The turning of the fagus

This is the photo which inspired the first story in my book Floundering: Stories from Cradle Mountain. Here is the full story. Make yourself a cuppa and settle down to read. 

Nothofagus gunnii snow fall

Nothofagus gunnii. Decidious beech. Small yellow leaves with deep veins dividing the leaf into 14 distinct segments. The only Australian native deciduous plant, it looks vibrant and spectacular across the alpine slopes of Cradle Mountain and Crater Lake in autumn. The small yellow leaf contrasting against the white crystalline snow, on to which it had fallen, was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. So she thought as she lay there on the damp ground, with autumn flakes floating down around her.

The wind and the rain had stopped. She was relieved, as they had cut into her face and hands and through her clothes. Now snow was falling peacefully, quietly. She had come to the mountain at this time in April to see the fagus. ‘The turning of the fagus,’ as it is colloquially known, occurs around Anzac Day ever year. The small leaves of these large shrubs turn from bright green to yellow and sometimes a vibrant red. It is unique to Tasmania – one of the many things that make the place special.

Sarah had left home early that morning – before her husband and son had woken. The teenager and the drunk allowed her to escape without detection. They probably wouldn’t emerge until late morning. Brian had gone out drinking with his dirt bike mates the night before, after work. Yes – she knew he worked hard at a job he didn’t really enjoy and needed to blow off steam, but every Friday lately, it was the same. And then, he’d often disappear for the weekend, tearing up and down four wheel drive tracks and coming home filthy muddy, and dump his clothes on the bathroom floor for her to scrape off and wash. They had rowed about it before he’d stormed out last night. She worried Jack would grow up like his father and do the same thing to his wife. ‘You’re such a bad example for your son!’ He’d come home as usual, some time after midnight, groped her clumsily as she shrugged him off, and then kept her awake with his alcoholic snoring.

Jack was just a typical teenager who seemed to need at least 12 hours of sleep and would stay in bed until lunch time on Saturdays if he could. He had his moments but generally he was a good boy. Moaned and groaned about getting up at the ungodly hour of seven in the morning to go to school but did OK; had an occasional job mowing lawns and doing gardens at the caravan park up the street, had a new girlfriend every month, nothing serious, sometimes went motor bike riding with his Dad but really preferred to go surfing or fishing. At least he only brought home sea salt and sand, much easier to deal with than coagulated mud.

Newly fallen snow is so pristine. The crystals are clear when you look closely at them, not white like you’d expect. Sarah wondered how long she’d been lying there in the snow among the fagus. She felt strangely warm and floaty, dreamy.

She remembered a time when Brian wrote her love poems. They were so corny but they were genuine. He had meant every word 20 years ago. Such a long time ago – almost half her life. They had met at the church youth group. She was 16, still at school. He was 18 and an apprentice mechanic. She liked his rugged wildness. They married three years later and Jack came along when she was 20. There were no more children after that. They had tried but lost two babies. Babies were, for Sarah and Brian, like fagus – very hard to cultivate. Seed viability is often poor, and they require of a lot of rain, peaty soil, and temperatures just right, cold but not too cold. Sarah’s 20s were years of struggling to germinate. After two miscarriages at 10 and 16 weeks, there were no more babies. Jack was a joy. He kept Sarah going, gave her a reason to live, and Brian, a reason to stay, but their life became gnarled and twisted like the grey branches and trunks of the fagus. They were now tangled together uncomfortably.

Cradle Mountain became Sarah’s escape. Brian had his dirt bike rides. She had her mountain walks.

the founder of Cradle Mountain tourism, Gustav Weindorfer, called it ‘a place where there is no time, and nothing matters.’ That is how it felt for Sarah. Whenever life became too much, too contaminated, too muddy, too burnt, Sarah fled to the mountain. The luxury of the solitude was a great pleasure which she found rejuvenating. She could be herself. Not Brian’s wife or Jack’s mum. It was the only place she felt free. All the responsibilities fell from her like yellow autumn fagus leaves, leaving bare branches to receive the refreshing caress of falling snow.

The rhythm of walking for hours was soothing like meditation. The exertion of climbing steep hillsides and clambering over rocks to reach the peaks was exhilarating and liberating. It purged the grime of life and purified her soul. It was like a pilgrimage. The cold clean waters of Crater Falls and Dove River and Wombat Pool were cleansing baptisms and purifying detoxes. The haunting harsh cry of the currawongs and black cockatoos echoed her own feelings of sadness and loneliness. The steady wanderings of sturdy wombats were solidly reassuring. The pademelons and wallabies were like gentle friends for the journey. The wildness of the mountains and enormity of the skies were reminders that there was a power that watched over her, although it could kill her if not respected. It made her feel immensely privileged to be allowed to commune for a time, until the human reality called her back to her life in the lowlands.

She wanted to stay as one with the beauty of the fagus and the snow, but like the contrast between the bright yellow of the leaf and the crystalline whiteness of the snow, she could not. She was too human. And while she felt remade by the love of the mountain, it was her love for that teenage boy who still needed her, and yes – that muddy inconsiderate man, that brought her back. 

Sarah slowly realised she was not comfortable. She was wet and cold and her head hurt. She managed to prop herself up on one elbow, but when she tried to push her body up with the other hand, the pain shooting through her shoulder stopped her. She lay down exhausted. She wondered how long she had been lying there and if anyone knew. She had registered her name in the walks book at Ronny Creek. Worst case scenario, the rangers would check the book at the end of the day, see that she had not signed back in, and go looking to see if her car was still in the car park. She had written her registration number in the book, as well as Brian’s mobile phone number for an emergency contact.

Maybe they would find her during the night. She was sure she was on the track to Crater Lake. She remembered thinking that the fagus was particularly good this year – putting on a great show all around the banks and high up the steep cliff-faced slopes around the deep black lake. Yes – she must be on the track, only about 30 minutes from Ronny Creek. It was one of the more popular day walks in the area. Someone might come soon and find her there. But the weather was low and threatening and snowing so that would mean fewer walkers. And the light was becoming dark. The bright yellow of the fagus leaf on the snow in front of her eyes was fading. As she drifted with the muffled snow she heard faint human sounds.

Sarah woke up in a hospital bed. Rhythmic beeping. Blurred whiteness. Muffled purposeful sounds of doctors and nurses calmly going about the business of saving lives. She was uncomfortable. When she tried to roll over on to her side there was a tugging at the back of her hand. She was wired up to a machine, dripping liquid in to her and monitoring her for signs of life.

‘Mum? Mum!’

She recognised Jack’s voice close by. Then a deeper huskier voice.

‘Sarah, thank God! You scared the hell out of us.’ Brian was there too. She felt his rough hand brush her hand, the one that was not wired.

What had happened? She remembered being cold and her shoulder hurting. She remembered the crystalline beauty of snowflakes falling in silence and the bright yellow of autumn leaves before her eyes. Ah, yes – she had been walking in the mountains, alone as usual. It had been very peaceful, floating in and out of consciousness.

‘Don’t you ever do that again! That was a stupid thing to do, go walking out there alone. You could have died.’

But I didn’t, obviously, because I am here and you are here, and I am not sure I want to be here. I will go out there again, I can’t give it up, it is where I am who I should be, myself. The mountain is calling.

Sarah did not voice her thoughts in reply to Brian. She couldn’t quite find the strength to speak out loud. It was all she could manage to just open her eyes long enough to look from her husband’s face to her son’s face and give him a small smile. Her eyes closed as she drifted off into a drug induced slumber delivered via the tube in her hand to mask the pain of her broken shoulder.

Later, when she awoke fully, Sarah felt two kinds of emptiness. As she lay in the hospital bed surrounded by whiteness that was not snow, she felt sad that she was no longer as one with the fagus and the snow. It was a hollowness inside her chest and gut. Then she felt another sort of emptiness, the more familiar feeling of an empty stomach.

A nurse helped her to a sitting position so she could eat. Chicken soup, ham and cheese sandwich, peaches and jelly – not very inspiring, but it helped fill the void. The colour of the peaches reminded her of the fagus.

The doctor came while she was eating.

‘You’ve done a pretty good job of banging yourself up,’ she said with a soft Irish lilt. That’s different, thought Sarah, an Irish doctor. Usually, when she brought Brian into the hospital with his bumps and bruises, and the odd broken bone from a dirt bike accident; it was an Indian doctor with a thick accent and a busy attitude.

‘You were suffering mild hypothermia when they brought you in. And you’d given yourself a decent knock on the side of your head, no stitches needed; just a dressing. Were you unconscious at all? We think you might have knocked yourself out when you fell as you were quite incoherent and confused when they found you, and slipping in and out of consciousness, but that might have been partly due to hypothermia as well. Do you smoke? You kept saying you wanted to be a fag?’

Sarah smiled. ‘Fagus, not fag – I wanted to be like the fagus, beautiful and bright and defined. No, I don’t smoke.’

‘Oh, well, you were somewhat delirious then. Lucky they found you when they did or the hypothermia might have killed you. We’ve got you over that now. Your right shoulder will take longer though. You have a humeral head-split fracture and you dislocated your humerus as well. Part of it penetrated your skin. So you’ve had surgery to put it back together, and two pins to hold it all in place while the bone and the muscles around it heals. That should take about six weeks and then you will have another operation to remove the pins. You can start physiotherapy next week.’

‘Can I walk?’

‘Yes, carefully, but no wearing a backpack for at least three months. I understand you were hiking in the mountains when this happened.’

When Brian and Jack came to take her home, the L plates were on the car and Jack sat in the driver’s seat. Brian helped Sarah into the back seat. At home, the house was surprisingly tidy. No muddy clothes in the bathroom, no beer bottles in the lounge, no dirty dishes in the kitchen. The boys had made an effort to have the place nice for her. They even managed to cook dinner – fried sausages and pre-prepared salads from the supermarket. At least it was better than hospital food. And then they did the dishes – a minor miracle. Sarah could not have done it anyway, with her shoulder strapped up and very painful. She had very little use of her right hand.

After a week of take-away meals, Brian expected Sarah to start cooking again, and the beer bottles returned to the lounge.

As the weeks passed, Sarah gradually regained use of her right arm. She tried not to ask for help, especially from Brian. When she asked him to help her undress for a shower, he had taken that as an invitation. The first few times he had grudgingly accepted that she was in too much pain for sex, but after the first week, he was not so considerate. He had grabbed her between the legs, ‘It’s your shoulder that’s sore, not down here.’ She couldn’t avoid him, of course.

She found ways to do things with her left hand, however slow and awkward. Everything seemed to take twice as long. Her life was confined and tedious while she tried to heal.

The fagus will be all dry and grey and twisted, surrounded by snow, dormant for this season of winter – just waiting, waiting for the green growth of spring to shoot forth again. 

Jack was far more obliging. If she needed a can opened in the kitchen, or wanted the washing brought in from the line, he did it without hesitation. And he drove her to the shops and helped with the grocery shopping. He even seemed to enjoy learning how to cook as he flipped omelettes for her and took roasts out of the oven. My little boy is growing up, Sarah thought, with a bemused mix of sadness and pride.

It took another six months of healing and physiotherapy before Sarah could take the washing off the line without pain and shoulder a backpack.

Late one Sunday afternoon, she thought she’d pull out just a few weeds she had noticed appearing with the warmth of spring, but then she found more weeds and kept on pulling them out until she had filled a wheel barrow. It felt good to uproot things, but when she came inside, she found herself floundering around on the hard tiles, the bathroom ceiling spinning above her.

She had fallen, again. She still had dirt from the garden on her hands and under her finger nails. She could smell dried mud and motor oil. Brian’s dirt bike riding clothes surrounded her, all tangled like twisted fagus trunks and branches. Trapped by tangle-foot again, she thought. I have stayed too long. There is no life here, no new growth like fagus in spring – bright green, iridescent new leaves glistening in sunshine.

Sarah left two notes.

One on Jack’s pillow:

‘I have left your father, not you. I am proud of who you have become. Don’t lose that. I will be in touch, when I am ready. Don’t worry about me. I love you.’

One on the dressing table under Brian’s motor bike keys:

‘I am leaving you. I am going to a place where I can heal and regrow properly. I need new life. You cannot find me.’

Would you like to read the other stories in Floundering: Stories from Cradle Mountain ? I still have copies for sale. If you would like to buy one for $19.95 please email me: waywardwanders@outlook.com