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very slowly. There’s no sudden riot of bluebells or daffodils.
The view from my parents’ house is essentially the same as it
has been for 30 years, month in and out: constant gray-green
foliage and tree trunks one local poet described as the color of
dried blood. When I started hiking in the northern hemisphere,
it all felt so cushy and easy, like an upgrade to business class.
For Australia’s first known human inhabitants, the bush
was just as difficult and omnipresent, but it was—and still
is— sacred. Hills, rocks, waterfalls, plants, even animals, are
believed to hold the spirits of ancestral beings. The land is
holy ground; humans are only there to preserve it. For non-
indigenous Australians, 40% of whom shelter in its two big-
gest cities, the bush is just there; it fades into the background
much as the smell of smoke stopped being noticeable a few
hours after we arrived and we had to check an air-quality app
to ascertain whether the skies were gray from smoke or rain
clouds. (I still haven’t used a face mask.)
Fire is the only event that offers any change to the bush at all.
In fact, my favorite time to explore when I was growing up was
after it had burned and the tree trunks were black and threw
everything else into sharp relief. Once cleared of the thick, low-
lying scrub, striated sandstone ledges and caves became visi-
ble. You could make out how trees were literally growing out of
rocks. Several months ago, anticipating a tough bushfire season,
firefighters had strategically burned parts of the bush nearest
my parents’ home to thin it out, and as I walked through the
day after I arrived, I saw four wallabies, more than I had seen
in half a life’s worth of walks combined.
Just as a parental illness will force offspring to notice frailties
they’d overlooked, the fires have suddenly made Australians
pay attention to parts of their country they don’t think about
often. Normally a reliable carbon absorber, the bush instead
has pumped hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide
into the atmosphere, along with enough smoke to briefly make
Australian cities the most polluted in the world. The specter of
half-burned koalas drinking from water bottles and kangaroos
fleeing the flames has made it very clear that even though the
bush looks like a wall of unchanging and impenetrable wilder-
ness, it teems with life. One estimate put the animal loss at a
billion creatures, but the truth is, nobody knows. Most of that
which is burned Australians didn’t consider inhabited.
In many ways, the fires—and the smoke—are how the Aus-
tralian bush announces that she will not be ignored. They’re a
reminder that even apex predators like humans are vulnerable.
They’re a reminder that things we take for granted and don’t
visit enough, like parents, will not be around forever. Nature
always wins.
But fires are also one of the ways the Australian bush
regenerates. In November, my cousin’s ex, an eccentric who
actually lives in the bush, had to flee with his dog. He lost two
sheds and a car, but his home and cat survived. The trees that
were scorched on his property have started to sprout little leafy
collars as the seeds below the bark that germinate only after
being burned spring to life. Every day he sees new signs of life.
More locally, the rains have announced that at least part of the
gray sky is clouds. The Australian bush will probably rise again
from her fever. The question is, can she find a way to keep her
neighbors interested in her recovery? •