We had watched the bark of the snow gums change colour in the rain – grey to yellow, brown to green, their thick trunks growing sideways, their branches cupped in contemplation, like a vase waiting for a bouquet of flowers.
writer and photographer KATE BOWN
With hearts beating wildly, the children rush to window. They pull back the curtain. Nothing. The morning is still dark.
But the littlest waits, her nose pressed to the double-walled glass, her eyes opening to the tenderness of the morning. Don’t give up on me, the world whispers. And she listens. For snow, as the Nigerian-American poet IS Jones says, is also a measurement of longing.
Outside she sees a gentle landscape — the ground glowing and the sky falling. It’s ‘nowing, she shrieks, her eyes frozen full circle, her smile as high as her nose. Oh, how I adore the way she skips the ‘s’ in snow.
The other children whoop and lift their hands above their heads in celebration.
. . .
The day before the snow, it had rained. Heavy, wet water. In a hut on the shoulders of Mount Mawson, in Mount Field National Park, we had watched the temperature gauge with eager eyes, our hopes melting as the snow line retreated to the safety of the clouds, our heads not high enough to talk the sky down.
While we waited, we had walked in the swirling mist, our feet sloshing in the brown muddy water cascading down the rocky track. We had watched the bark of the snow gums change colour in the rain – grey to yellow, brown to green, their thick trunks growing sideways, their branches cupped in contemplation, like a vase waiting for a bouquet of flowers, or just the thought of them. Come down snow, they whispered, Come down.
The children found icicles next to the hut, as long as baguettes, clinging to the moss on the dolerite boulders. And put them in their mouths to suck. They found old snow deep inside a rocky cavern – tough and disappointing. And on the ground, chunks of ice the shape of gum leaves, long and pointy, shed by the trees in the rain.
I wandered further, listening to the water – gushing, gurgling, dripping. I stopped to peer at a small tarn, a thin circle of water waving in the wind, and underneath ice dotted with tiny air bubbles. The sounds of change – creaking, groaning, trickling – joining with the rush of the wind and the thrum of the rain. I thought I heard the kar-week kar-week call of a black currawong, but perhaps I was just feeling lonely, the grey weather closing around my body.
Eventually, the rain soaked the children’s gloves and their hands grew cold. We retreated inside. They built cushion cubbies and hideouts with hands tingling for a snowball. All of them suffering from a strange condition – I’m bored. The adults drank tea like rum. The hut shivered with fever. Waiting with hunger is not easy.
What to do without snow?
. . .
That evening, tucked into our sleeping bags, we remembered the winters when we would hike up to the hut under a sprinkling of stars and wake in the morning to find the world silent and white. And how we would play on toboggans and skis until our tummies rumbled and our cheeks burned.
And I could rest, sit for a while, and breathe in a landscape frozen in exquisite beauty. Time almost standing still. A rich blue-white sky bleeding into the white-blue below.
Snow dreams.
In the dark, my youngest child calls out to me. Mummy, I want to tell you something. I climb down the wooden bunk bed (grateful for all the years of rock climbing under my belt) and put my head next to hers. Mummy, in the morning, I’m going to make a ‘now baby.
I give her a kiss and tell her that I can’t wait. Though I haven’t the heart to say that the temperature is still too warm for snow. Here, on the side of an alpine mountain, on the island of Tasmania, at the bottom of the world, the tarns thaw and the snow-line rises and falls in despair.
I love the ‘now, she says.
Snow, the last word on her lips, as she closes her eyes.
At least the children still believe – clinging to hope, finding beauty, even though the climate is changing and the world is collapsing.
. . .
But in the morning, the snow does come.
Glorious and aching.
Our salvation.
It is not enough to cover the tracks and boulders. Not enough for skiing. But it is enough to make snow babies.
My youngest daughter carries three babies inside on a shovel. Two balls of snow, the size of an orange, stacked on top of each other. We put them in a pot in the cold box (cupboard with airflow to outside) to keep them frozen.
Next to the fire, I pick up a book about the history of the Mount Field National Park by Kevin Kiernan. It is a grand tale. Hopeful and sad. It tells of the stewardship of those who took on challenges to protect a wild and fragile place when others cared not.
And I think how privileged we are to be here. To walk in alpine gardens and cross ridges shaped by the movement of water thousands of years ago. And I know then that showing my children this place, opening their eyes to its wonder, will not be enough to save it. As Kiernan, writes, “A finite place, whether scenic valley, an island or planet, cannot survive infinite demands being made upon it and hence nor can it survive the infinite agenda of commerce and materialism.”
. . .
At morning tea time, my youngest daughter discovers that the snow babies have melted in their pot.
She cries, long and deep.
Snow is too brief.
I take her in my arms, and walk to the window.
Look outside, I say.
See the eucalyptus trees, the lichen pressed flat to the rocks, the pandani standing tall with her skirt of leaves.
Everything is waiting for you.