Relations of learning

Taking our eleven year old, Zephyr, out of school has been a long-awaited blessing and I'm slowly developing a teaching method which is increasingly simple, involving only walking and being open. Learning can't be quantified when we happen across a jelly fungus called Yellow Brain (Tremella mesenterica). An old and highly sophisticated organism that attaches itself to its food source, this saprotrophic fungus, like most fungi, help decompose dead matter and turn it into soil. This understanding of life, this directness of contact with earthly processes, makes our walks about relationships.

Today we walked across the town's lake bridge and noticed the degrading pebble-mix concrete barrier and the lichen covered cherry plum and the grey melancholy of deep winter. Our blood and woolen warm engagement with these cold elements and our closeness together as father and son brought a quietness to us both. A simple joy that encouraged openness.

In the forest on the edge of town we noted that the numerous little mounds of rabbit droppings are partnered with an ancient moss (Polytricum sp.) and when we later bumped into a friend on his mountain bike traversing another part of the town's edge we learned that it is the buck rabbit that makes these little mounds as territorial markers, as nitrogenous cairns, that the spores of such moss so obviously gravitate to in order to make an easier life.

As we walked and talked of such connectivity, we discussed the many different type of relationships that exist in life – the mutualistic, the parasitical, predator-prey, the advantagious and the loving. None of which are exclusively human, as Zero, our kin dog Jack Russell likes to remind us in his own particular creaturely way, and who nearly always joins us on our homeschool adventures, using senses we've long lost but surely need to rescue.

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The Real Through Line

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A blue wheelbarrow (lessons in household economics)

so much depends
upon 

a red wheel
barrow 

glazed with rain
water 

beside the white
chickens 

William Carlos Williams Spring and All 1923

With spring coming and a home-birth approaching – Meg now has regular visits by Sally our midwife –

we've been working through a list of jobs. This morning Zeph and I loaded our blue wheelbarrow with over forty kilos of Jerusalem artichokes to sell and a bag of goodies for the community op shop and headed into town.

We took many stops for breath and encountered neighbourhood friends along the way.

We took it in turns to push our heavy load, Zero conducting affairs from the top of the pile, passing the pine forest where we hunt mushrooms from May to July.

We arrived at Tonna's and we sold our artichokes for five dollars a kilo, 

which we took as credit and filled the barrow with produce our garden hasn't started producing yet, and toilet paper – we really need to get around to building a composting toilet and using old phonebook pages for paper.

We wheeled on up the hill with our goodies to the community op shop and left a bag among a sea of other donations. It really is an awesome op shop that raises money for various community groups.

Then we pushed on home, clocking up about four kilometres of joyous car-free, physical, educative and alternative economic exchange. 

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A small video-poem concerning agriculture and well-being

I wrote this poem and took the footage roughly a year ago when in Mole Creek (Tasmania) visiting family. I finished editing it yesterday. Enjoy!

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Walking for Food

I've been in Hobart for twelve days staying with my friend Glen, attempting to put together a first draft of all the chapters I've been working on over the past thirty months that constitute my doctoral research work, 'Walking for Food' (working title).

While at Glen's I was able to forage in his local neighbourhood. I brought to our table rosemary, figs, mallow, dandelion, hawksbeard, apples, feijoas, fennel, borage flowers, stickyweed, rosehips, crab apples, and up on Mount Nelson high above the suburbs I came across the one fungus I saw in hobart, the curry punk (Piptoporus australiensis), which I consumed only as sensory delight. Walking and foraging helped me loosen up my sedentary studious body, but I also resorted to quick break outs in Glen's apartment overlooking the Derwent River.

Arriving back in Melbourne yesterday morning I wandered once more disappointingly into The Age while I waited for a cup of tea and read another stupid article on foraging. Will the bourgeoise please take a plate of death caps now. Actually the article was not really on foraging at all but on secreting, privatising and selfishly capitalising on the autonomous food commons. Arseholes!

Photo: Meredith O'Shea

On my last night in Hobart I was a guest speaker at a dinner-debate titled 'Eating Wild Fungi: Fun or Foolhardy', an event that was part of a national symposium of mycologists and fungi enthusiasts that aimed to generate more awareness of the important role mycelium plays in life production. I wrote this little number while at the symposium.

At the dinner I was on the affirmative team with Tasmanian food writer Graeme Phillips and my friend Alison, a photographer and fungi educator who I've been doing an informal apprenticeship with while helping her out with the brilliant workshops she runs. We argued for a return to commonsense and self-accountability, not the continuation of the nanny state. Naturally I found this debate a platform to critique anti-ecological society, its estrangement due to a lost connection with food. We won!

Then after the dinner I hooked up with Glen for a final bash at Hobart nightlife, and headed to the Brisbane Hotel to see the FUN FUN FUN world of the 5678s. They were very cheap, cool and mingled with the common mycelium after the show. I had a chat with bassist Akiko Omo about all things punk, fungus and Hobart.

My love and gratitute to Glen for a wonderful time, and who shot this final peg as an encapsulating image of an awesome journey, at once intellectual and biophysical; metaphoric and metabolic; theory and practice; fun and fungi.

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Walking and weaving country

Here's a short documentation of my first day's walk through Jaara country to take a traditional Aboriginal weaving workshop and meet the founders of Bunjil Park Aboriginal Education and Cultural Centre, Jude Perry and Uncle Brien Nelson.



Here's the small basket I made at the workshop.

This is the hand-drawn map that I used on my walk.

And here's Jude and Uncle Brien extracting worm tea at Bunjil Park.

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Walking Bare

A video poem written in response to a long shoeless walk, thinking further about technics and technical mediations, mediations such as shoes and the digital footage that preceded, inspired and ultimately simulated this poem.

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