I needed a fix.
I needed to get away from all the nagging commitments and distractions of the secular and tap into the spiritual world of Tasmania that so timelessly surrounds us.
I needed to get away from all the sniping and peddling, from the disharmony that so often clogs our lives and blinds us to the daily beauty all about us. I needed to restore my poise and sense of wonder. I was feeling quietly desperate, lonely for connection.
Clearly, I needed the mountains.
Driving through the green farmlands, toward the plateau, it didn’t take long to feel that sense of freedom that the open road in Tasmania always gives one. Roll down the car window, feel the translucent sunshine, breathe in the cool air and behold the rolling hills and bluffs. What an inspiring landscape to pass through.
We too easily get wrapped up in day-to-day busyness, in abstractions that confuse and take us away from where we live and who we really are. We live on a treasured island in a magical corner of the world, far away from it all. We should never worry about a thing. We should lead the world with hope and not follow false promises. We should not be living lives of quiet desperation in Tasmania.
When Paul McCartney finds himself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to him. For me, I head into the wilds, and in this case I was driving up the winding switchback roads of my favourite local haunt, the much underrated Ben Lomond.
Less than a news cycle out of Launceston and one is driving up big Ben’s slab of rock that has so much to offer in terms of inspiration, light and space. On this clear day, with remarkably blue skies, there wasn’t another car on the mountain. Midweek, half an hour from a hundred thousand people, and I had the place to myself. How lucky was I? My eyes began to open and I was beginning to feel myself again – and I hadn’t even started hiking. Mother Mountain had come to me and I to her.
My daughter’s indie rock playlist loudly played melodic harmonies that trailed off through the open windows behind the car. Fresh air bathed my face and before I knew it I was dreaming, off with the fairies (again), travelling through a landscape of stringybark shadows that crisscrossed the road rhythmically, seemingly in time with the music.
I drove more slowly, dissolving into mountain time, savouring the moment of connection with the music and shadows. My spirits rose. I was getting the first rush of the fix, and it felt good.
. . .
At Carr Villa I got out of the car to breathe in the cool, fresh air – not just cool, cold. There was frost in the shadows. How good this mountain air felt – it had a bite to it and my ears and fingers felt the tingle of the mountain chill. I put on my woollen hat and regretted forgetting my gloves. No matter. The morning sun would have a bit of warmth in it and the mountain air was stirring my soul, and I’d soon warm up walking.
Anyone can get here easily, locals or tourists alike, but it seems few journey to this mountain – Launceston’s kunanyi. Locals come here when there is snow in winter to ski and frolic, but the rest of the year you can practically call the park your own. Maybe it’s just that little too far away from Launceston, maybe it is taken for granted, or maybe it isn’t valued because it is not a name brand like Cradle Mountain. Whatever, but for the curious it is a diamond waiting to be discovered and see shine.
Starting the walk at Carr Villa (where the road ends and an overnight hut awaits bookings), I began walking up a track through a scree of lichen-covered boulders that quickly opens up into views of the mountain’s dramatic dolerite columns. The morning light on the columns was shining bright and they looked like silver organ pipes reaching for the rafters. What a church to play music in. Also shining was ice that covered parts of the little gurgling creek that bubbled along and beneath the path. The ice glistened in the morning sun.
I walked quietly, quietly elated, in reverence. I felt like singing. Mountains heal and refresh the soul.
Walk softly enough and you can hear rocks thinking. What do they think about all day? Do they dream? What else is there to do if you have been there for an eternity of sunshine, wind, snow, ice and rain? If I could dream their dreams, what would I find?
It wasn’t long before I was walking in a suspended spell, bewitched by the mountain’s natural silence and its contemplative stones. I heard the meltwaters chuckling, heard the indigo sky ringing above, heard a rock creak as it warmed in the morning sun. I tapped into the dreaming of the stones and it was full of the music of the spheres.
My mind emptied as I gave into the seduction of the beauty of the mountain, of living in its moment. Mountains teach mindfulness without words, books or guides. One step at a time, one breath at time. Walk into the embrace of Ben Lomond and feel its thoughts and let your heart beat with the flowing water and the stillness of stone.
Follow the narrow path up through the scree, an easy walk, past mountain peppers and wintergreen westringias, and in no time you are out of the boulders and into another world – in a Scottish highlands-like environment. Without ado you have walked into a world of soylent green cushion plants and mirror-clear tear drop lakes, of tarns and tundra.
As you hike up the path, the land opens up into a plateau and one feels that elation of being high up in the wide open, tramping in the wilds with nothing but land below and sky above, on top of the world, troubles falling away like autumn leaves.
Walking across the escarpment I passed snow patches and saw ice crystals shining in the tussock grasses and the alpine heaths. A wonderful crystalline hoarfrost along the track seemed to light my way. Clumps of spiky scoparia, with beautiful red inflorescence, complemented the wintergreen heaths. I felt like a Hobbit, walking in pure magic.
The ice that covered the track was slippery and I marvelled at how tough the plants must be to thrive in such a harsh climate, baked by sun in summer and covered in snow in winter, a typically Tasmanian land of climate extremes.
Clumps of rocks and boulders are scattered across the undulating plateau of this part of the mountain (known as the Plains of Heaven) and they tell one that this land was once covered by glacier ice. The blocks of rock left behind are story clues to the mountain’s past.
A guidebook tells us: “The Ben Lomond field is one of the largest allochthonous block fields in the world … The basement rocks comprise slates, siltstones, greywackes and quartzite, intruded by granite and later by dolerite during the Jurassic Period.”
I am not sure what this geologic poetry means, but I take it that these rocks have been here a long time (later I look it up: the Jurassic was 200 million years ago. These timeframes are always incomprehensible to me. But I’ll take the expert’s word – the rocks on this mountain are old. Very. I scan the landscape, trying to understand its story.
. . .
Walking on from the plains, one climbs up through a cleft of rocks and onto the highest area of the mountain. Here one scrambles over more dolerite and instinctually one heads to the highest point of Ben Lomond, Legges Tor. Here there is a cairn of rocks piled up Tibet-like, to mark the top of the mountain – the second-highest peak in Tasmania at 1572 metres (Mt Ossa is only 45 metres taller and yet gets all the attention).
On a clear day from the summit of Ben Lomond one can see kunanyi/Mt Wellington, about 200 kilometres away – but not today, as the afternoon brought high clouds and a below-zero wind chill. As I placed a prayer stone on top of the cairn for a brother in need, I again regretted not having my gloves – my fingers felt frozen in the bitter wind – but I had no complaints. It felt good to be alive and to forget my petty worries and breathe in the moment, however cold and transient it might be. Moments like these are what we live for.
As I descended, I felt enlightened. The feeling reminded me that nature always delivers what the soul needs – renewal, inspiration and sanity. Life is good after all. One just has to learn how to breathe deeply and make the moment of realisation last into the next breath. And the next breath after that.
The wind dropped as late afternoon shadows grew across the mountain. I followed a brook, which was starting to freeze over for the night. I felt the silence of the boulders and heard the chuckle of the creek. I thought I heard an organ playing Bach from the direction of the columns.
I hastened slowly down the track, leaving the rocks to their dreaming.
I turned Lucy’s music on, low volume, drove slowly, and I gently reposed with the evening light. I was ready to go home. I was connected. I was fixed, for now.
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.
