Unbraided Lines: Essays in Environmental Thinking and Writing

Abstract

When I first arrived in the biodiverse South-West corner of Western Australia (W.A.) in 2008 from the temperate climes of the eastern United States, I was struck-as many visitors have been before me-by the seasonal differences between the hemispheres. Rather than resuming my familiar four-season consciousness, splicing up time according to significant plummets in temperature or the dramatic falling of deciduous leaves, I had to adjust to the subtle movements, sounds, smells, and tastes rhythmically tracing the course of the solar year. My poem "Western Quandong" concludes with a quatrain conveying a burgeoning awareness of Western Australian seasons and time: "dispersal of nuts and winter wind/ mark the sutures between seasons,/ soft like silence rather than rupture,/ while serpentine roots tangle below" (Hickman and Ryan 2012, 68, ll. 17-20).