“Shacks do not entrap, they free. Shacks undress us.”
It’s Tuesday, I think. I’m really not sure.
I have escaped. Escaped the traffic of day-to-day existence (and the incessant traffic in my brain) to be happily marooned in the present. I have become a castaway from the mainland of life here at a faraway island we call the shack.
Days pass and melt together into a summer stupor, a dreamy mirage. I have become adrift and taskless. It feels vaguely familiar, like childhood, like a time before the endless busy-ness of life took over. It feels good. I can breathe again.
Maybe it’s Wednesday. I don’t know; it doesn’t matter.
One arrives at the shack full of purpose and the boundaries of the secular world. One rushes noisily into the shack silence, unable to hear it, still enslaved to the ticks of the clock, the cause and effects of the world of deadlines, the noise of tasks and achievements. We are addicted to accomplishing things. So we arrive in a flurry and immediately get into mowing the lawn and pruning and ticking off on a list of Things to Do.
But the urge to achieve fades. After a few days of swims and walks and afternoon naps, a type of magic takes over and one finally has truly arrived at the shack. The linear world dissolves and one isn’t quite sure if it is before or after noon. Time becomes linked to the tides and not the watch. One begins to shed and the spiritual world emerges.
One begins to hear the sweep of the waves washing the shore, caressing the sand and one’s mind with the soothing sound of the sea. One hears the gentle breeze whispering in the Casuarinas. One begins to unwind, unravel, open up and slow down.
But this new appreciation doesn’t come instantly, this learning to be mindful of the environment and the simple pleasures of life. To fully appreciate sipping a cup of tea as being the most important thing in the world to do while listening to a yellow wattlebird warbling in the wattles is a discipline; it takes time to see and hear the alliteration of life. It takes time to shed.
Shack life is all about shedding. Letting go of time and attire. Watches become artefacts. Socks: so 20th century. Long pants: a memory of a square past. Wi-fi: irrelevant. These things are castoff relics of another time and place, a foreign land. T-shirts, shorts and thongs are the new skin.
One sheds not only things at the shack but also a mindset. All year one’s life is dominated by goals, targets and deadlines, drop-offs and pickups, lists of lists of lists of things to do, of made-up priorities. After a few days of shack life, of evening cicadas and nightly domes of stars, suddenly there is nothing to do. Suddenly the endpoint is no longer the goal and there is only the here and now, the rhythm of the waves licking the shore and one’s own breath peacefully giving life.
But none of this is easy. One must work at not working. One must let go of time to let the present become pervasive instead of fretting about an illusive future and yearning for a simpler life. There is no such thing as the future at the shack; the simpler life is here, now.
Now is the second cup of tea, the shadow of the hammock bobbing in the breeze, your eyes reading every word of a book for pleasure instead of scanning it for information. Information is not much use at the shack – facts do not feed your heart and soul.
The shack is the light in our eyes, the shadow of our soul that we have forgotten for most of the year. The shack brings our shadow back to light and life.
. . .
The sea churns in the background whether we hear it or not. Day after day, year after year, the endless breathing of the earth is there, if only we have time to hear and feel it. There is so much to learn.
It’s easy to fall out of love with life, to get caught up with distractions. The shack allows one to fall in love with life all over again.
Sit awhile. Close your eyes and breath with the waves and the wind. You will eventually hear your heart slowly beat and realize that you are alive.
We are alive only by the gift of our last breath.
For some, shack life is intolerable. They never “get it”. They can’t bear drifting; they need oars moving at all times. They must build or cut or rev engines while the rest of us merrily idle, ponder, nap and remember that life is but a dream.
For many, a few weeks at a shack “with nothing to do” is a form of purgatory. They can’t shed. But shacks do not entrap, they free. Shacks undress us.
Shacks free one from the cares of unimportant things – for so much of life is indeed unimportant. There are too many PINs and passwords in our lives. We spend our entire lives sweating the small things only to let it all go once we get to the shack. To what gain was all that worry all year? One wonders. The shack offers perspective on life, on the things that matter.
What matters after a dose of shack life? The beauty of the natural world, the song of a honeyeater. Time playing with children. Walking under the stars. Telling your partner that you love them. Shedding clutter and appreciating the pleasure of achieving absolutely nothing.
At the shack we lose the world to gain the universe.
. . .
I’ve been learning how to shed at our shack for more than 20 years. I feel I am only just now getting close to being any good at it. Close, but still a way to go. It takes years to learn to walk down the path of shack enlightenment. And I’m not there yet. But of course it is the path and passage, not the destination, that is important.
It takes years to learn how to shut one’s nervous neutron of a brain off so one can really hear the sea and the voice of one’s spirit sing again. Over time we too easily forget our own songs and how short is our time to sing.
We get so far removed from the natural world and from who we really are that we forget what we are doing with our lives. We risk becoming what everyone else thinks we should become. We forget the daily beauty that surrounds and lurks deep inside us. Shacks rescue, restore and reconnect.
Many summers of hard work – of snorkelling, kayaking, playing with the kids, of doing nothing but cloud watching – has gone into my shedding. Hard work. But someone has to do it, so it might as well be me.
Shacking came late in life to me. Alas, busy-ness begets busy-ness and years pass. But it is never too late to learn. Never too late to learn to sit in the dunes and be mesmerised by the sound of the wind sluicing through the boobyalla, and to watch the waves rolling in like radiant electricity across the bay.
It is never too late to walk barefoot down the beach and feel the soft sand warm both the soles of your feet and your quietly grieving soul. We grieve for simplicity.
It’s never too late to run into the waves and feel the sting of cold water release endorphins and adrenalin that give one an immediate feeling of joy and enthusiasm for life: life is good, life is worth living!
Come, anyone can do it. This is the hard-earned path of shack enlightenment, of shedding. Is it Thursday? Who cares?
Don Defenderfer is a native of San Francisco who once went on a holiday to Alaska where he met an Australian who told him to visit Tasmania. So he did, and while here he met a woman. That was 30 years ago. He was state coordinator for Landcare Tasmania for many years, a job that allowed him to be inspired by not only the beauty of the Tasmanian landscape but by the many people that are trying to repair and renew it. He has a Masters Degree in Social Ecology and a Bachelor of Environmental Studies with a minor in writing. He has published three volumes of poetry, and his work has appeared in newspapers and periodicals, including The New York Times and The Australian.