Budj Bim (Mount Eccles)

What a strange misunderstanding: to view the forest as separate 

from anything else we hold dear.

The forest is not someplace to visit, 

nor is it a museum piece to be preserved. 

It is our home. 

When did we decide that we are different from this land? 

We could protect the red gums, pencil pines, bottle brushes and she-oaks, yes. 

But don’t defend them because they are beautiful,

do it because they are ours. 

Not to own but to live with. 

To thrive alongside our environment and dance once again with our forgotten phantom limb. 

Once, so much a part of us, we were absolutely inseparable. 

Shaded by the very leaves that let us breathe.

We came out of this world, a very strange species of monkey. 

For an incredibly brief amount of time, we have shaped parts of this place for our comfort. 

Forgetting that we are happiest solving the simplest of nature’s problems, 

find food, sing as the birds do, and just be. 

Even our most incredible attempts at representing the spectacle 

of this place pale when struck by the rawness that the treelines and rivers even exist at all. 

Why, on this stone in space (that should be as barren as the rest of the planets) 

is there a sparrow, a fern, a desert, a mango, a father, anger, a gallery, a valley 

Is it not enough to be a part of all of this? 

Don’t conserve this, love this, grow with it all. 

Be a part of the world, 

it is in our nature.