symbiosis

Lichens. Those pretty white or yellow, green or orange growths on rocks, fences, tree trunks, that’s Lichen. A symbiotic combination of two very different life forms, one Algae, one Plant. Neither, in this environment, in this beauty, in this force of life can survive alone. They only ever make the One that they create by combining forces and turning that meld into a whole new thing. How extraordinary is that and yet it isn’t extraordinary at all. Think Man and Woman: think opposites, or apposites. Moving on.

I watch lichen daily, the flower of it, particularly now in the Autumn wetwetwet. For me it says Opportunity. But for what? Well, in the natural and Algae-Plant world, it means a new entity, a new persona. It can be, usually is, the same in the human world. After all, isn’t it true that when a couple are together, each member behaves as one instrument in a duet, each accommodating the other for mutual benefit? She might run around his needs and wants, allow his faults and failings (as she sees them) in order to keep things running smoothly, or it might be the other way around. I have witnessed both and those of us apart from this symbiosis will take our lead from them (or is it ‘it’?) with the same smooth running thingy as priority. It is also impossible to judge the inner workings of any human duet. Nobody else knows the real truth or can explain it any more than the most of us could explain the lichen dynamic.

However, where lichen lifts the eye into marvel, it isn’t always that way with a couple of humans. We can see what we see and shake our heads at the seeing, or we can shine up into a smile at what we imagine is the truth. Both times we are way wrong. It is better by far to observe, to only observe, without comparison and particularly without comparison to a romance novel, a Disney film or the soaps we might watch on a daily basis. I can find myself doing the judging thing, nonetheless. I can, also, feel the rise in me of the strong feminist but be careful, I warn myself, very careful. Men snicker about women and women snicker about men. I am great at snickering, but also very aware that what I allow to infect my thinking can grow long roots and become a very judgemental belief, a big tall tree that throws all the seedlings of hope, faith and love into a killing shade.

Relationships are driven, to a degree, from experience, from observing parents, from television or idealism. So, how do we refresh our thinking, my thinking, supposing that is that we want to? The way I work it is by noticing my thoughts, feelings and retorts that rise without my bidding, it seems. Triggers trigger reaction and the good news is that those reactions to something or someone observed can stay silently internal at first. The choice to opinionate without caution is my own. I may witness yet another downtrodden woman on the end of a short leash and feel a burn of fury rise from my boots, threatening conflagration, a forest fire, but I know the danger of speaking out and the pointlessness of doing so at all. Who am I, after all, to think I know all the details of this so called symbiosis? Nobody, that’s who, or is it whom? What I long to see is a tidal turn and this will only begin when we as mothers and fathers teach our girls and boys never to accept the leash, short or long, from anybody, man or woman, without aggression, with respect, with surety and confidence. Perhaps I dream. Maybe I do.

Lichen manages it and lichen is billions of years old. I live in hope that we humans will finally get it.

Yesterday at 0600 we set off for a day in Kruger Park. This vast expanse of wild bush covering over one million hectares is the home of the Big Five. Lion, Leopard, Buffalo, Rhino and Elephant. However, there are many more species living in symbiosis. The Ground Snail (size of my clenched fist), Leopard Tortoise (the only one who can swim) Golden Orb spiders whose webs are as wide as I can throw my arms, Giraffe, Zebra, Wild Dog, Jackals, Vultures, Fish Eagle, Warthog, Hyena, myriad birds of spectacular colour and size and so much more. My eyeballs threatened to fall out with all that looking. Just a tiny movement through the thorn trees could mean, well, anything and it is so easy to miss a sighting. Camouflage is everything. Although we didn’t manage to find Lion or Leopard, we saw many species just doing their thing over the course of nine hours, including a newborn elephant beside his dauntingly huge mama. A gaggle of parked cars meant ‘something’ and so we stopped too, to look. Refreshment stops en route kept us sustained and it made me see how easy life is for us in comparison to all those creatures who must always be on the hunt for their next meal.

As I sat in back of the truck I thought about that. I also thought about the driver, the guide, our protector, my son. He, who has lived a long time surrounded by wild animals and the ways of Africa, marvels me. All my children do. I observe their traverse through adulthood. I watch them deal with daily thingumabobs and disappointments, news both good and bad, ups and downs, people, animals and things, horizons foreshortened and expanded, and, most tricksy of all, unforeseen changes to their inner maps. Although their innate goodness and respect of all life may have had something to do with the way their father and I guided them through childhood, they have each developed their own set of rules, grown their own characters, chosen their own considered paths and set out to walk them down. They have moved on a long way since those days of learning values from us, and now they are parents themselves, teaching values to their own children, probably as clueless as we were, stumbling in the darkness of inexperience, their lights always in need of a re-charge in order to keep the momentum up and the noise down.

But it is their core selves that lift my heart. How did you become so strong and wonderfully good? I whisper that to myself, for I fear they would not have an answer to that. Not one of them is a ‘product’ of their parents. They have become themselves, each one different to the rest and yet with a set of principles that sing in harmony. I admire them beyond admiration and observe their daily ordinariness with a smile. I have also learned #amstilllearning to observe without comment at times when I can see things going a bit diplodocus, for my own words can only come from my own experience and there’s the limitation spelled out for you. It doesn’t mean I can’t be of use at times of trouble and strife but go canny old girl and keep quiet unless asked for help. That’s what I whisper to myself. This is their life now.

I reckon I am blest beyond blessings. In ignorance I helped to grow these remarkable human beings. Each one has gone through a big load of trouble on their journeys and from that trouble, they have grown strong and light. Their ability to see the fun in life, their attention to detail, their love of and respect for all living things and the way not one of them ever gives up marvels me. And now, they teach me too. They tell me that life will always go on, that hope is full of beans and goodness will never be out of fashion.

And, yesterday, traversing Kruger Park, I thought about all of that, as my youngest guided us through one of the last reaches of natural, unspoiled, raw beauty; where life and death walk hand in hand and where very few live to tell their tale.