Swans
After all, decay is fertile
The swans came back to the lake to nest this year. All winter long, one swan sat on the nest while the other perched on rocks nearby and flapped about grandly, revealing the white feathers hidden underneath the wings. As the days got slightly warmer in August, they would sometimes leave the nest unattended in the afternoon sunshine. Once I spied a white-billed coot sitting there instead. The coot was comically dwarfed by the huge nest, like a chihuahua sitting on a greyhound’s bed.
The nest was a metre-wide mound of sticks and reeds, decorated with river rubbish, built a few metres from the lake’s shore near the weir. It was not an out-of-the-way part of the lake, and there’s a barbeque and picnic table nearby, but a fence scoops out this small grassy patch from the rest of the park, probably to stop people walking out on the weir wall. The human gawker needed to make a concerted effort to see the swans’ nest up close. One morning I joined an elderly gentleman on the water’s edge, both of us watching the swans. Using his translator app and showing me his screen, he asked “How do you zoom in?”
The cygnets hatched in early September. There were two chicks this year. I am inordinately proud of these birds who thrive despite me and my species’ shitty contributions to their life. Last year the pair had five cygnets and I watched them grow from fluffy little ugly ducklings to graceful large birds, only slightly downy with grey feathers. My partner coined the term “bygnets” to describe these almost-adults. I became too busy with work over summer to check in on them and by the time my schedule let up, the bygnets had moved on. I wonder where they are now and hope they are having a nice little paddle in a wetland somewhere.
It was a cold, rainy, grey start to spring, which is how it is every year in Melbourne. It doesn’t get warm until after the equinox. The nicest weather after April is in August when the false spring rolls around and cures this town’s seasonal depression. The days are crisp, skies clear, and the light is bright. The mercury might hit 27°C for a day. I always feel joyous for a month or so in August.
It’s a struggle to stay present during the false spring and not pin hopes on the end of winter. Don’t get too excited and plant seeds, for instance, as they won’t survive the coming wet and cold; don’t make plans to go to the beach if you’re not going to go when it’s already sunny, because by the time you do, it’ll be raining heavily.
I celebrate the start of spring on the equinox, around 20–23 September, also the time of Ostara celebrations. This is a solar event, which makes sense as the sun governs the seasons. The first day of September is an unhelpful marker of spring, given the calendar months are roughly governed by the moon, not the sun. In a polemic from 2017, Imre Salusinszky points out that South Africa, Australia and New Zealand are the only places in the world where the start of spring is considered 1 September. Another weird colonial legacy.
In the Wurundjeri understanding of seasons, winter is interrupted in August by Guling, Orchid Season, which is marked by the flowering of the silver wattle. The neon yellow of the winter wattle hurts my eyes after months of grey. We saw five wombats at dusk near Petty’s Orchard. It was overwhelmingly precious.
Poorneet, tadpole season, comes afterwards as temperatures rise but rain continues. In the Reddit estimation of Melbourne’s seasons, this is also coming into swooping season, during which the magpie and more importantly the magpie finch assault passing humans’ heads.
I reject the idea that speaking about the weather is small talk. It’s intimate. I want to know how your physical, emotional, mental and spiritual body is experiencing climatic changes.
I had a soggy winter, very governed by the element of water. Things were a bit heavy and a bit sad. I spent a lot of time in baths. Bath magic. It was nice to take the time to grieve whatever I had to grieve, both real and more metaphorical deaths. I feel inspired and energised after this time now, but sometime in July I wrote:
I am lying fallow at the moment. I am resting for a vegetative cycle. I am decaying in a field … I am lying on the forest floor with the weight of leaf litter on top of me. Perhaps over time and under pressure the leaf litter will break down and form a nutrient-rich layer of soil on an otherwise infertile mountain of sand. I will, in the future, support gigantic plant life.
I must have been describing the ecology of K’gari-Fraser Island, on Butchulla land in Queensland, which I visited at some point in the last five years. K’gari has a layer of fossilised, nutrient-dense soil made of leaf litter compacted over millennia. It is the world’s largest sand island and the only place on Earth where a forest grows solely on sand. I’m just sharing cool facts now.
I see people reaching for similar metaphors of decay a lot these days: rotting in bed, brain rot, bog witches, memes about the swamp, whispering secrets to the reeds à la King Midas’s barber.
Wetlands are a hub of biodiversity whereas ‘swamp’ is the name given to a wetland when it is deemed bad, stinky, rejected, evil. I am for reclaiming the metaphor of the swamp. (But not reclaiming the swamp. Let the ground stay soggy. Wetlands are extremely important and reduce fire risk, among other ecological benefits.) After all, the waterlogged mud of the swamp is teeming with life. Decay is fertile. In the natural world, rotten things transform into nutrients for living ones.
Swamp recommendations follow:
I love the strange artwork and storytelling of NYC artist Yuliya Tsukerman, also known as Sister Cecelia in the Greedy Peasant extended universe.
I am currently reading The Mires by Tina Makereti in which the swamp is personified and a conduit to the story. The book opens with the passage:
A swamp knows more than most people about most things.
And later:
The locals call this place the estuary, though Wairere prefers the idea of swamp, not pretty but a little treacherous, as full of sludge that’ll suck you down as it is of native plants and pretty birds.
It’s great! I’m about two thirds in. The story revolves around three households living in public housing in a small town on the Kāpiti Coast, Aotearoa: a Maori woman with a teenage daughter and young son, a family of recently arrived refugees and a middle-aged white woman who is prone to gift baked goods when she feels guilty for saying things with racist implications – and then her son moves back home. Literary fiction with a sprinkle of magical realism that touches on racism, poverty, industrial online trolling, the swamp. Recommended!
Not really swamp related but I’ll leave you with the work of an artist I came across at a Matariki night market back in June – a set of tarot cards by Noongar, Ngāpuhi and NgatiTuwharetoa artist Kiri Tawahai.
That’s it from me for now. I’ll keep writing this silly little blog when I have more things to say!
PS. I currently have some space for more freelance editing work, so please get in touch if you have a piece of writing, book or project in need of an editor. You can respond to this email and I’ll direct you to my website. At the moment I mainly work on art books and oracle card decks for traditional publishers.
(I’m a bit conflicted about sharing the above since I never wanted to promote actual work through my Substack lest I be on the line for my editorial decisions here. Also it might detract from the fun I have tip-tapping away my thoughts. While I will defend my choice to use single quote marks for quotations and double for direct speech to anyone who asks, please know this quirky attitude is not how I approach my professional work. Also, all writers need an editor. And when I’m in writer mode, I need an editor most of all. This blog will stay as personal reflections, mostly about nature it seems, from a witchy point of view.)
I’m also putting it out there that I want to do more ghostwriting! I have written chapters and forewords for people who weren’t able to write themselves, for whatever reason, and also most of the copy in one architecture coffee table book (uncredited). I type while someone talks at me, and then I write it up for them. It was fun. I’d like to do more. (Manifesting.)
PPS. If you have made it this far …