OMG We bought a rainforest

Sunday morning and mellow as precious metal
The church bells rang, but I went
To the woods instead.

Mary Oliver

The beginning

It is an ordinary December 2020, ordinary, in a lockdown, Covid-pandemic kind of way. I am working from home in my office, a tiny book-lined nook on the 1^st floor of our inner-city Sydney terrace.

I’m staring at the screen. On it is an image of a cabin. It’s small, nestled in the landscape, and half hidden behind trees with bird song rising like mist. I move my curser, hit pause, and then wind the video back and play it again, leaning in closer.

The image pans down, a shard of sunlight glints off the roof, tall trees sway and that is all, except for a hint of smoke curling from the chimney. It’s a simple moment,; a quiet cabin in a forest on a cold morning with birds twittering on the breeze.

Through the window above my desk I gaze at our neighbour’s oversized roof. It engulfs the skyline and rain is flooding off its eaves. Downstairs Paul is on another Zoom meeting, he’s trying to talk quietly but I can still hear the stress in his voice.

Without thinking, I begin typing. Land, forest, mid-north coast. And then for sale. The search words feel meaningless, just a fantasy, a way to kill time on my lunch break.

I take a sip of my tea and begin to scroll down the listings. One is just days old. I click, and images leap off the screen bright with sunlight; a dazzling creek, towering trees and a sky line that stretches to the horizon.

100 acres of pristine forest.

I feel I’ve been hit by a bolt of lightning.

Days later Paul and I are in the car, speeding through torrential rain heading north. As we drive we can hardly hear each other over the roar of the storm. Up since dawn, all we can do is grin with excitement. What are we doing?

This is a first. We’d never checked out a property before. Sure, we’d talked about it over the years – hasn’t everyone? Late night discussions with friends over glasses of wine, wouldn’t it be nice to live in an off grid cabin in the woods. But that was just talk and nothing ever felt solid enough to do more than dream.

Above us, the weather system is huge and growing. A product of La Nina, it’s been pounding Sydney and the east coast with rain bombs – violent, biblical deluges which can dump a month’s worth of rain in day..

Seven hours later, the rain is still bucketing down when we arrive and greet the agent. He is brisk. We can see the property but the main river is rising and is likely to flood, so we need to get in and out of Die Happy quick.

Die Happy. Paul and I laugh. Real estate agents will say anything.

The access road to the land is more like a gravelled, muddy track winding away into the trees. We buckle up. I’m in the front seat, with the window wipers slicing like mad hands through the river of rain. Paul is in the back, staring out as the forest blurs and civilisation disappears behind us.

We’re being driven at high speed along a narrow ridge, lined with tree ferns and fallen branches, the edge falling away into nothingness. White knuckled, I’m hanging on, speechless with a mix of excitement and terror, as the track loops higher and higher.

Gears grinding, the car slips and slides around a final hairpin turn and we stop.

We’re here. We’re on Die Happy.

Doors slam and we get out.

The rain has stopped for a breath and in the sudden moment of stillness the sun peeks out. We are on the edge of a middle ridge, surrounded by silky forest oaks and saplings. Above us the ridge line continues up into the clouds and disappears.

The first thing that hits us is the smell. A sweet softness combined with a hint of sharpness from the wet eucalypts. It’s quiet, save for the twittering of a single tiny bird. Paul and I grin.

Through a break in the clouds, we can see the view across the valley below, an expanse of unbroken trees and in the distance a waterfall gleaming like a shard of silver against the dark green of the forest. Wow we whisper wow.

Four months later

Die Happy

The weather app promises 5 days of clear skies over Easter. We are driving, the car is bulging with camping gear, some of which hasn’t been used for years. We’re on a mission to explore the land and see what we actually have.

It was an impulse purchase and doesn’t quite feel real, but it also feels completely right. It’s hard to explain. It’s like everything in our lives has aligned for us both to be here at this moment – to be caretakers of this land. We feel a gravity here. Like the land pulls us in, holds us close.

But we don’t know anything, and we feel like little children looking around us, eyes wide, pinching ourselves in disbelief.

We camp on the ridge. There is nowhere else we can leave the car that we know is safe.

We pitch the tent and head off on our first walk down a track covered in leaves – and wide enough for a quad bike, Paul reckons. We saw it the first time we were here but it was too wet and rainy that day to do more than a simple wonderstruck look around. But now we’re here.

We walk slowly, starring up in awe at the forest. By now the sun is dipping lower in the sky and birds are starting to roost. We can hear the high whistling of yellow-tailed black cockatoos and see a pair of them flying their strange looping flight high over the trees. Storm bringers, they’re known as. I hope not, but still, they’re beautiful.

The forest surrounding us is as grand as a cathedral, and the feeling of disbelief grows. How can this be ours? How is it possible? The idea feels enormous, but we are trying not to be overwhelmed. Everything we are doing is new.

We are city-slickers, we have never even really been out of cities. Paul is from London, and we tend to head to cities and beaches for holidays. The last time we camped was about 13 years before when our son Zack was around 8. It rained. We couldn’t make a fire to cook our dinner, and everyone was miserable.

But here we are.

Sunlight is filtering down through the leaves. There is an iridescent quality to the light. It’s magic hour, where senses are heightened and everything looks beautiful.

Trees stand tall and straight with smooth white trunks rushing up into the sky. Some are more knotted and thickly shaped, these feel strong and earthy and the roots around their base push up through the soil. Others have rough textured bark, dark and criss-crossed with ants and spiders going about their business.

I’m wishing I’d brought our tree book. So I am taking photos to take home to cross reference what we see here. Our ignorance is staggering, but we assure each other that it’s ok.

We’re here to learn. We’re here to help conserve this place and we’re hoping this pocket of land is home to koalas and quolls and maybe dingos. And we’re hoping this land is a refuge after the horror fires of Black Summer where billions of Australian animals died. We hope life has survived.

But we don’t know.

Birds twitter, and I hear a strange chop chop chop sound. It could be a lyrebird but I’m not sure.

As we head further down the track, the forest reveals simply enormous trees, they seem to be growing in size with every step we take down the ridge. We gaze around us in wonder. How are these trees still here? We’d heard that loggers had been through here 40 or 50 years ago and we had no idea this land held trees of this size. Why hadn’t anyone told us?

We walk on and then, near the edge of our land, just before the ridge line loops away, we see it.

The tree’s trunk is covered by thick ribbed bark, and is so wide and strong it’s hard to comprehend. The giant is standing off the path, and down in a deeper gully. Clambering over vines I push past tree ferns, undergrowth and sharp ribboned grasses to get close.  

I reach out my arms but It’s base is so wide it’s like hugging a wall. Gazing up into its crown, my heart is pounding and I feel as though I am in the presence of a huge ancient being.

Sentient.

She feels like a grandmother tree, harbouring a wisdom so vast it reaches down into the depths of the soil and radiates out into the surrounding forest.

She is like a beacon. She is like a teacher, but more.., Its profound and hard to explain but it’s like she is calling us, me. All of us. She is why we are here. She is home tree.

She is home.