Wicked Chicken and the Practice of Knowing

There is what sounds like eleventy-thousand Sulphur-crested Cockatoo in the yard. I am staying inside so they don’t think I am here. I rarely get more than one or two show up, but very occasionally it is like someone put the word out on the bush telegraph that there is sunflower seed here, and way too many of these big and boisterous birds appear. I can hear a couple on my roof as I type this, and I can’t help but smile.

This is my home, and all the wild are welcome.

I am lucky that (touch wood) they do not cause any destruction. I have seen what they can do, and yet my yard (and home) have been spared - and to be honest, the Little Corella that come more regularly are more full on, often lightly trimming the Mulberry even though I didn’t ask.

These big birds won’t be here long once they know I am not coming out with seed, and I have already heard a couple of them mumble a few swear words of frustration as they fly off. I call these ones that come infrequently and in a large group the interlopers, but I have my regular few that I know and adore and am very happy to support and love on. These usually come in just their pair, occasionally 4 of them come together (or perhaps they just arrive at the same time).

Jake and Lady, who I have spoken of many times before (Jake with only one leg).

Peanut and Topaz (Topaz is Jake and Lady’s baby from a few years ago). Peanut has a wonky wing that she has always held a little out from her body. She is a BIG girl, strong and imposing, and the others always give her room - though I think she is beautiful, and she always listens to me jabber at her with intent. Topaz is the only cockie I have ever seen sit on the meditating gnome statue, on his head. He does it regularly, always has, and it utterly delights me.

Wicked Chicken and Mrs Chicken - Wicked Chicken is just that, wicked. He flies straight onto my back screen door and taps with his beak (thankfully he doesn’t screech, though he has nibbled the screen mesh), and with his lemon-yellow comb up he (sometimes very pointedly) urges me to hurry up with the treats.

These are things that ornithology books and field guides can’t tell you. You can look up a species and learn facts, and these are often important to understand, but they are only a small part of the story. The same way that looking up “human being” in an encyclopaedia does not tell your story.

Our ancestors did not tell and keep telling the great stories of our love and interaction with wildlife after consulting a reference book - it probably would have been considered a bizarre thing to do, really.

We can’t know our land and our Earth and the beings we share the larger sky and our own place with by reading about them alone. Nor by photos or videos - oh, these are all wonderful, yes, especially when it comes to beings we will never meet in person, but it is always, always, only part of the story.

You can only know a being and a place by being present to them - and like many if not most modern (western) humans, being present is actually a lot harder than it seems. We are exceptional at living in the past, and thinking about the future, even though neither of these exist.

But did you see the dandelion seed head unfurl this morning in your backyard? Did you watch the sparrow find tiny delights to give to her nestlings? Did you hear the wind moving through the leaves you can actually see, and try and taste the whispers they made?

These are all moments of utter magic.

Some may scoff at my naming of these beings, but isn’t that how we build relationships? To name is part of knowing - Jake doesn’t really care what I have named him (oh how I would love to know what his people call him), but my doing so, my recognising his individual personhood, lets me know him. I can ascribe personality traits, physical differences, and delight that they belong just to Jake, to him alone.

Which means I am subtly looking for similarities and differences in Lady, Peanut, Topaz and Wicked and Mrs Chicken so I can know their personhood, too.

I have a connection to these individuals which lets me find delight and recognition in all their kin, no matter what part of Australia I am in. It gives me presence, a weaving to this moment. It gives me care, love and understanding. Reciprocity.

This means of connection, this relationship building, this desire for knowing infinitely helps my creativity too.

When I am drawing a being, I want to know them. I want to know more about their physicality so I can describe their form in pencil or paint, yes, but I also want to know about their internal experience of the world. What do they feel about a beautiful sunrise (it would be foolish to think only we could enjoy sky poetry). Do they know the words the crickets sing? What do different winds feel like to them?

Wondering this, imaginatively shrugging on their feathers or coats, humbling myself out of ego and determination that I know more or am more than other beings, oh that, that is a big part of why I draw in the first place. Wildlife and nature gives me perspective in a way that human centred life absolutely cannot. We build cities and make technology and isolate ourselves with walls and doors while foolishly thinking that is the best way, the most ‘civilised’ - the only - way, and in doing so we take ourselves right out of meaningful, connected, creatively lived and loved lives.

Human connection is important, absolutely. What I think might be even more important for our long term health and happiness though, is re-building and practicing our connection to place, even if the place you are right now is not your dream or ideal home. There are beings you can learn from, even if only outside a window. There is poetry in the sky, the whispers of trees on breezes, the stories of birds told through song that tickle the hairs in your ears.

Look them up in books or on the web, yes, but I know it is only part of the story. Then watch and listen even more. Then? Name them, name all of them, get to know them as a good friend, and maybe even pick a pencil and make some deliciously rough and tumble sketches, about them and for them. They feel the reciprocity of your honourings and truly haven’t a care what those sketches and scribbles look like, they’re all both amazing and silly to them. The intention, the process, the wondering, oh yes, that is what matters. That is pure magic that you are manifesting and letting multiply into the wilds like the beats of a butterfly’s wings. Talk about good vibes man!

There is a practice I developed after the big-old-full-on burnout that came after my solo painting show last year. It centred on three things. Wildlife, touch, words. I call it Creative Ecology Sketchbook Practice - I wish I could say I made “Creative Ecology” up, I really thought I had, until I Googled it and of course there were a lot of instances of its use - I mean there are only so many words we can use, right? And so many wonderfully creative humans. But as a sketchbook practice built on three threads - that is ours, right here. And it can be yours as much as mine and anyone else’s, and that is all kinds of wonderful.

First, drawing wildlife either around me at the time (the place I was at that moment), that I had seen with my own eyes at some point (my herstory), or that was related to something I could hold in my hands. This would necessarily require a photo (for me anyway - unless the wildlife was cooperative and stood still). I have drawn from my own photos (the Andean Deer I took photos of during the hike to Machu Picchu), or looked up references of a bird I could hear.

Second, something I could literally hold in my hands - it did not have to have relevance to the wildlife or anything else - the point was that it was here, in this place with me. I could add the physical touch aspect to the process. Everything is necessarily woven together by the fact it is coming through me anyway.

And third, either a word or a quote or an observation. A word like hierophany or wonder, a quote from Mary Oliver or something recently read, a description of what I am seeing - it does not matter, it is all wonderful, it only needs to be words.

Three things, but an endless landscape of possibility. And of course you can add in other elements that you can see - a tree, a sky, the waves crashing on the beach you are sitting on. Take a photo to work from later, yes, but start the sketch where you can see with your own eyes. Be present, be in wonder, be aware and witness the world where your body is at this exact moment.

It is truly a gift that keeps on giving - you are recording your own unique field guide. A field guide to you.

When you gather these scribbles and noticings and thoughts and wonders into a sketchbook, you also get to find out how wonderful it is to go back and revisit them later. To remember the sky from that day, the songs your ears heard, how both of these entered your body. Your version of Jake and Lady (be they feathered or furry or someone else entirely). The dandelion flowers or the seed heads or the pretty ‘weeds’. The ordinary extraordinary and everyday sacred. To know you were here, you were paying attention, you lived your life fully that day, in those scribbles, in that wonder.

I have filled one sketchbook full of these sorts of observations and thoughts, and am playing in a new one now. The difference I feel between these sketchbooks that record my relationship to presence and place, and all my other sketchbooks filled with wildlife alone, has nothing to do with the detail or depth of finish or even the subject matter. The difference is tangible presence. I am very present when I am sketching or painting (mostly, anyway) but the practice of holding what I am sketching in my hand or being outside to sketch and make notes becomes a tangible presence - there is a memory associated with it that is more robust and real than just ‘I was at my easel’.

When I flick through these pages I feel the feather, the rock, the shell, the leaf that I was studying under hand anew. And I remember why I sought out a reference image of that bird or mammal or being - they become interwoven. This is the thing most missing from photographs, even though I love them, I need them, and they will necessarily be a part of my work forever. Combining them with something I can hold in my hand on a page brings a whole new depth for my own personal experience.

I think ultimately that is what a personal creative practice inside a sketchbook should be - something that helps you describe the thoughts and feelings that are for you. In which you can make beauty, for yourself. Where you can work through big emotions and get messy and make beautifully ugly scribbles and pay attention to your own wild heart and perhaps the larger wild around you and maybe even become a little more devoted to both.

So yes, that’s the bones of it - wildlife, touch, words. But bones are just the beginning. This month’s Hedgerow journal walks you through the full field guide, with prompts and mirrors and windows for each thread. Plus a whole community of women doing the same practice, in the same season, so you’re never doing it alone. This is a way to embody a creative life lived with presence and wonder. If that’s calling you, Hedgerow is open right now. Come find your way in.

I have a couple of new feathers (Australian White Ibis) that I found on a walk this week that are itching to be included in my sketchbook… so until next time, my loves, from my big wild heart to yours,