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If separation is the sickness, connection is the answer. Photo by Casey Horner

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Photo by Eddie Kopp.

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Photo by Wesley Baltan.

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Photo by Alessia Francischiello

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Testing out the Biolite stove in one of the balanese huts out in the forest here at Cloud Temple. Making coffee and charging a phone all from a few sticks.

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Photo by Bobby Hendry

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Photo by Greg Rakozy.

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For more depth on how and why these simple practices work check out ‘Coyote’s Guide to Nature Connection’ from the awesome peeps at 8 Shields. Photo by Helena Yankovska

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Photo by Clément M.

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Spade Lake

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Swoon...

The most beautiful thing you will look today

3 years it took this girl to turn this piece of truck garbage into her home and it was beautiful. 😍😮 Have a good trip!

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Before The Sky Opened

From Cloud Temple, I walked out into the subtropical rainforest, this time on an old logging track that cuts along the side of the steep ridge.

When you live high on the side of a mountain in a dense forest, most trails involve a climb, either on the way out or on the way back... or both.

The east track, however, is one of the few that was once cut with a bulldozer blade, so it’s a relatively flat track across the side of the ridge, gently climbing to a waterfall and above that, a ridge top plateau where a different microclimate sees dryer, more wind hardy trees and vegetation.

The east track was cut for logging so long ago that the trees that have returned to the forest since then are probably 70yr old teenagers. The old guy at the end of the road says he offered to clear the track as it was starting to become overgrown... around 15 years ago. The mystic gardener who had taken over custodianship here declines and now rainforest palms and small trees grow up through it.

Only in rare places where a storm has pulled a tree down are there any gaps in the canopy where direct sunlight can come in.

Once was some kind of road, now seamlessly part of the forest, except for the shape of the earth.

I walk it often, maintaining it with a small cut here and a trim there.

A narrow walking trail has emerged, winding its way through the vegetation growing up through the bulldozer blade-width track.

Not far up I cross a small footbridge made from a slab of wood cut by a portable mill that was used to build the house out of trees from the forest. It occurs to me that in a sense, as we live in the house, we are truly living in the forest.

I cross onto a small island as the cascading creek flows around me on either side down to a waterfall not far from the house and on, all the way to the creek at the valley floor.

I cross the deeper of the two creek beds by dropping down into it. It flows year round but not deep enough to get inside my shoes... unless it’s soon after rain.

Climbing out on a couple fallen logs I find the trail again and wonder how the bulldozer would ever have crossed that. Probably by just filling it in. They didn’t care. And judging by the way it has washed out and looks completely untouched by man now, neither did the forest in the long run.

The track is flat for a while and then begins an easy incline again.

Another creek bed, this time dry. A staircase to explore and map some other time. Maybe it’s the fastest way to the ridge and the north facing view on the other side. From there it becomes clear that you are standing on the edge of a ring of mountains surrounding a volcano. Science says it’s no longer active but if that’s true then why did it call me to this place? Why do I feel it’s influence in dreams and in waking stillness?

Sometime soon I’ll also follow this dry creek bed down to find out where exactly it merges with the creek at the valley floor. The one that catches all of the water from the giant bowl up here at the end of the valley.

I spent a week learning about animal tracking recently and was taught that inside every track is a topographical map. I now playfully wonder what mystical animal of the Dreamtime stepped here to leave this valley the way it is?

As I continue east I can hear trickling as I approach, then the ground on the track itself becomes boggy. I look to the high side of the track and everything is dry. The water is emerging out of the ground beneath me. The mountain spring trickles off the edge of the track into an open hole between to big rocks. Perfect for reaching down and patiently filling a water bottle.

The incline becomes a bit steeper and there are some of the larger gum trees, aka eucalypts, are close to the track edge here.

Too young to bother taking when the loggers came. The biggest trees have big twists or break into many branches at a lower than usual crown. These are the only old growth left. Too hard to mill, they remained to seed a returning forest... with the help of the birds.

Around here the birds feel more tense when they pass the word along that we are walking through their territory. It feels stressful for them. Many had probably never seen a human before me.

I remain in gratitude as I move, as this apparently keeps my mind oscillating at a frequency that is less disturbing to them.

I show them I know they are speaking about me by stopping out of respect whenever a new alarm is sounded.

Over the weeks they are starting to feel more comfortable with me.

I reached a fork where another track heads upwards for the ridge. It was a trail I knew, but I wanted to keep heading east,if it wasn’t for the afternoon sky and what it was carrying.

Thunder had been rumbling in the distance for a while, rolling up from the mountains to the south. I could see the ridge line on the other side of the valley and the darkening sky above it.

I had kept going for some time, gauging the storm’s approach in the back of my mind, but the last rumble of thunder had a promise in it and I turned and headed for home.

Light rain began to fall about half way back, but barely a drop touched me as a made my way beneath the canopy far below.

By the time I broke out into the clearing near the house the clouds had darkened the sky above.

No sooner had I put the kettle on did the sky open, and for a time we all stood mesmerized by the spectacle.

By Jonathan Davis

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Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.

E.O. Wilson 

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Jon Young Speaks About The Role of Deep Nature Connection in Culture Repair.

There are few people who inspire us more than this guy. Jon Young shares how awesome things happen when we become more nature connected.

https://youtu.be/GbfwoaI9zJs