A Big View
Why I Love Looking at Big Things
I have always loved a big view.
There are some special big views that have inspired and nourished my soul over time. A few have even opened portals to new or different ways of thinking and knowing. Like watching the Eiffel Tower sparkling from that first simple Paris room I stayed in and returned to over the years. It was located high on the butt in Montmartre with a view across the rooftops to the city. There I contemplated big ideas looking out that window and I felt guided by something bigger than myself to begin to write.
A few other treasured views. Here in Newcastle there is a stunning view from the lighthouse over sea toward the city. It never fails to fill me with an ambivalent tenderness toward my adopted home. I have been fortunate to spend two artist residencies writing from a room there, sitting gazing over the sea and city and pondering what home means.
Very recently on a Japan sojourn I was unexpectedly greatly moved by the grandeur and innate wisdom of the snow capped Mount Fuji that dominated every view. Every time Mr G and I return to Japan, the sacred privilege of looking out over the old city, Kyoto from one window of our small home on Yoshida Hill. Here is a simple sit spot where I write, that has gifted many moments contemplating the miracles and invitations found in that particular place.
A very early personal memory is of a sublime feeling infusing my whole body as I gazed from a high point over the country I was born and grew on.
It was one humid Sunday after mass. Our family drove from Wardell through Ballina and along the pacific highway toward Byron Bay. Our great grandparents had farmed land at Goonengery in the hills above Mullumbimby so it was to visit the old place, walk to a rainforest picnic spot and swim in a secluded creek. We had turned off the highway onto Coolamon Scenic Drive when mum impulsively decided we should stop and eat right there.
So hot and hungry we set out our simple feast on rugs on the hillside as we drank in an astonishing view. From this vantage point the landscape literally breathed and heaved green before flowing and folding over into a heavenly blue infinity.
That’s when I first got that divine feeling that big views often gift.
Everyone was a little intoxicated with that view but dad got extra maudlin after adding splashes of something into his milky tea. He started waxing on lyrically about ‘the wind meeting the wind” and of Mt Waring (now Wollumbin) being where the first ray of sunlight touches the earth each morning.
He pointed out the many punctuation points of that profoundly poetic place and told us how the land was chosen by Micheal his grandfather as it reminded him of the Irish countryside he came from. By this time he was singing Celtic ballads like Danny Boy, declaring what we were looking at to be “Gods own country” and as he was apt to do when like this, weeping a lot.
Now the area is a mecca for the rich and famous and many original locals, including myself are locked out of ever owning the land. Over the years I have been constantly returning walking the many rain-forested trails including the one from Clark’s beach up to the lighthouse on Cape Byron now known as Walgun. Once I went up there with Delta Kay a Bunglalung elder who sang and danced a welcome to country. She then told story of her mob stretching back 22,000 years in the area. She walked us to a midden site that has been damaged to make way for a ramp for the hang-gliders and a cement slab for picnic tables with a view to Gruenbaa, The Pass.
On that day I walked as an adult white woman cursed forever to carry an unrelenting homesickness for the hinterlands of northern New South Wales where I was seeded. My body blazing again with that transcendent and luminous feeling as I looked across the landscape, knowing that my ancestors and I were nevertheless living on stolen land. Wth my feet still rooting into that red volcanic earth I felt a resonance with the indigenous woman and her loss as well great admiration for her tender care of that place. My spirit seemed able to soar above my private concerns and went to hover fondly over our now lost farm land. As she talked of the sacred song lines I could see again my now gone father slurping on tea and slurring words as he sang his Celtic songs of longing and lament.
Sometimes a big view cultivates expanded sympathies.
Like a deep sense of belonging and a way of knowing that dwells in the land itself that cannot be purchased no matter your wealth or status or ancestors.
Sometimes imbibing spirits might be an attempt to soothe a soul sore for that original knowledge and resting place.
Sometimes first peoples and second peoples might share some devastations.
Mostly I just think that it is wise to put big views and some big ideas inside oneself. Because you are sure at some point to be bogged down with the minor misfortunes and larger losses of your personal human life. In such moments and times I have found it helpful to be able to look inside myself, and take a bigger view.