A Calendar That Waits

Once in a while I hear or read something that strikes me as profound and important, but I don’t really have much immediate comment on it. This is one of those things.

Drought is normal in Australia. In the arid lands of Australia, “normal” ecosystems do not follow the annual seasons, as they do in other parts of the world, but rather boom (or “pulse”) after rare rain events. Flowers, seeds, seedlings, baby birds and other animals all follow at different times after the events, but the pulse produces activity, and then inactivity. During the long dry times between booms, the natural systems wait. The technical term is that they “reserve” their energy. They are waiting, not strictly “busted.”
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Australian Aboriginal people have a different calendar… they watch the birds and flowers and understand the structure of each year on its merits.… The coming of rain, of fish, of edible seeds is each an important season, but it is not necessarily annual.… This is the story of a calendar that waits. And people who remember stories.

Dr. Libby Robin, National Museum of Australia
“Ockham’s Razor,” ABC Radio National
26 April 2009

Patience, and planning, and the notion of appropriate times and places for action and inaction, is a topic dear to my heart. I like some of the vocabulary here, and I think it will change the way I think about these things. Pulse and reserve. Seasons not as cycles, but as a series of beginnings. Each year on its merits.

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Permalink | April 28th, 2009

Posted by Dan Hallock | Filed under Uncategorized