Wollemi pines and Megabats~

I am in Sydney, Australia, visiting my daughter, Meraiah, her husband, Tim, and my youngest grandchild, Morgan. I left San Francisco last Monday night, late, arriving in Sydney on a Wednesday morning. Somehow or another Tuesday was completely bypassed on my journey. I gather I will make it up on my return flight, arriving in San Francisco the same day I leave Sydney, but it is all too confusing for my aged brain.

It took me a day to readjust to the time change, never mind the traffic pattern. I keep trying to get into the car on the driver's side and believe me I am not ready to drive here.

Today Meraiah, Morgan, and I went to the Sydney Art Museum to look at an exhibit there. Morgan's father had to work. After the museum, which was packed with school children--it is the end of summer holiday here right now-- we went across the street for a stroll through the Botanical gardens. We wandered about through the succulent gardens that looked like something from another planet, agaves, aloes, and euphorbias planted densely together created such an odd assortment of shapes and colors. Some of them looked like sea anemones clustered together, others like melted iron collapsing in on themselves.

Then we found the Wollemi pine.

This pine species was thought to have become extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period (approximately 65 million years ago). In 1994 it was discovered in a national park north of Sydney, it's actual location has been kept secret to protect it. The tree has unusual pale green, fernlike leaves, bright green female cones and brown male cones, and dark brown, corklike bark with a bubbly appearance, and can reach 130 ft in height, but the one in the botanical garden is quite young and only reaches about 15 feet. With fewer than 100 mature trees in two known stands, it is one of the rarest wild plants on earth. Those have been protected by the government, but now produces starts for gardeners. It is a particularly bizarre looking tree. Very prehistoric looking.

I kept hearing these strange screeching noises. Meraiah said, "Oh, those are the flying foxes." Flying foxes? Grey-headed flying foxes to be precise. They are the largest bat in the world, a megabat. These enormous bats with a wingspan of over six feet were hanging in the trees screeching and squabbling with each other, waiting for the night. According to Tim around dusk, they leave the roost and travel up to 20 miles a night to feed on pollen, nectar and fruit.


The food sources utilized by the species include pollen and nectar from trees belonging to Eucalyptus, Angophora, Melaleuca and Banksia, and fruits from a wide range of rainforest trees, including members of the fig family. Grey-headed flying foxes, along with the three other Australian flying fox species, fulfill a very important ecological role by dispersing the pollen and seeds of a wide range of native Australian plants.

I love Australia. It is so primordial.

Stress: My Former Constant Companion~

I suppose this has been written about ad nauseam, but it really is true. I am referring to the absence of stress after living under its constant grip for a long period of time. As Richard Selzer says about starving to death, no one who is doing it can tell you what it feels like; only someone who is not, can. The same, I find, can be said of stress.

For the past two-plus years I have been under the constant strain of being sued in a foreign country, learning the legal ropes in a system other than my own, and dealing with lawyers, judges, and unpleasant neighbors. I felt as though I was handling all this without any adverse effects. When concerned people asked about how we were coping I thought they were being overly protective. I had no idea what kind of constant burden we had been carrying until it began to lift last week.

Now that this interminable land deal is clearing up, I have begun to sleep deeply, waking in the morning wondering how I survived the last two-and-a-half years with so little REM, or any other kind of sleep. Before, in a high-anxiety state, I woke regularly in the middle of the night and immediately began to analyze our current situation from every angle I could imagine. My mind felt like some kind of out of control printer, pre-programmed to begin collating paperwork if it was bumped out of sleep mode.

This morning I awoke and realized I had slept straight through the night. Old habits die hard though, and this morning when I opened my eyes I found myself cruising the possible things I could troubleshoot.

Nada. Nothing. Zip.

I lay staring out the window at the palms and the gray dawn breaking. The muscles in my shoulders were relaxed, residing where they are supposed to and not somewhere up around my earlobes. They were pliable and I was actually able to turn my neck without a crunch. I took a full and cleansing breath and my brain felt at ease for the first time since I could remember. The air was noticeably fresher and the jungle looked that much greener this morning.

I have no idea if this will last or if we will be , once again, thrown into the gristmill of Land Deals Gone Bad In Foreign Countries, but for now I am buoyantly going about my affairs, thinking of things I haven't considered for over two years.

I am due to fly out of San José on Thursday, headed for Australia to see a new grandchild.

I am looking forward to the change.