It was one of those clear, bright, cold winter mornings where the chill penetrates your clothes and seeps into your bones. I felt my fingers turn blue with it as I walked up the road, and my cheeks sting with it. It reminded me, as often these mornings do, of the occasions years ago now when I would travel inland to hunt for goat or wild pig or deer. I recall those frigid mornings I would wake to find any water left out overnight frozen, and the sun come rise in a brilliant sky as we stood by the fire clutching hot cups of instant coffee. How I wanted to go back to my sleeping bag then. Instead as the first rays of light stole over the landscape we would set off with the peculiar curly chirp of the magpie in our ears. For a good while I would be numb, but with a creeping expectation beginning to fill me. I looked about, at the austere landscape snap frozen overnight - largely red earth country, filled with hardy, straggly bushes and by the rivers and streams taller gum trees sprawling and for years undisturbed. In the hills where we hunted deer it was different, lush vegetation grown close together, tall, thin mountain gums and ash trees closing out the light above us, and cherry trees with the bark ripped to shreds and the red wood exposed by deer rubbing the velvet off their antlers.
They are vivid memories and good ones though it is a long time since I've carried a rifle in anger. More than anything else it is an experience you carry with you, to live a little like that and to behold these different landscapes and to begin to understand the life these habitats supported. As we stalked our game the hunter we went with would feed us information I always eagerly lapped up, about the habits of the deer or the wild pig, the difference in their tracks, what they ate and how they lived. He would point out the different trees and bushes, tell us what could be eaten and what not. He had magic eyes from years of doing this and would pick out a bird in flight and name it, and on the horizon would point out a smudge he might declare to be kangaroos. We would look and after a moment discern the strange motion of animals hopping.
In the evening after early mornings out and late dusk we would eat well feeling all the days ramblings in our bones. It was a feeling of satisfaction no matter what we had potted that day. We would sit by the fire and talk, telling stories and drinking beer as we shared a hearty meal, a joint of goat perhaps, an ostrich schnitzel maybe, venison or maybe roo. The dark would enclose us and the cold as we sat around our ring of light and warmth. We would laugh and sometimes play music, incongruous music that somehow seemed perfect for those distant places, Sam Cooke or Vince Jones. And as we sat there enjoying that we would hear the rustlings and calls of the nocturnal creatures come to life, and occasionally see a pair of big eyes reflected by the light of the fire. You became aware that you were far from the civilising graces of the big city, that while that was your territory this was theirs. I always felt richer for knowing that.
I returned from my walk this morning feeling warmer, the blood pumping through me and the sun as it climbed in the sky more more accommodating. These memories went through my head and I wondered as I have often about the associations we form in our mind.
I had earlier recalled a time in Vietnam as I ate my breakfast. For some reason I remembered the time I was in Hoi An in 2001 on the Vietnamese national day and how that evening they floated down the slow river hundreds of delicate paper lanterns each with a little candle burning inside. It was a beautiful sight and said much about the aesthetic grace of the Vietnamese people, who are friendly and generous, a warm, happy people.
These random remembrances and thoughts fill our mind all the time, though I guess they're not as random as they might seem. I wonder at the synaptic connections between one memory and another, in the web of associations and thoughts and long ago events.
It is fascinating, and welcome too. It's more complex than anything we can build, I thought as I turned the corner for home. And then, recalling once more those coloured lanterns and the visual picture I have of them, it's lovely having the memory - but it's the living of them that is everything.
