With Some Devils

Muirs Beach

The moon is extraordinary tonight.  Enormous and low, it’s a crescent.  A bright orange star hovers at the tip, a planet perhaps, or a fairy.  It’s the moon I used to doodle as a girl, when I still believed if I hoped and tried hard enough, I could fly myself up after my parents fell asleep, to schmooze with all the creatures who surely lived there.  I try to soak it all in, the sounds, the sky, even the temperature.  Protected as I now am by my fabulously forest green coat, a gift from Michelle and 1991, it’s still cold enough to make me dance.  I wake in the morning in a cloud of my own breath, sprinting through my frosty little compartment to the bathroom, an effort to expedite my morning toilette and return as quickly as possible to the burrow that is my bed.  A bonus, if you’re wondering, to being a solo traveler in a family-traveling world: the more beds, the more blankets.  All.  For.  Me.

Here in Tasmania, I’m getting back to my traveling roots.  Chasing rainbows up and down the coast, hiking national parks, and slowly perfecting the art of driving on the left side of the road, I move slowly.  I’ve encountered about 12 people and 900 wallabies, cartoonish little chubbers, and much more delightful company than the maniacal monkeys I’ve come to know and loathe.  This is a little dollop of an island that fell off Australia so many eons ago, a microcosm of that spectacular country that seems to be about 90% sky and 10% people.  Kind, friendly, easy people who I’ll surely miss when I take my leave.

In addition to having the world’s best oysters, Tasmania also hosts some of the most fantastical creatures on earth.  Bandicoots and eastern quolls, Tasmanian devils and pademelons, weirdo little buddies I had to meet to believe.  They snort and bark and carry on, peeking out from the bushes when they think I’m not watching.  In the evenings I run a wallaby gauntlet to get in and out of my trailer; they’re as curious of me as I am of them, and I think they want to share my snacks.  I get the feeling if I settle down and keep quiet, they'll start chatting me up like Mr. and Mrs. Beaver in Narnia.  Anything could happen on a day like today.

Bay of Fires

But in the meantime I am perfectly content tumbling around this enchanted island in my little Suzuki and in my head.  I’m letting the scents of eucalyptus and pine and salty air newly born from the sea clear my brain and heart of the smog of the last several months, and the last several years.  I’m visiting haunted penal colonies, and a granite coastline covered in a stunningly orange lichen, the bay of fires stolen long ago, like the rest of the country, from the Aboriginal natives.  I’m taking advantage of the quiet, sleeping without earplugs, and staving off frostbite with cup after cup of granny tea made the way my aunt Mary Alice taught me.  And for today, that’s enough.