Hands and Fire
I started writing this piece in November. I’ve been feeling this way for a long time, but I held off posting because I didn’t want to catastrophise or make others anxious. Yet here we are: February, in a state of emergency with fires on our doorstep. Everyone’s anxious.
For those of you reading who are not in Canberra: I am okay, I live on the opposite side of Canberra from where the fires are burning. I am in no immediate danger.
I’ve spent January working my bum off to help organise the Peoples Climate Assembly. It’s five straight days of protest held on the lawns in front of Parliament house. We’re calling on the government to declare a climate emergency, tell the truth about climate change, and take radical action. It feels good to be doing something positive and active.
If you’d like to know more about things you can do, I’d love to talk.
Here’s the piece.
I’m not usually afraid of fire, of heat and smoke. I work in kitchens, I hang out with flames all day. I’m the kind of chef who loves to smoke and char vegetables over open flames. Fire brings heat, flavour, and life to otherwise bland dishes. Eggplant is at its best when blackened all over, until the flesh becomes soft and tinted with the smell of smoke. Think of a wok being tossed as the flames soar; think of white wine catching alight as it splashes into a pan.
My arms and hands are covered with scars that tell stories of flames. A hot tray, the edge of an oven door, the flame of the gas burners. My scars mark me: when I was overseas last year I stayed with a friend who translated our conversations for his mother.
‘She’s a chef,’ he said, ‘I know,’ she responded, ‘I can see her scars’.
Returning from my travels I found my fingers had grown soft as old calluses faded with disuse. Things I could once hold with bare fingers were suddenly unbearable. My skin had forgotten how to play with fire. After a week or two of painful mistakes, I had reformed the callouses, and I could once again work without fear of that sting, that burn.
But now Australia is burning.
This bushfire season feels like it has gone on forever. Canberra habitually chokes under a shroud of smoke and now our beloved national parks are aflame. Every time a hot wind blows I get a knot in my stomach and momentarily my love of Canberra’s bushland turns to fear. My favourite hikes have become places of danger and disaster. Conversations over drinks with friends have turned to disaster planning: what would you take? Where would you go?
Once, Indigenous people cared for this land with controlled burns that prepared the bush for fires. Like the callouses on my fingers, the smaller fires left the landscape better able to cope next time. But as the temperature rises and the rainfall dries up, we are left with fewer and fewer opportunities to follow these practices. We’re not prepared, we don’t have a thick skin.
Occasionally I regret my scars, and begin to wish I had hands that don’t ache, and arms that don’t need an explanation. I’m self conscious of my callouses when I think about holding someone’s hand, or touching their face. But then I remember that they symbolise a life lived. If I don’t regret the journey then I can’t resent the scars.
But I deeply regret the journey that is bringing us towards this deluge of climate disasters. I regret the choices of those who elected politicians who simply ignore the science. I regret our apathy, our carelessness, our wilful ignorance. I regret that any action I take now feels like too little too late, even when I know that anything is better than nothing. I regret that we have allowed ourselves to reach this tipping point, and I feel helpless in the face of this raging fire.
It’s often said that we know our hometown like the back of our hands.
My hands are made of scars.
My home is made of kindling.
