Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER
The first time I walked alone in the bush, I was small, perhaps about 8. I was at a family reunion of sorts at a place called Sherbrooke Forest. My mind kept flipping to Robin Hood all day. I was a quiet freckly tom boy. I was wearing identical clothes to my step sister who was 3 years older than me. We wore fake white sheepskin like jackets over red velour jumpers, punctuated by long lime green collars. She was the popular, beautiful, funny one. I felt generally privileged to be in her company and have her as my constant companion.
I can’t remember a lot about that day now looking back from the vantage point of 51 but there is a memory that comes back to me fairly regularly. It is of standing alone in the bush near our picnic site. Turning my body around in a full circle and looking to the horizon of trees, hearing the lyre birds’ strange calls, and being amazed that I could not decipher where I was in relation to our group and had no idea which direction to walk in to return to them.
When you are lost it makes you tune in to small details I think, a bit like looking for clues, paying closer attention to sounds, colours, shapes, objects, moving things. Next minute I was feeling a rising sense of panic. That feeling when you have been a bit stupid, pushed things too far, been so absorbed in something you have stopped paying attention to something else important. I had a sense of dread, but for me, and probably due to the accompanying adrenalin rush, it was also a little exciting. It was a problem to solve, a project, a mission, a challenge. So following the panic, there was a steeling of my resources, readying for the battle for survival of a sort.
And I do not remember the moment when I finally found the family party. I am sure it was under whelming. Who’s asking for me at the party, nobody. Had anyone noticed my disappearance, no. Probably I had been away for minutes, but of course it felt like time had stretched, and in that moment of being lost, time warped, place changed, and I changed. I remember sticks on the ground, the smell of that particular bush, the slightly threatening sound of the lyrebirds, not perhaps normally a threatening sound, and being left with myself as my own companion. I remember the internal dialogue and also the accusations of failure.
Sex in front of the fire was a very long way from my thoughts in that place, at age 8. So were other concerns of adulthood, love, loss and the grand beauty and challenge of life. My challenge was here and now.
I do consider myself a survivor. I do like to be tested. I do like a physical challenge. And now I find I still like getting lost. I don’t do it deliberately very often but I do sometimes. I definitely did it deliberately years later when visiting Venice. Getting lost in that city is like a magical dream. I luxuriated in those strange exciting lost moments until finally I found a familiar bridge that linked into my sense of place. And then I was walking with a kind of heady relief toward the old Nunnery where my then partner and I were staying in 2 separate rooms. Originally it was one, until we had a fight serious enough to for me to ‘move out’ into the room next door. Sometimes I think this was a warning or precursor of things to come but that is another story.
I have been lost whilst driving or a passenger on many car trips. It usually seems to be when there is a timeline that is already compromised and stressed. How often do we really do things without a timeline? I confess that must be a hallmark of adulthood for me. Sad. But reliably when I get lost whilst in a car, particularly when a long way from home, I undoubtedly re-experience the strange joyful, timeless, freedom of being untethered that I experienced all those years ago in Sherbrooke forest. Infuriating often, for those that I am with.