Signing up for another decade

21 August, 2021

I’ve just clocked my 69th birthday, and it’s got me thinking about what’s changing as I get older. I can do all the outside work I always have done, but I work more slowly. I walk down hillsides carefully. I take more breaks.

I pay more attention to what I’m doing. 

I’m out preparing the vegetable patch for spring planting, and I pace myself. The early afternoon sunshine hits the side of my face. The valley is full of birdsong, the wind is just the particular way it is today, lifting gently along the valley.

I think I’ve got more persistence as I get older. In Landcare meetings, the grey heads sometimes look at each other and lament: ‘Where are the young people? Who is going to carry on this work?’ Well, a few have shown up, but being old doesn’t worry me, because persistence outweighs the physical limitations of aging.

Looking after a patch of land takes a long time. It’s a matter of decades, not months. What matters is getting organised to keep at it. What matters is making the effort itself, not just the result. When I was younger, I didn’t think in terms of decades. I rushed at things, wanting a quick result. The land works to a long timeframe, and I feel mine stretching out as I get older.

I understand as well a little more of the way the world works. The reason a place like Barrm Birrm either slowly degrades or slowly recovers is partly a matter of what we do in Riddells Creek Landcare, but it’s also up to the walkers from town, and the trail bike rides, and the Shire. That gorgeous hillside of grasses and trees lies at the edge of a growing town and a growing city. More people use the place, but maybe attitudes are changing towards care for land. It all affects this place. What we do fits in alongside those other influences.

The recent IPCC report shocked me, as it was designed to do. I have committed to clearing the newly sprouting gorse in a gully in Barrm Birrm near my house. I spend an hour there every couple of days. It’s out of the wind in the gully, and sweet to be amongst the grasses and bursaria and fallen timber. This is not something that will stop the ravages coming, but the gully appreciates it.

I have to dig deep to get the roots out—there, got another one. It’s slow work, but I’m going to get this gully clear of gorse sometime in the next couple of years. There will be more after that, but I reckon I’m good for another decade.

Ross Colliver
Riddells Creek Landcare ross.colliver@bigpond.com