SM 204
Palimpsest
Whilst running the sheep property in NSW I was visited by a government official who was assisting farmers to eliminate the noxious weed Prickly Pear. He brought with him a trailer load of prickly pear leaves infested with the South American Cochineal beetle – the small red bug used to make food colouring, and a pest of Prickly Pear. I agreed to spend a day with him on our property, showing him all the Prickly Pear plants that I could remember – of which we had plenty. It was our duty as farmers to control noxious weeds but Prickly Pear in our district were more like trees than weeds, and no small matter to get rid of.
It was an interesting day because apart from finding out about the Cochineal life cycle, I also watched this man’s amazing ability to spot his target plants from a distance too far away to see. Although I knew the land quite well and could show him many large plants, it was difficult to remember every last one. He was aged about 60, and like most rural men, worn down by the labour of years. His hands were knarled and the fingers stiff. He did not wear glasses though he almost certainly needed them. Yet he would scan the distant hill side and point to some spot in the hazy scrub and say ‘there’s one’. Sometimes I could see it, sometimes I could half imagine that shape of scrub could be one; sometimes I remembered one being there even though I couldn’t see it at all. Often I just had to take his word for it. But one thing was certain – he was never wrong. He would point them out and I would direct us to the spot and there it was.
Over the years of searching for Prickly Pear he seemed to have developed a sensitivity, an attention, to the patterns of the plant even when he couldn’t directly see it. A certain shape; a certain hue, gesture or height. There are plenty of other examples of this diffuse type of skill. The old farmers could spot sick sheep in a mob even when they were barely more than spots on the horizon. After a few years on the land I could pick them too. You become able to spot a sheep with fly-strike in a mob, or intestinal worms or body lice, through their postures or behaviour. You also know whether the half eaten carcass on the ground was breakfast for a pig, fox, crow, wedge-tailed eagle or a stray dog. Information throws itself at you once you have learned to read the signs. Similarly an osteopath can see a scoliosis passing in the street, a psychiatric nurse can spot an imminent change in behaviour, a workshop supervisor will hear the machine being used incorrectly from another room. An employer will spot the employee’s drug use of the previous night in the eyes.
Attention, focus, combined and honed perceptions mark our bodies. And like any form of knowledge or any loss of innocence, they are never really lost – we just continuously overwrite. Palimpsest.