A girl’s best friend

Just after one in the morning. Way past my bedtime. But Ive just come in from a fire vigil for the last four hours and even though I should call it a day, I feel compelled to get this entry in before the ashes get cold.

Tonight’s fire was not at the Peace Fire. It was on the Windgrove property but at a location near where I shot this photo this afternoon. The reason the photo was taken was because my neighbour’s dog Clamp, who had been missing for eight days, was seen at the bottom of the far cliff by a fisherman passing by in a boat.

Now, see the wave in the foreground? Nearly a twenty foot breaking swell. See the cliff face? Over a 170 foot vertical drop or 60 meters. Don’t ask how the dog got to such an inaccessible spot.

How to get the dog?

Since the marines are all in Iraq, the dog’s owner Donna decided to abseil down herself to rescue the dog from terrorist seals, penguins and bull kelp. Just to get to the top of the cliff face was an arduous half mile walk down a thickly forested hillside.

Eventually, from my side of the little bay called The Tea Gardens, I watched as a tiny figure in the distance eased herself off the edge of the cliff and made her way down to the shelf at the base where Clamp was last seen. Confident that she and the other five men on top of the cliff would complete the job, I headed back to the studio for another hour of carving before calling it quits for the day.

A couple of hours later after dinner, Donna’s husband Stan telephones me to say that Clamp is safe at home by the wood heater all curled up and sleeping. The only problem, Stan says, is that Donna is still at the base of the cliff.

Seems that it got too dark and dangerous for Donna to safely climb back up; that a Tasmanian state emergency rescue crew was arriving soon from Hobart to get her so that she wouldn’t have to spend the night exposed to freezing strong southerly winds; that because of the noise of the wind and pounding surf, Donna could not have been told that help was coming.

Wanting to do something, I figured the best thing I could do was to go back out to the point, build a fire and signal to Donna that I was nearby doing what I could to hold the energy. As my neighbour, she would know that I would be praying for the safety of her and those who would eventually be making their way down to her in the dark.

Dragging branches from a spot where they had been placed for soil erosion control, I was able to maintain, despite the stiff wind, a big fire for the next four hours or until I saw the last of the bobbing flickering lights ascend to the top of the hill and disappear into the black night.