ON MOTHERHOOD, TRAIL RUNNING AND THE WONDER OF WILD PLACES
For the hundredth time this year I am running away, in plump pink sneakers, black quick-dry shorts and a light green t-shirt. It’s late on a Sunday afternoon, and although the sun still hovers above the horizon, I know, as all parents must, that it’s time to sort dinner and things for tomorrow.
And yet, I am running out the front door, and I do not look back.
I am not being dramatic. I am a mother of four young children, heartsore and tired, running away to find who it is that I am and to remember all the things that I love. And besides, I always return home.
Around the corner, past the sage-green double story house, the garden with fluffy cream roses, the black labrador prowling its fence, and along the street lined with silver birch trees, until I reach the edge of the forest.
I leap in and my world becomes earth and leaves, wings and sky.
At first the forest is nothing more than a tight green gully with a scattering of slender eucalyptus trees and a dirt trail that curls up into the hills behind the city. I follow, running past a trickling creek, bottlebrushes in bloom with wands of red, purple, yellow and cream, and a sandstone bench tucked behind a bustle of cutting grass, willing me to linger, if only for a moment.
The trail rises; rocks burst out of the earth. My body groans; first a deep burn in my thighs, then a clenching in my chest, and in my mouth, the taste of blood, though I know I cannot be bleeding. I have learned to love this feeling, to crave the way it hurts, the way it pushes me closer to the edges of my body. Upwards I go, swinging my arms a little faster, urging my legs to follow.
. . .
At a crest, I turn off the main trail and onto a pad made smooth by the passage of animals – wallabies, pademelons and bandicoots, but also dogs and feral cats. This is an urban forest, after all. It is not a wild place – if any place can be called wild at all.
I drop under a eucalyptus branch, hanging like an arch, and around a native cherry tree, its tiny fruit the same shade as its new shoots. Beneath my feet, sticks and bark and leaves, bright green weeds, yellow grass. It’s messy and chaotic and yet, somehow beautiful. I remember to hold onto this feeling when I return to my own home, messy and layered in other ways.
The trail begins to flatten and I slow a little. Beside a clearing, a crumble of pale sandstone boulders resting on the earth, old and weathered by time and the wind. I press my palms onto the warm crust, push one leg back, and bend the other until I feel a stretch.
I watch, I listen, and my body fills with the forest — an orchestra of birds (how I wish I knew their calls by name), a rushing of leaves in the deepening sky, the egg yolk eye of a black currawong watching me, a dark chain of ants carrying pieces of a dead skink across the trail, and the sun cutting diagonal stripes through the trees, draping everything in a warm honey. I savour it all.
But as I open to the landscape, something within me shifts. Not in the usual way – pulse, contraction, flow, and motion. Those boundaries no longer exist. No, I am becoming more tree and moss, less blood and flesh. Where once my fingernails grew, now leaves shoot into the loosening air. My arms stretch towards the light, bending above the undergrowth. And my face, bright as the sun, radiates a boundless energy, a fire within.
Look at my skin peeling, sagging in strips to expose a delicate body, fresh and alive. There is moss on my feet, lichen on my eyebrows, birds in my hair, and in my hands, seeds — the beginning of dreams and everything in-between.
. . .
It has been half an hour and I can no longer remember what it is I was running from. My home – a weatherboard house with a red door and edible garden, bulging with collections and creations. My family – thick with children and various animals, thrumming with a fierce and forever love. My thoughts – knotted, looping, and too much.
Perhaps you are a parent, or you have caring responsibilities, and you have a sense of what I am feeling – the shock of being needed, always. Perhaps you are here too and you know about the wonders of the forest.
. . .
Overhead, three yellow-tailed black-cockatoos fly towards the river. They shoot across the sky like an arrow – one ahead, two behind – wailing as they go. I know this call; rain is coming, wind perhaps. I follow, their dark bodies a constellation in my sky – over the chain of ants, around the native cherry tree, under the eucalyptus arch, down the steep and rocky trail to the gully, along the street lined with silver birch trees, and all the way home.
When I open the front door, no one is waiting. I find my children in the garden, jumping on the trampoline, and my husband serving dinner in the kitchen. I take my shoes off, tuck them into the shelf by the back door, and sit down on the deck that looks out at our garden. Now, a feeling, a rush of something within. It is not joy or hope or the fluttering of wings. It is the feeling of a forest, wild and sweet and flourishing.
