It almost looks as if I have been a complete hermit for the last couple of weeks, but it is not so. A couple of days ago, for example, I was out hiking hills on the Downfall Fire Trail. This is probably one of my favourite bush-walks in the area although it is not on a foot track but on an old fire trail. The old fire trails through Currowan State Forest are fast disappearing since the bushfires went through in 2019 and then the floods caused massive erosion. Most 4WD’s probably can’t get up them anymore, so they become quiet trails through beautiful gum and burrawang forests along rambling ridge-lines.
There are nice views from Downfall Ridge over to Monga National Park (NP) and you can access Monga NP via a variety of different old trails from Currowan. I went early as there were thunderstorms forecast and I remembered our last walk through Murramarang NP and the drenching we got. When I left, the radar had rain over the ACT already. It was humid, but although it clouded up, no rain while I was out.
I took an old side trail into Monga NP to see if it was easy to get down to Cabbage Tree Creek but the track ran out before and I had decided that there would be no bushwacking on this day as I was in shorts with only my Altra running shoes on. I’ve been to Cabbage Tree Creek before when I was doing a lot of running around in the bush. I’ve been to most of the places you can see from Downfall Ridge at one time or another. Down into the Nelligen Creek valley and up onto Erics Ridge. All over Bolaro Mountain multiple times. All these trips are getting harder now, the regrowth is so robust and it will be years or decades before the forest thins out to old growth again.
Yesterday, one of the kayak squad had organised a paddle day. It was advertised as an easy paddle day, and it was. But, it’s good to see friends and a strange experience, in a way, from my usual targeted training to paddle slowly down the coast, stop on a beach for a break, stop again at a cafe for coffee (I almost never visit cafes), chat with friends, talk about old trips and new plans. I had the surreal experience of talking to someone who has had four vaccines, caught the ‘rona, and still believes that all of these experimental injections are vaccines. Interesting to reflect also on how, for the believers, the narrative has subtly changed. Easily visible to those of us outside the cult, but inexorable and completely invisible to those steeped in the fear and anxiety.
There has been a few climbing days, even climbing in Sydney at West Bangor, which was fun to go back to again. I haven’t climbed there seriously since the first year we moved to Australia and I didn’t feel in good shape for sandstone climbing. There’s been local climbing and working on some newer local climbing, and bouldering, and tweaking my shoulder when my footholds crumbled on a boulder out in the forest. Two paddle days, one south to loop around Jimmies Island and one solo paddle out to the Tollgates and over to North Head. Unless it is skill training, I always do a minimum of 20 kilometres to make the fuss of washing the boat and gear worth it. It’s a variation of the drive to adventure ratio.
I have seriously cut back on my news consumption, which was pretty minimal anyway and only amounted to glancing at the ABC news while I was having morning coffee. The ABC stands for Always Be Cowed as every news article features the latest thing you should be afraid of. One of the recent stories was about how you can get sick to death – death I tell you – simply working in the garden. In addition to Always Being Cowed, the ABC wants to convince you that you are a victim. Of society, gender, the railways, the price of food, the magpies nesting in spring, doesn’t matter. Everyone is a victim.
This is just great for the Always Be Cowed media, a readership scared of their own shadows and believing themselves unable to move into the shade.
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