Two Years and Counting

January 2^nd, 2017: the beach is so perfect I’m almost afraid to step on it. Water gurgles gently as wavelets lap the shore. White sand sweeps in a graceful crescent in front of me, broken by two small clusters of granite boulders extending into clear turquoise water. Sunlight refracts into a web of millions of golden rings laid on the soft sand beneath the waves. The shallows’ clear, pristine aqua fades slowly to a deep, intense cerulean blue-black further from shore before exploding into a shining silver sheet as, in the distance, it reflects the midday sun.

The shore brims with life: oystercatchers strut and shriek after one another as they probe the sand in front of me. Terns swoop delicate, angular bodies low over the shore. Stingrays cruise the shallows, lazy fins emerging from the water as they glide over rocks. Small schools of glimmering silver fish dart through the water around my legs, presence given away by their telltale shadows on the sand. Feathery, dusty gold seaweed dances in the water’s gentle roll against the shore: in and up, out and down.

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I’ve walked into Cook’s beach from nearer the beginning of the Freycinet Peninsula after spending a day exploring the coast further northward, circumventing a compact granite range known as the Hazards. From my elevated track I gazed down to where kelp and reefs claim residence in patches through the coastal waters, darkening the bay in crude patches. I made friends with a wallaby and negotiated Hazards Beach’s three-kilometer stretch, littered with monster scallops and abalone and oysters, fragile layers shining in blue and purple iridescence. A gentle breeze accompanied me as I ducked through the forest beneath Mt. Freycinet, keeping mosquitos at bay. I passed a deep rusty ochre creek cutting across the beach to arrive at my present position, 17 kilometers from the car park.

Sheltered beneath a stubby she oak, my campsite perches on the short dunes overlooking Cook’s Beach. White crab shells decorated with deep orange spots lie half-buried in the sand. Receding water reveals verdant tide pools warmed by the afternoon sun, filled with anemones, snail shells and seaweed. A gentle, increasing rhythmic roar of breakers cuts the silence as water encroaches on the beach’s steeper ground. Giant black cicadas’ sharp buzz drowns any other ambient noise as the insects fall from trees by the thousands. Common in this world has become extraordinary for me, watching the water come and go at twice the rate from my shady perch just above the tideline: the last time I experienced a tide, I lived in the world of a 25-hour cycle.

By night, possums emerge. I discover possum-proofing to be far and away an entirely different game from the bear-proofing methodology we use at home: I wake from a cozy slumber to a brush-tailed marsupial clinging upside-down like a sea-star glommed onto the basket-ball sized food sack I’ve hung from the limb of a nearby tree, hands, feet and tail clutching for dear life as it scrabbles with straps and fasteners and sways through the air like a pendulum.

Just as much surprise and beauty and intrigue fill the rest of my four-day adventure on Freycinet. I take a day walk down to Bryan’s Beach, wandering through rolling hills dotted with saprophytic orchids, bright fuchsia blossoms springing from a leafless maroon stalk so deep near the base as to be almost black. I arrive to find myself alone on a wild, isolated arc of sand rimmed by delicate violet blossoms and dotted with cormorants, jellyfish, rays and abalone, displaying the sea’s spoils in an unfeigned half hazard array. In the evening clouds come in. Everything turns to a soft, muted aqua gray, fading gently through an obscured skyline into hazy mist.

I summit Mt. Freycinet the next day to clearing skies and somehow manage to pull off a suitcase-sized slab of rotten granite as I boulder hop on the summit, resulting in a too-close-for-comfort encounter with a monster funnel web spider and a miniature scorpion. My vantage point at the summit looks straight down over the peninsula’s isthmus, where Wineglass Bay and Hazard Bay swoop in to meet each other beneath the Hazards. As I sit and bask in the wind before making my way down to Wineglass Bay, a keen-eyed wedge-tailed eagle nimbly dives and reels through the air below me.

Wineglass Bay itself feels like it spirals in toward me like a seashell, as if I’m the focal point of a Fibonacci Sequence. Water curls around glowing orange rock and green foliage on the near point, enveloping it in clear gradients of turquoise and silver, whitecaps dancing in the wind beneath the Hazards’ deep gray peaks. Sun-warmed, silky silver sand squeaks beneath my feet. Jellyfish as big as myself, red and cream, pulse lazily along the shoreline.

Throughout a lazy last morning before my hike out, serpentine clouds form over the Hazards’ heads as a northwesterly carries moisture off the ocean. We watch dolphins hunt in the bay, sending up sprays of water, dark fins arcing out and down in rhythm. And a great big grandpapa tiger snake takes up residence next to the bridge to the bathroom, so engorged and skin stretched so tight around a recent meal that when he tries to slither away from us across the sloping stream bank, his body actually begins rolling down the slope behind him.

On my rest day I wake to the cover of low, flat clouds, extending out of sight like a quilt thrown over the world. I scramble and hike over slippery, water-streaked granite slab to the summit of Mt. Amos and find my way to a rocky outcrop straight above Wineglass Bay, from where I watch cloudcover clear. Peeled back by western winds, a crisp line of deep blue marks the sunbreak far out at see as it advances steadily toward the muted bay beneath me.

My vantage point reveals a clear view down the east coast: past my path over Freycinet Peninsula’s ridges and mountains and plateaus and whorls, past Schouten Island and south to Maria Island beyond. As I descend back toward my car, I leave behind a week of sheer wild, rugged, pristine beauty and danger, vibrant life, death and adventure.

Two years, one week down. Here’s to the rest of Year Three.