A Writer's Process: Karen Lethlean

Karen was the winner of the Wild Words Winter Solstice Competition 2020. Here she describes the process. Her winning piece follows…

Bleached Bones was born from experiences walking parts of the Overland Track in Tasmania Australia. Where I encountered multiple day tour groups and things like Button Grass. Growing up my father was a beekeeper and I learnt about blooms, including those which were invaders from other places. I am also a keen walker, and ride a mountain bike as well as being an ocean swimmer in my leisure. So, mine is a life of wild encounters.

I wanted to play with two distinctly different characters in a wild place. One who respects the environment and the other whose encounters with wildness are taken from media and websites. As these two walk, sensual elements emerge. There are enough doubts about the ending to allow a reader to make up their own mind about what actually might happen. I recall a story, with a time travel aspect which contemplated the impact of stepping off designated trails, this affected me deeply, as I wonder what our footsteps might evoke.

I found reports and visited photographic exhibitions of bushfire damage, which gestated some of the imagery. I tried to listen to sounds and encounter textures of National Parks near my home. As I could not always be in Tasmanian Wilderness.

Recently I had a chance to attend workshops about Poetry and Nature Writing at a local, South Coast writers centre. Under the guidance of Mark Tredinnick, a well-known Australian Nature writer. Author of The Blue Plateau. While I am not a poet, advice like, ‘what ever you do, put a bird in it…’ struck a chord and seems to work in my stories. In addition, I also got a chance to attend a Nature Writing Retreat headed up by Inga Simpson, Mr Wigg, Understory and various other works. This opened my mind to building a stronger wildness in my own writing. I learn new ways to grant reverence to First peoples, and inclusion of historical details. We spent a day planting trees to encourage return of endemic Black Cockatoos deeply impacted by 2021 Bush Fires.

‘There’s a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen’ - Rumi

Is the prompt I wanted to link this piece most strongly to. I can say listening to wildness, sounds and textures of wilderness were very important. I also wanted humanity to take a second seat, and be the less powerful component.

Bleached Bones

Terry must know best, waving away information centre guidebooks, whispering, ‘they’re rip-offs.’

Since their earliest email, Sue called him The National Geographical. Always mouthing greater knowledge. Particularly local flora, fauna, environmental issues and wilderness expeditions. Coming across as an agitated David Attenborough.

Hushed people filled gallery space; awe struck by huge landscape photographs; paying reverence as if these images were memorials. Yet Terry walked around uttering barely suppressed irritation.

‘Look at this – showcase of Australian contemporary photographic artists, wankers, more like – see that?’ An agitated thumb directed at one offensive image.

She cringed, tried, with no avail, to ask Terry to keep his voice down.

Out walking trails Terry dropped his constant light touches on her elbow. Stopped asking, ‘you ok. Not too much?’

Difficult walk, this trail; climbing long, steep inclines with a pack on, into fierce winds. A lot more difficult than Sue anticipated. But chilled September air, forced her to think of lost first peoples.

As fellow walkers slogged up an incline overshadowed by Crater Lake, steep canyon walls, her pack morphed into bricks, all sharp edges. Terry told her to practise with a daypack loaded with telephone directories. Over-kill, with hindsight, dismissing his advice, not her best idea.

Straps rubbed her shoulders too, foreboding chaffing.

‘I have snakebite kit, and antiseptic cream for inevitable blisters.’ Terry’s litany; a chemist shop stock take, rang in her ears.

Surely, quiet shuffles of walker’s boot-falls would vibrate enough to frighten away any snakes.

By mid-afternoon, they encountered light drizzle. Rather than soak in, moisture sat on surfaces and gave everything a damp smell.

This walk started in tussocky grass. Later she found seeds trying to plant themselves in her socks, even breaking through to tender skin. A mere scratchy twitch compared to grief of original inhabitants of these lands.

Small things drew her attention; how snow gums wore patterns, a bark patchwork, largely flame shapes. A creek tinkling off in a nearby gully, Cicada hums, light twittering from some invisible bird. Smells of burnt nutmeg, lemon tinged.

Further, along the trail they passed some bushfire damage; pale almost colourless windswept grass, craggy rocks and dead trees sticking out like skeletal fingers. A landscape corpse with no flesh, just bare bones, left behind. Tree trunks completely bare and bleached white by sun’s glare through this thin mountain air.

Halloed in sun, walkers rested beside a tiny stream. Finally, able to take their shoes off. White toes might be mistaken for grubs wriggled about in icy water. This breather felt so good.

Walking again, she peered up at a track, forming a scar. Other brightly clad walkers strung out, made tiny by vistas. Sue experienced a sensation akin to dropping into a calendar, no, more like a giant frieze.

Up at the lookout, Sue gazed out over views rolling off to a vanishing point beyond lake edges far below. She felt dizzy, slightly high. Sky pressed down and ground pressed up, jamming her between like a tiny speck, no, a minuscule troublesome piece of dust.

When she looked down Sue felt you could step off this fragmented rock edge and bounce downward like a pearl gestating speck. A weird momentary desire to jump brushed against her. How would it feel? Not clean, like bungy jumping leaps off buildings or bridges; swan diving through empty air, nor shades of 9/11 falling man images. She pitied decisions to select death.

Looking up at spines of rock-ringed crater above, Sue imagined a dragon’s backbone.

Stunted trees appeared in pain. Wind, snow and storms must weigh them down similar to Sue’s pack. Yet leaves and bark embodied strength and solidarity.

She felt defeated but knew it would be wrong to give up, cede before really beginning her grand adventure.

‘We’ll go do the Overland Track,’ Terry suggested, months ago.

‘That’s four days, walking, in mountains. I don’t … well I’m not so used to country.’

‘It will be epic,’ He insisted.

Too daring, too physical, but now her efforts headed toward worthwhile. A catalyst forcing Terry to fade fast. Not even worth a thought compared to hot tingles in Sue’s nerve ends, synonymous with new growth. This landscape and air impressed way beyond any human, dead or alive.

She paused to take in breathless hushes. Listen to wind, and plot connections with her own slushing breath. In her mind, Terry kept reducing, nothing more than another mere human walking clearly gouged trails through this majesty.

Early this morning they argued. She threatened to wander off, alone. Sue wanted to – but knew how stupid this idea. They paid money to do an organized trek. Being lost up here, was beyond imagination. Stumbling through shrubs, tripping on rocks, yelling at un-answering emptiness. Why would she? Rather she’d continue to avoid efforts to push through thick brush, scratches on arms and legs, and encountering a sinking panic not being able to identify locations of tracks. Any signs of humanity quickly vanished, consumed by bush. No wonder escaped convicts stooped to cannibalism, or preferred returning to their cells, suffering punishments rather than stay, alone, trapped out here. Trees, scrawny besides trail edges, fringed with unexpected sinister broodiness. Yet beautiful enough to make her skin tingle more.

Alone in her tent, Terry missing, she heard gurgling, scary threats invisible to humans. Sounds guides reassured came from possums or Tasmanian devils. Sue thought of these noisemakers as scavengers, ghosts, or ghouls; embodying perfect attendants for Terry. Now vanished, he obviously preferred these dark corners alive with these scratching more than her company.

Someone, she didn’t know for sure who, some youngster on work experience planting trees, maybe a chronic unemployed person working for benefits by repairing trails, or a farmer, perhaps another walker or one of those sticky-nosed uniformed type would eventually find Terry’s bleached bones. By then Sue’s presence, no more than eucalypt haze, or blurred photographs faded from memory.