Season of Creation Anchors of Hope – One by Sue Hall Pyke

Anchors of Hope – One

Hope is starting to feel quite slippery. I save myself by grasping the stems of baby trees and lowering them into the ground.

Over the past four years I have put hundreds of trees into this farm-ravaged soil. Only tens are standing. It has been unseasonable weather. Too hot. Too dry. I am watering too much or not enough. Spring has come again, another order will arrive soon from Landcare.

I’m not that hopeful, not with so many seedlings dead, so many moments of anticipation now marked by a small depression of dirt and a fall of bamboo stakes. The exception is a third of a patch planted by Landcare as part of a grant. This year I have prepared some ground as Landcare does, with a spray of poison I’d rather see banned.

Others do better. Beau Miles’ video shows a forest created in four years. The planting took him a mere twenty-four hours. There was no poisoning, watering or weeding. I tell myself his seasons were good but I suspect his energy also helped.

I may be disheartened, but I will continue planting trees for the non-human people around here, including the large-footed big-tailed kangaroos that swish past thigh-high manna gums, breaking them back to ground level. When they get spooked, they don’t see the branch fences, recycled drums or guards made from the bamboo stakes gathered from the dear departed.

Who am I to judge? They know more about this place than me. The trees are the same. Two head-high Manna gums recently died of their own volition. Or so I despairingly thought. But now they are resurging under the dead stick of their previous growth. Have faith, they tell me, watch the human-made curve of a potted seedling give way for the anarchy that runs in our sap.

Sue Hall Pyke, Season of Creation 2025