Scabby Days

Mt Scabby, at 1790m among the highest of ACT peaks, lies on the border with New South Wales in a remote region of the Namadgi and Kosciuszko National Parks. Less a peak than a flat U-shaped plateau, it is here the Cotter River begins to flow – its three dams supplying Canberra’s water.

 

A long one day walk from vehicular access, another to return, Scabby receives relatively few visitors. The effort though has its rewards – like the occasion two wedge tail eagles circled in and out of fast moving clouds with bases scarcely a dozen metres above our heads.

 

SCABBY HAIKU

 

Why leave us alone

On the mountain with wedge tails,

Silly clouds scudding?

I’ve camped there several times; once in April 1989 with Jim McPherson on a walk around the ACT border to raise funds for the sanctuary window Regeneration, by glass artist David Wright, in St Stephen’s Anglican Church, Kambah, ACT where Jim was rector.

 

On Scabby, Jim’s stomach reacted badly to our evening meal of Thai fish cakes, and he beat a hasty, if reluctant, retreat from our tent out into the mist and rain, seeking another place of sanctuary.

 

In October 2017 I wrote this poem when Jim and his wife were our guests in Canberra and, as it happened, just when another fund-raising ‘around-the-ACT-border’ walk began. It rekindled old memories. Some may see the poem as blasphemous, which is a shame – rather it is intended as a song of praise, an affirmation of the Divine. Others may detect my nod to the less well-known trinity of Thomas, Jung and William Blake, in references to Mr Pugh’s “Lives of the Great Saints” from Dylan Thomas’ Under Milkwood, to Carl Jung’s youthful imaginings of God’s judgment and the roof of Basel cathedral, and to Blake’s Tent of the Eternals from his Urizon.

 

DIVINE DEFECATION  (or HOLY SHIT!)

 

For Jim McPherson

 

Out there (O where?) slant slab 

awaits, 

inevitable oddity.

ssh! fish cake 

vipers and scalds, Pugh-like,

on Scabby.

 

 

In here, tent Eternal

affords,

insignificant sanctuary.

ssh! light mist 

softens and falls, Christ-like,

on Scabby.

 

 

Below, deep rumbling

assaults, 

indubitable evacuee.

ssh! as torch

headed he trawls, Ghost-like,

on Scabby.

 

 

In, out, up, down – in all

assays,

inexhaustible deity.

ssh! when shit

happens God calls, I AM-like,

on Scabby. 

I think “Holy shit” and “Shit happens”, two borrowings from our more recent vernacular, are expressions worthy of serious theological reflection. Perhaps on retreat to Scabby.

 

Scabby is anything but scabby. And it casts creatures, along with its spells.