Alice Miller students, with two bags holding many, many small gorse plants
Students from Alice Miller school have started coming Fridays to give us a hand clearing out the gorse in the creekline inside Barrm Birrm. They get to spend time out in the open air, and the joy of giving freely to someone or something that needs a hand.
Your sick mum who wants you to visit, your broken-hearted friend who just needs to talk, a bit of land that can't do entirely for itself - it's all the same. You give, you put yourself out there, and then something magic happens:
you follow what you know and feel is important
you connect a little bit more to a person or a place, and they connect to you
your world gets bigger and deeper, more complicated, more resonant you feel more.
We want the world to be less complicated and less troubled, but on most environmental issues, it isn't going to be easy to make a difference . We're up against two or three centuries of a certain way of thinking, the exploitation of nature, and that will take a lot to shift.
Giving freely is a start, but it brings you close to the detail of the way humans are hammering natural places. That can get hard to handle.
The flipside though, the flipside of giving freely, of volunteering your effort, is that your spirit lifts and your heart beats calmer.
In the Barrm Birrm creekline, with the gorse cleared, the grasses coming back, the shrubs growing out unimpeded, well, you kind of have to take it on faith that the place appreciates it, but there is a life living itself out around you in these natural places, and if you go very quiet inside, you can feel the breathing.
That's a gift, coming right back at ya!
The Alice Miller kids will be in every Friday afternoon for a while. If you want to join in, keep track of What's on at RCL's website. Or give me a call, Ross Colliver 0411 226 519.
The creekline, clear of gorse