Certain Uncertainty
Nature, Control & Surrender
There is no certainty in anything at all, none whatsoever. That’s a stark and sometimes scary realisation. We didn’t need the pandemic to confirm this, but it did rouse us from our slumber. All the while, the natural world has been consistently rattling the windows of our complacency. Pathogens are part of nature, however, so the pandemic was a reminder from nature of many things, not least the capacity for our circumstances to change radically beyond our control.
As humans, we crave certainty and regularity. That provides us with a sense of safety. We live prescriptively, based on societal norms, rules and values. We are wholly reliant on technology and the systems of extractive energy production that, without, we would plunge into utter chaos. Roads, transport, and communication would collapse. Dystopia aside, time is a social construct, helping us plan and schedule our lives. Throw some quantum physics, namely dark matter, add a dash of existential angst into the mix and forget it!! What is life? There is still so much we don't know and nothing is certain!
Uncertainty has been a constant theme lately, and a recent walk was no exception. This 3km walk to the local ocean pool in the afternoon sun promised to be the perfect refreshing dip to counter the post-walk heat. On my way though, I was reminded of the most recent flooding event we’ve had in New South Wales. It is one of many, increasingly regular severe weather events we’ve faced in recent years. I think this is the fifth local flooding event we’ve had within the year, I’ve lost track. This time it was a flash flood. I was working when the storm broke. After several minutes a huge downpour (which we’re well used to) resulted in a local village main street coming to a standstill with over a metre of rain in the lowest parts. I stood inside a shop with the water lapping at the doors. Overwhelmed creeks, drains and gutters overflowed flooding homes, cafes and shops.
Mercifully the water receded almost as quickly as it came, but not without causing substantial damage. Overnight rain brought up to 300mm of rain and that single hour of rain the following morning measured up to 177mm in some areas. Fire trucks, ambulances and police cars raced north of where I was. We later discovered an area prone to landslides that succumbed to rain. Thankfully no one was injured. To the north of the landslide, a video appeared on TikTok of an unoccupied car floating like a leaf down a local creek into the ocean. It could have been a lot worse. The landslide filled the driveway to the local beach and pool with boulders, sludge and debris. The denuded coastline with little remaining natural coastal vegetation to filter and protect against the gave way to the storm surge. A disturbing image of the ocean filled with muddy water appeared yet again.
As I reached the pool an older couple were getting ready to leave. They confirmed the pool conditions were ideal. We spoke about the rain and the landslides. Living in the area for 40 years, they said they have seen their fair share of landslides and floods, but not so often as this. I wondered how they could live somewhere so precarious. Yet, here I am, living just a few kilometres north in a similarly flood-prone spot. They mentioned their Irish heritage and said they would like to visit Ireland one day. I encouraged them to visit the west coast since wild coastal landscapes are their thing, and mine too, I suppose.
As I lay on a rock drying off after a few leisurely laps I watched a tiny white cloud drift slowly against the blue sky above. I felt unexpectedly chilled by the breeze which had whipped up and the increasingly loud crash of the surf prompted me to sit up, gather my belongings and make my way up to the mechanised “modern” bathrooms with the type of automatic doors and canned music nightmares are made of. As I wrestled with my togs and balanced on my shoes while avoiding the verruca-virus harbouring floor I listened to a tinny instrumental of ‘What the World Needs Now’ by the late Burt Bacharach who I can only assume did not intend his music to be used in an automatic changing room in coastal New South Wales.
Escaping the threat of perpetual muzak, I stepped back outside into the daylight, relieved to be out of the metal chamber. I sat on a small ledge close to the little playground and brushed the sand from my feet, marvelling again at the view and intensity of the blue sky. I could hear the crashing waves interspersed by the occasional shrieks of children leaping into the pool. I looked at the houses perched precariously on the cliff and down to the rock platform where boulders the size of small cars, presumably displaced by waves or previous landslides or rockfalls, sit seemingly unmovable.
It is a year since the “unprecedented” flooding hit us locally, but the most profound impact of that weather event was in northern New South Wales, parts of Queensland and beyond. Entire towns like Lismore were submerged. These weather events are more common now with climate change and the multiple flooding events country-wide which have happened since then. Even in our privileged existence in the so-called ‘lucky country’, everything from the weather to the economy is less certain. Meanwhile, the recent earthquakes which we can't accurately predict have had catastrophic impacts on already vulnerable places Turkey and Syria. Pakistan also experienced once-in-a-lifetime' floods this year.
Our nervous systems are designed to live with uncertainty, to switch from rest and digest to fight or flight at the flick of a switch. We are primed for change. Nature reminds us that change is inevitable. Plants, animals, fungi, rocks, weather and the very core of the earth, undergo constant change. When we consider our own internal systems, we too, are in a state of consistent change. Our bodies react and move with our environment, the bacteria shift and repopulate, our digestive systems slow down and speed up, our breath fluctuates, and our heart rates vary. We are intensely sensitive and adaptive beings, responding to the slightest change in our surroundings.
While we experience change so regularly internally and externally, we are conditioned to resist change in favour of safe regularity, which is reasonable, to want to feel safe. In a strange comfort, noticing the constant change around me, not clinging to sameness, looking at the inevitability of the tide turning, the unpredictable nature of the weather and knowing that even the vessel, my body that I live in, is morphing and dare I say it ageing, and healing (currently from sunburn) all the time.
We are resilient beings and surrendering to the inevitability of change is a relief from the resistance of trying to stay the course in a world that is anything but certain. Though I am no expert in surrendering to change and uncertainty, far from it, the calmest place for me in nature, somewhere that I have no control whatsoever. The coastal landscapes that I feel so at home in, are places of constant flux and change, one of the places you see the landscape change most vividly. Tides turning, wild waves and winds shifting sands daily and shaping rocks over millennia.
For me, this paradox of being in a landscape of constant change and renewal is the thing that allows me to surrender. Each time I visit the coastline, I will likely meet one or many creatures, by sight or sound. The trees and plants will be different, blossoming, turning, and decaying. The basic structure of the beach will have shifted slightly, or even dramatically, and the rocks and shells exposed on the shoreline will reveal something new to delight in. Smells and sounds may be familiar, the conditions will be unpredictable, and the waves might be loud and crashing or gently lapping and calm, welcoming me in.
By surrendering to the reality that there is little I can control, I can find a sense of ease and freedom. The knowledge of my fleeting and finite existence is strangely reassuring. I can savour the moments of pleasure and beauty in nature, absorbing a breath of complexity of not-knowingness, awe and grandness of the world or the simple joy of a honey-sweet flower. Moored and steadied by the certain uncertainty of nature.
Natures notes is proudly written on and inspired by Dharawal Country.I recognise the Dharawal & Wodi Wodi custodians and ancestors who have an enduring connection to land, water and skies.
Always Was and Always Will be Aboriginal Land.
Thanks for a lovely piece, Anna. Inspirational!
Beautiful writing Anna - perhaps the uncertainty pushes us to really look at and take in all that is magical in nature - your writing certainly creates a desire to seek all that nature offers us - in spite of the all pervading uncertainty