In the company of arsonists
One day recently, while swimming at sunrise, I began thinking about how Oscar Wilde described the dawn as like a ‘frightened girl’ who crept along the ‘long and silent street … with silver sandalled feet’. It suddenly struck me as a very timid and peculiarly British perspective (although Wilde was an Irishman, he lived many years in London). In Australia, the dawn is an arsonist who pours petrol along the horizon, throws a match on it and watches it burn.
The sun’s rise and the sun’s retreat bookend our days with awe. We often take awe for granted, and yet it’s something both modern scientists and ancient philosophers have told us to hunt. Awe makes us stop and stare. Being awestruck dwarfs us, humbles us, makes us aware we are part of a universe unfathomably larger than ourselves; it even, social scientists say, makes us kinder and more aware of the needs of the community around us.
Wonder is a similar sensation, and the two feelings are often entwined. Wonder makes us stop and ask questions about the world, while marvelling over something we have not seen before, whether spectacular or mundane. The eighteenth-century Scottish moral philosopher Adam Smith — the man who became known as the ‘Father of Capitalism’ after writing his influential book on economics, The Wealth of Nations — put this perfectly. He thought wonder occurred ‘when something quite new and singular is presented … [and] memory cannot, from all its stores, cast up any image that nearly resembles this strange appearance … It stands alone and by itself in the imagination.’ Smith believed that sometimes we could physically feel this wonder: ‘that staring, and sometimes that rolling of the eyes, that suspension of the breath, and that swelling of the heart’.
Great thinkers, philosophers and eccentrics have all been inspired by the unfathomable. ‘The most beautiful thing we can experience,’ wrote Albert Einstein, ‘is the mysterious; it is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.’
In my own quest to become phosphorescent — in which I lost myself many times in dark holes and swamps — it was awe and wonder that I kept returning to, and the quiet healing properties of nature: the forest, the sea and the creatures they contain. So many of us have our quiet places of escape and refuge — nearby beaches, a park bench, a magnificent tree.
A small mountain of studies in the field of nature science has repeatedly confirmed that the sheer sight of green — plants, leaves, trees, views from windows — can make us happier and healthier. This evidence and these experiences have given rise to the burgeoning Japanese-pioneered practice of forest bathing, or shinrin yoku, whereby participants are walked slowly through tracts of trees to touch them, listen to their sounds, and reconnect with nature.
All over the world, people increasingly want to understand how residents of an urbanised environment can tune out the cities, the traffic and the jackhammers and listen, once again, to the birds singing and the leaves whispering in the breeze. They want to settle the stirring, or restlessness, and remember who they are. Often, they seek silence, an increasingly valuable and rare commodity. Real silence is not about muffling all sounds, though, but about muffling all artificial, or human-made, sounds. As I learned recently on a visit to Arnhem Land, a connection to country is a fundamental part of the identity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and the call to quiet, to listen and to respect the world we live in is an ancient one. While so much of our self-exploration today is hash-tagged #wellness and performed for all to see, it became obvious to me in the far reach of sacred lands, encircled by campfires and eucalypts, that sometimes the best way to pay attention to country is to keep your mouth shut, open your eyes and just listen.
Chapter 1
Lessons from a Cuttlefish
Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties or mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life … Their thoughts can find paths that lead to inner contentment and to renewed excitement in living. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.
— Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder
THE FIRST TIME I saw a cuttlefish swimming in the wild I was astounded by how prehistoric and alien it looked. Cuttlefish are astonishing creatures, with heads like an elephant’s, eight arms they occasionally splay then join together like a trunk, and small bodies ringed with thin, rippling fins that look like a silk shawl. They glide across the ocean floor, changing their colour to match the surface underneath them, from gold above sand to brown and red over seaweed, and even their texture, from smooth to thorny, blending in with the background so effectively that they are often noticeable only when they move their silken frills.
Cuttlefish are not just otherworldly in appearance. Consider these facts: their pupils are shaped like the letter ‘W’, and it has been speculated that cuttlefish eyes are fully developed before birth and that the young start observing their surroundings while still in the egg. Their blood is colourless until exposed to air, when it turns blue-green. They have three hearts and a doughnut-shaped brain that is larger in proportion to its body size than that of any other invertebrate. The cuttlefish bone — that white oval-shaped object you often see washed up on beaches or in budgerigar cages — is actually a thick, calcified internal shell that helps cuttlefish control flotation, and separates them from fellow cephalopods such as squids and octopuses. There are four or five male cuttlefish for every female — an excellent ratio in my view — but all live for only a year or two.
For me, cuttlefish are symbols of awe. After my first sighting, I was charged with a peculiar kind of electricity for hours. They still have this effect on me. I regularly spend the winter admiring them, then mourn when the spring tides cast their light white bones onto the shore.
When I dive down to swim alongside cuttlefish, as I have several times this week, the world slows to the rhythm of ruffling skin. They rarely flee and are sometimes quite friendly. Seeing them regularly in the bay at the foot of my hill has given me an unexpected insight into awe. If I had guessed that spying them gliding along reefs could be part of my daily ritual, I would have devoted myself to ocean swimming decades ago.
Peter Godfrey Smith, a professor of philosophy and history, who also lives on my hill, likens the giant cuttlefish, which can grow to a metre in length, to ‘an octopus attached to a hovercraft’ with arms like ‘eight huge and dexterous lips’. He reminds us that ‘the mind evolved in the sea. All the early stages took place in water: the origin of life; the birth of animals, the evolution of nervous systems and brains, and the appearance of the complex bodies that makes brains worth having … When animals did crawl onto dry land, they took the sea with them. All the basic activities of life occur in water-filled cells bounded by membranes, tiny containers whose insides are remnants of the sea.’ In other words, the sea is inside us.
IF YOU JOINED THE hundreds of people in my swim squad, you might think at first that the routine was simply about getting a solid bout of exercise before the day begins. We meet after sunrise at Sydney’s Manly Beach, swim out to the headland, then arc across a protected marine bay to another beach.
The caps we wear are bright pink. The name we call ourselves, the Bold and Beautiful, is a bit daft, but it’s a reminder that the squad was formed years ago by middle-aged women who were too nervous to swim the distance alone. This morning swim was never about skill, but about pluck.
Most days, at some spot along the 1.5-kilometre long route, heads will cluster, arms pointing down under the water at enormous blue gropers, cuttlefish in various states of disguise (also occasionally breeding, or devouring each other), bearded wobbegongs, Port Jackson sharks, eagle rays and even tiny, darting turtles and seahorses. Just this week, a pod of dolphins curved past me as I swam around the headland.
In early winter, dozens of young dusky whaler sharks usually swarm the bay, only a few metres beneath us, migrating only after they have already become large enough to make people nervous — there’s a reason a collective term for sharks is a shiver. (While I was writing this, a dawn swimmer was bitten by a shark he says he bumped into in the dark sea while he wasn’t wearing a headlight. The fact it was a usually mild grey nurse shark meant we were able to continue swimming without fear.)
One day, a whale glided into the bay and played with the swimmers for an hour — though I refuse to talk about it because I wasn’t there. (I had to read about it instead in The Daily Telegraph, under the headline ‘A whale of a day’.) My atheist friends who were there described it as like a prayer or quasi-religious experience; their faces turned solemn at the recollection. Okay, whatever.
Our outings are not always ideal. Frequently we battle thickets of seaweed, powerful currents and daunting, crashing waves that pull you under and spin you around, or dump you against the sandy floor. Occasionally the swell is so big, and the undertow so strong, that I make sure I am with a friend as I swim back to shore. Newcomers often need to be rescued. Sometimes we emerge with red welts from stingers across our faces and limbs. I will never forget the swarms of jimbles — small, box-shaped jellyfish with long, trailing pink tentacles — that inhabited the bay for many months one year in their thousands. Though we put on protective wetsuits and smeared our faces, hands and feet with pawpaw ointment, many people still bear the scars of their stings and some even landed in hospital. But the daily difference in conditions is what makes it thrilling.
Something happens when you dive into a world where clocks don’t tick and inboxes don’t ping. As your arms circle, swing and pull along the edge of a vast ocean, your mind wanders, and you open yourself to awe, to the experience of seeing something astonishing, unfathomable or greater than yourself. Studies have shown that awe can make us more patient and less irritable, more humble, more curious and creative — even when just watching nature documentaries. It can ventilate and expand our concept of time: researchers Melanie Rudd, Kathleen Vohs and Jennifer Aaker found that ‘experiences of awe bring people into the present moment, and being in the present moment underlies awe’s capacity to adjust time perception, influence decisions, and make life feel more satisfying than it would otherwise.’
Research conducted by social psychologist Paul Piff and his colleagues suggests that people who regularly feel awe are more likely to be generous, helpful, altruistic, ethical and relaxed. In one case, people who spent time staring up at towering eucalypts were more inclined to help someone who had stumbled and dropped a handful of pens than those who had not. In other words, when dwarfed by an experience, we are more likely to look to one another and care for one another and feel more connected.
It would be wrong to think of exercise only as something to build muscle and ease anxiety. If we can, we should force ourselves out of gyms and off machines and into the natural world, knowing, or hoping, that we may stumble upon awe.
THOSE OF US IN our squad hardly need research to tell us about the joys and benefits of ocean swimming. Several of my Bold and Beautiful friends have stopped taking antidepressants: they call the ocean ‘vitamin sea’. One, who documents the creatures of the teeming bay with gloriously lit photographs, calls the swim her ‘happy pill’. Others use it to survive: several fellow swimmers going through illness, breakups or family traumas, have told me how they have cried into blurry goggles while swimming around the headland, before returning to hot showers and coffee, able to garner strength for another day.
As Wallace J. Nichols, author of Blue Mind, a book about the benefits of being in or near water, says, water ‘meditates you’. A study published in the British Medical Journal in August 2018 posited the theory that swimming in cold, open water could be a treatment for depression, which is again science starting to catch up with what we know — why else would I find myself, a night owl, rising before dawn to jump into black seas if it wasn’t an addictive high? The study was based on the experience of a twenty-four-year-old woman who found that a weekly swim in cold water allowed her to stop her medication. The authors were uncertain why this happened. One suggestion was that the water worked as an anti-inflammatory or treatment for pain; however, the explanation that rang true for me was a theory put forward by co-author Michael Tipton: ‘If you adapt to cold water, you also blunt your stress response to other daily stresses such as road rage, exams or getting fired at work.’
The awe found in daily swims does bring a sense of connection, as does the companionship. We are a strong community, a motley crew bound by a common love. The conversations of our diverse crowd — which includes judges, carpenters, models, priests, doctors, care workers and teachers, and ranges in age from five-year-olds who paddle on boards to veterans in their eighties — are also part of the cheerfully repeated daily ritual. We talk about the beauty of the sunrise, the presence of stinging jellyfish, the creatures we spied on the ocean floor or hidden in the weeds, whether a wetsuit is needed, the weather, the water temperature, the visibility and the swell. And we complain about how long it takes for the local café to make our hot drinks. Then we have the same conversations the following day.
In an era of increasing disconnection, digital-only relationships, and polarisation of political views, it is wonderful to sit among such a varied group of people — with many of whom you only really share one thing — and talk rubbish and riptides. I walk down the stairs at the south end of the beach each day knowing that I will see dozens of beaming faces before I put in a toe in the water, and that each of them knows how lucky they are to have, and to share, this experience. Often we hold bake sales or fundraisers for the local surf club or various charities. When I came back from hospital, members of the swim group would drop meals on my doorstep for months, walk my dog, feed the cat, plant trees in my garden and do all manner of things, unasked...
