27 December

One way to see the current bushfires is eucalypts intensifying their control over our landscape. The huge amount of scrubby undergrowth we’ve allowed to proliferate in our national parks, through our appalling attempt to spiritualise the landscape as ‘wilderness’, represents a real threat to eucalyptus. They’ve always promoted fire to clear away those competitors. As humans we struggle to see the agencies at work in the world, because we think ours is the only agency. Right now as always the fires are being thought about (not much thought actually) as a battle between humans - heroic firefighters, bad Greenies, idiot politicians etc. A tree from my holiday, showing a corkscrew-shaped branch. That tree actively responds to its conditions over time, with shifts in light and clearing patterns around it. It will burn you to a cinder if it thinks you’re in its way.