirs are always sad, filled with memory and the hope of return, i hold my bucket of pink salt lake sand like a child, the city begins to pick the desert out of my eyes, what could i have been doing out there quietly collecting salt for my well being, standing on the edge of salt lakes for days?, leave me out in the desert for one week and look at what happens, the city culture is immediately forgotten, dropped like an uninteresting toy, i begin to lose all my previous concerns, smooth stones find their way into my hands, i have been truly changed by this, i have brought back some desert to show you
iv
i have adopted an eagle's worldview, a wilderness ago it seems, i was sky and sun scanning, like that wedgetail eagle who looked out over his territory on the stuart highway, he sat on a post and had his great sandy brown back turned on north bound traffic, when i passed him on the way to coober pedy, it was sunset and he was sitting there looking out over the treeless plain, pigweed and a low orange winter sun, the next day i came back out along that highway heading south, and there on the same post at dawn, was the wedgetail eagle in expansive thought, the way his country suited his feather and his way of looking out over the country, i dream of looking out over that country, i will go there soon and more often, suddenly a kangaroo skidding along the stuart highway as the semi trailer chopped up wind, for a moment there was this intensity of life and death, then nothing, the olive grey silence through the myall tree hushes the aftermath, lowers it down to ground level, like a plastic bag blown gently to lift, then levels it into dirt like a parachute, swallowed into the hard clay soil, that will slowly rid itself of a brief story, in all the wide long years to come, slowly dissolving what touches down onto it, this odd compacting and suffocation |
