Windgrove has launched a new website which is designed to work with smartphones, iPads and desktop devices.
Please update your bookmarks. This website will remain here and there will always be a direct link back on the new site. The new site is still a work in progress, but constructive ideas and opinions are always welcome
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When planting trees or any form of landscape work, the slowness-of-time has to be taken into consideration when trying to visualise how things might look in the future. And doubly so at Windgrove where minimal rainfall and salty air from the ocean slow things down even more.
Nine years ago the area now called the Peace Bus back yard was just beginning to take shape. Three of the raised containers for the veggie patch, as seen in the above photo, are about to have top soil put into them. Two covered domes have blueberry bushes. A circular area (middle right) outlined by sagg grasses has a fire pit covered with a galvanised lid.
Today the veggie patch is totally enclosed and houses 22 raised container beds for a multitude of veggies to grow free from the ravenous possums. Inside this enclosure are two apple trees, a lemon tree and a lime tree. The blueberry domes still contain blueberry bushes, but the area around each dome has been sort of prettified with native flowering, bird attracting bushes.
Where the fire pit once was stands one of five decorative pear trees that have been planted out to give me — a Michigan boy — an opportunity to witness the budding of spring growth and the coming of autumn colours as associated with deciduous trees.
Whether morning, noon or night, there is something mightily delicious in sitting within the confines of the Peace Bus back yard and savouring the fruits of one’s efforts.
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Don’t let the blue sky with its billowy white clouds — that appear to be floating serenely on a sunny afternoon — deceive you into thinking you might want to sit down on the Dropstone Bench and meditate quietly for awhile in perfect equilibrium with Nature.
In truth there is a howling gale blowing and the temperature near freezing. Those clouds were flying past, straight out of the south and an Antarctic low. It is winter here, you know, even though the trees and shrubbery are evergreen and are deceptive in such a photo; giving false clues that green foliage means summer warmth.
I had to huddle behind a tree to take the photo such was the force of the wind.
Within a few minutes of brisk walking, I was in the shelter of my veggie patch and came across a lone tomato clinging tenaciously to last summer’s vine.
Death was all around, but the blood red passion of hope prevailed; metaphor for what will cycle around again.
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At 7AM earlier in the week, I went to the kitchen to pour a glass of water from the jug that sits next to the window far right of the sink. At the bottom, huddled in 35mm of water, was a shivering “Little Pygmy-possum”.
I picked up the very scared tiny creature who, most likely assuming that I was about to eat it, tried to escape from my hands. It’s fur was totally saturated and the little guy would, certainly be suffering from hypothermia. I grabbed the towel off the stove handle and wrapped it around the squirming ball of wet fur. Next, I walked over to the reading corner, sat down and opened up the towel enough to put the Pygmy-possum directly against my heart and skin warmth. Within a few minutes all was quiet beneath the towel and my hands.
I sat for an hour this way. I meditated. I thought how six months earlier I had the first of two total knee replacements with the second TKR operation just three months ago. Following the second operation I started to have severe bouts of atrial fibrillations of the heart lasting up to 13 hours. The short story is that I’m now on beta blockers to keep my AF under control.
The Pygmy-possum is pressed against my heart. Two sentient beings of this earth wanting to live a life more-or-less stress free.
Ever so slowly I began to feel movement so I opened up the towel to take a peek inside. Tiny bulging eyes peered at me. Then it started licking itself; doing what it knows best when wet. From nose to tail it cleaned off excess water, even turning over onto its back to lick its belly fur while occasionally turning its head in my direction eyeing me eyeball to eyeball, mammal to mammal. Eventually the Pygmy-possum moved over to a slightly dryer part of my hairy chest, curled up into a little ball and started to sleep now that it felt safe in its little cocoon of human warmth.
At 8:30AM, I carried him/her over to the kitchen counter and said my good-byes as it nimbly scurried over to find a new hiding place behind the cups and bottles.
The photo above was from some years ago when a similar thing happened, but whether the same or different Pygmy-possum, it was still pure delight to hold and provide warmth and protection to something so small and precious.
At 9AM, my heart felt in the best shape ever.
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So what am I doing at the base of the sculpture ‘Birth’?
I’m carving the letters TODAY.
Six hundred million years earlier, visitors to Windgrove begin their 1.2 kilometre journey along the Gaia Evolution Walk where each big step (one metre) equals 500,000 years.
The years roll by with each step. From the Precambrian Eon through to the Cenozoic Era — via the Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods — The Walk is completed when people touch the sculpture ‘Birth’ with its inscribed word: TODAY
Interestingly enough, after almost five years in the making, this lettering marks the formal completion of the Gaia Evolution Walk. The Walk is finally finished.
“To the future”, I say.
On the gate is the sign: The Future. Once inside, students within the expansive classroom of the Wombat Circle talk, not only of what they learned along the Gaia Evolution Walk, but how they view the future of the planet, the environmental and social changes that will surely occur, and, most importantly, what role they might play in helping to create a peaceful word for themselves and others.
Another topic of discussion that I like to bring up is whether or not human constructed art has a place in the natural environment. Is the sculpture ‘Birth’ an eye sore? Or, a lovely addition to the surrounding trees? Is it just one man’s ego intruding on the landscape?
Or, does it move beyond a pleasing aesthetic and become transformative to a person’s life? And the earth’s.
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This weekend, on a cloud free morning, I photographed the Peace Bus as it sat all pretty in the landscape surrounded by spring flowering beauty. The wattle tree with its masses of tiny yellows has certainly grown up since planted some ten years ago.
The “older” Peace Bus looks a bit haggard to the eye. The stove pipe sticking out the side of my home for eight years, at least promises some warmth within the narrow confines of the inner space.
And, on the inside….
The older bus… well, what can I say? It was basic and functional. For the first four years, before I installed a couple of solar panels, I had nine candles opposite me on the dining table for light (and company). No phone, no radio; certainly, no internet.
The silence of those evenings was a felt presence on my journey into a philosophical, deep ecological connection to the land called Windgrove. So very important to where I stand today.
I might add that during the first four years I also had no running water. Nor, even a proper “out house”; just a hole in the ground. Not many city visitors during this time.
But now….
All the lights work. Lace curtains. A gas heater for instant warmth (city people had trouble with the wood heater). Fully functioning stove and fridge. Top-of-the-line queen size mattress. Even the floor has been sanded and varnished.
Now, there are lots of city visitors clamouring to stay.
Goodnight Dan Bailey
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Windgrove is a 100 acre coastal property in the south-east of Tasmania that borders Roaring Beach and looks out across Storm Bay to the Antarctic 3000 kilometers away. ‘Life on the Edge’, first published in 2003, is a weekly diary of photos and prose about the comings and goings here.
The author of this blog and steward/ caretaker of Windgrove is Peter Adams. American born (Detroit), Harvard graduate (1968), Peace Corps volunteer (Korea), carpenter (Alaska), furniture designer/maker (North Carolina), sculptor and environmental writer (Tasmania).
His art is in six museums internationally and he has taught at schools in England, America, Korea and Australia.
After purchasing Windgrove in 1991, Peter has spent the ensuing years transforming the landscape through the planting of 8,000 trees and the creation of several large scale Earth Art features. In the process he, himself, has been transformed by the land.
This blog is the story of that reciprocal transformation.
