Tasmanian Devils (from House of Thorns)

“Errol Flynn was a Tasmanian,” my mother volunteers.  The clear pitch of her voice fills the angel-bedecked bedroom where she spends so much of her time these days.  I look up, surprised that she has pulled this somewhat obscure fact from somewhere deep within her memory.       

My mother, I realize, never fails to amaze me. . . .      

She meets my gaze with blue eyes that shine above a fresh, rust-colored scab where a surgeon’s knife has flicked a basal cell carcinoma from one side of her nose.  Another, slightly less angry-looking patch imprints her left cheek with a quarter-sized circle that gives her the appearance of having dipped too heavily into the rouge pot.       

The effect, though alarming, is not unique.  We’ve seen it before, off and on for years, when she’s periodically undergone treatment to counteract the consequences of a harsh prairie wind and sun on her Scotch-Irish skin.  We’ve come to accept the look as a temporary condition—a necessary but transient evil.  As something to be dealt with.  Nothing more or less.       

But this time, there’s a difference.  A place on her arm—just above her right elbow.  Melanoma.  My niece tells me the news on my way back from my month-long trek through Tasmania and the Australian Outback.  The surgery’s scheduled in two weeks.  My sister, says my niece (who’s been caring for my mother in my absence), will give me more details.       

I don’t want them.      

“How did you know that?” I ask my mother, as I process the information she’s offered me like a present.  “That Errol Flynn was from Tasmania?”      

“There’s a lot I know.”  Her reply as open-ended as the questions we can’t bring ourselves to ask each other.       

The truth is that I know there’s a lot she knows.  And, as always, when in the presence of my mother, I feel humbled.  Not overshadowed, exactly, although there’s that too.  But humbled.         

“I saw a Tasmanian Devil,” I tell my mother.  I show her the picture my friend Andy snapped of me near a sign that says: “Danger. Tasmanian Devil.  DO NOT FEED.”  The Devil—framed at the bottom of the snapshot—appears to be the epitome of evil: its fanged teeth and sharp claws capable, it seems, of ripping its wire cage to shreds at the slightest provocation.       

My mother lets out a nervous laugh, wincing as much at the picture of me—mugging for the camera, teeth bared, fingers splayed, in my best Tasmanian Devil imitation—as she is at the genuine article writhing at my feet.  “That’s hideous.”       

“It is, isn’t it?” I admit, referring, like her, as much to me as to the Devil stationed next to me.  “I love it. . . .  Andy got bitten by a koala bear the same day he took this picture of me.”      

“You’re kidding,” says my mother.      

“Nope,” I respond, before telling her the story. . . .      

After a brief overnight in Launceston, we traveled south along Tasmania’s west coast toward the Wilderness World Heritage area of Cradle Mountain.  Our first stop along the way: Mole Creek’s Trowunna Wildlife Park, where kangas lounge in the mid-day sun like languid lizards.  Here, too, you can cuddle a furry wombat in your arms.  Or challenge the devil to a staring match, as I do.       

Tasmanian Koalas by Margaret Dornaus

 

Andy, fresh from the wilds of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, immediately heads for two adorable koalas draped over eucalyptus branches like a pair of jungle gym playmates at recess.  “Look at them,” Andy coos, his maternal side showing.  “They’re so cute.”       

They are cute.  They are picture-postcard perfect, ready for their close-ups, with one slight modification; when Andy enters the frame, I return his favor to me by snapping his picture.  Then comes a slight error in judgment when Andy decides to reach down and stroke the fur of the koala closest to him.       

“Ouch,” he shrieks.  “Did you see that?  It bit me.”      

“You must have been bothering them.”  Trowunna Park’s tall, lanky gamekeeper strides onto the scene in a proprietary manner.       

“I thought you said we could touch them,” Andy cries, rubbing his right forearm, which is fast swelling to hide the fresh tracks of koala-sized incisors.       

  “I did.”  The gamekeeper is a laconic fellow.      

  “Well?”      

  “You must have done something.”       

  Andy is stunned.  As he continues to rub his wound, I wonder aloud if he should get treated for tetanus.  Or rabies?  The gamekeeper appears unfazed by my questions.  “Must have done something,” he repeats.  Then, ignoring Andy altogether, he heads toward the offending koala as if it were the victim instead of the perpetrator in this scenario and gingerly turns it over to inspect its underside.  “Ah,” he says.  “That explains it.”      

We wait a beat.  But Mr. Gamekeeper has a hidden talent, it seems, for dramatic timing.  Finally, he says, in a rather self-satisfied way, “It’s a boy.”  And?  The point would be?        

“He thinks you were messing with him.”  The barb is an accusation.       

Obviously, Andy and I are more out of touch with the natural world than we thought we were.  We still don’t get it.  The gamekeeper must detect our confusion; we see his lips turn up slightly in a little sneer.  “You’re a mate,” he says to Andy.  Andy nods.  “He’s a mate.”  Okay.  “He thinks you were messing with him.”      

Andy’s face turns as purple as his forearm.  I decide it’s time for an intervention, so I pull at the sleeve of Andy’s uninjured arm.  “It’s time to go,” I whisper.      

“What?”  My friend’s in shock.      

“Let’s go.  Now.”  I tug a bit harder until Andy stumbles forward to follow me.      

“I only wanted to take his picture.”  Andy is whimpering like the wounded animal that he is.  “I thought he was cute.”      

“I know.”       

“He was cute.”      

“I know.”      

“But he bit me.”      

“Yes, he did.”      

“See?”  He thrusts his throbbing arm up for inspection.      

“Yes, I see.  You’ll be all right.”      

“You think so?”      

“Yes.  Just keep walking.”      

As we head off toward a mob of ‘roos, I look over my shoulder like Lot’s wife—what was her name?—in the Sodom & Gomorrah story.  I try not to think about turning into a pillar of salt.  I shrug the notion off—this isn’t my home, after all—as I see the gamekeeper staring blankly in our direction.  Still cradling the koala bear in his arms, he suddenly looks shrunken, childlike.  It’s as if he is ready to be tucked in for the night with a good bedtime story.       

“Why do you think he bit me?”  Andy is past whining.      

“Maybe he liked you.”  It’s all I can think of at the moment, but it seems to mollify Andy.       

“Oh,” he says.  He rubs his arm again.  “Do you think so?”      

“Keep walking.”      

My mother is laughing hysterically.  Two weeks later, an orderly wheels her into Recovery.  “She asked me where the champagne was,” he says, “but I told her all we had was juice.”  He is smiling at the lunacy of my post-operative mother’s words.  He strikes me as somewhat patronizing.      

I take my mother’s hand.  “We’ll have champagne when we get home,” I whisper.   ”And more stories. . . . ”   

©Copyright Margaret Dornaus, 2010

 

Eureka Moment (from House of Thorns)

         

Eureka's Famous Crescent Hotel by Margaret Dornaus

 

 . . . My mother and I are returning home from a day trip to a Victorian village nestled in the hills of the Ozarks.  It’s a short drive from our house, the one I returned to after leaving New York in order to help my mother live out the remainder of her days surrounded by the possessions she prizes, an eclectic assortment of antiques collected over a lifetime—wine red curios, equal parts candelabras and magic lanterns sporting portraits of mustachioed Turkish warlords, she picked up one day back in the ‘50s on a shopping trip to Seidenbach’s Department Store; a century-old, rustic buffet and china cabinet of walnut that she purchased from her former law school dean before she and my father set up housekeeping in the late 1930s;  a well-worn blue velvet Victorian loveseat she wrangled from a now-departed sister some time in the ’60s.  It’s late January—one of those rare, balmy winter days that occasionally happens in Arkansas—and we’ve taken advantage of the break in weather by heading east to the tiny hill town of Eureka Springs.                

For nine months of the year, Eureka’s cobblestoned streets ring with the heavy tread of visitors lured by the village’s Victorian architecture—authentic nineteenth-century cupolas and gingerbread—combined with all manner of trendy galleries, spas and boutiques, tacky tourist shops, kitschy street fare álà sugary funnel cakes, gigantic baked pretzels and spun cotton candy, and a compound that hosts a Passion Play featuring live camels and bearded locals tracing Christ’s life and  resurrection in a spectacle meant to rival Germany’s Oberammergau.  In January, however, Eureka is all but abandoned—left, for the most part, to its one thousand  or so year-round residents who burrow in for the off-season to store up enough energy to put on their public faces come Spring.                

This more private Eureka is the one my family fell in love with more than thirty years ago when we—transplanted Okies—went wandering to explore our new environs.  During three decades, we have made the trek to a town that has charmed us many times and in all seasons, but winter—when it’s quiet, with only the bones of its more glamorous incarnations showing—is the one that makes us feel we share Eureka with those who appreciate her fully, whether she’s dressed in her best finery as a painted lady or draped in a shawl of gray. . . .                

Eureka has been there for us.  A place we go to when we need to feel uplifted, connected to the past as much as to the present.  My mother remembers dawn picnics on the lake just outside of town, cooking kielbasa and coffee over the park’s stand-up grills as she and her second husband watched the mist rise on a winter’s day.  And me?  When I think of Eureka, it’s as much of the people as the place: a wild man named Bob, dead now like both my mother’s husbands, who lived like an untamed creature on the fringes of society in a way that I never could and who challenged me to do more with myself, to write something that made a difference, to care about myself more than he could—or anyone else could, for that matter.                 

Thorncrown Chapel by Margaret Dornaus

 

This day, though, we’re in the present as much as we can be.  We’ve wandered through the few shops that are open; ambled through a woodland chapel that seamlessly unites form and function in a style reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright’s; driven to the crest overlooking town for a panorama of the surrounding valley—the Passion Play’s mammoth Christ of the Ozarks standing with frozen, outstretched arms like a monstrous man-made sentinel over the otherwise tranquil setting.  It’s been a good day.  We’re happy.                

 As we head west out of town, winter’s light—the kind that’s clear and golden and makes you want to testify—bathes us and the receding streets with more warmth as the sun begins to set.  It’s then that my mother, one eye to the future, says to me, “Perhaps you can live here.”         

When I’m gone, she means, but she doesn’t have to say more. . . .    

©Copyright Margaret Dornaus, 2010               

 

 

Out Back in the Outback (from House of Thorns)

Aussie Sunset by Margaret Dornaus

 

Here’s another excerpt from my new travel memoir, House of Thorns.  Hope you like it!–Margaret                

                

by Margaret Dornaus

 

After a week on the Outback road, we land in the thriving metropolis of Broken Hill—the Santa Fe of New South Wales.  A sanctuary for 23,000-plus culture-loving souls, Broken Hill is teeming with galleries displaying canvases that capture the sunburnt colors of the landscape.  A landscape enhanced by the jeweled setting of monolithic mountaintop sculptures backdropped against the brilliant rising and setting sun that ignites the Outback sky.               

There is even food beyond the bush tucker experience of roasted, poached or grilled kangaroo.  But best of all, Broken Hill is where we trade in the serviceable Steve and his gargantuan off-road vehicle for hipper, sleeker 4×4 SUV’s driven by hipper, sleeker guides—a quartet of lovers who infuse our bedraggled, road-weary group with new life and remind us that, at least down under, the mating season is about to burst into full-blooming spring.               

Mick & Joanne & Lisa & Steve Jump for Joy by Margaret Dornaus

 

Individually, Mick & Joanne & Lisa & Steve (a younger version of our earlier driver) is each as fine a specimen as the Outback could produce.  They’re energetic.  They’re healthy.  They’re easy to look at.  But, collectively, they’re a powder keg of raw sexuality.  It’s something they make no attempt to hide.  They couldn’t even if they wanted to.  For Mick & Joanne—and Lisa & Steve—are in love.  And we feel their passion for each other palpably, with a vicarious itch that leaves our already virus-stressed throats raspier and an octave lower when we speak.               

“I like traveling this way much better,” one woman pipes as soon as we hook up with our new leaders.  Strictly speaking, she is talking about nothing more than our mode of transit.  Comparing the virtues of off-road travel in several more compact and better shock-absorbing vehicles with the singularly massive coach we’ve heretofore withstood.  But the extra chirp to her voice reveals something further—a certain je ne sais quoi that will infect each and every one of our little band of travelers.  Some more than others.               

“We’re in good hands now,” my friend Andy coos after our first full day out with the Outback lovers.  “I can feel it.”  Andy’s round face is glowing with the inner zing of a sated Buddha.  “Can’t you?”  The Menindee moon backlights what remains of Andy’s hair, giving an oddly electrified cast to his normally ruddy complexion.               

Sheepherding, Aussie Style by Margaret Dornaus

 

I have to agree that the day’s had more verve to it than some of our others.  Even the woolshed walk was charged with excitement.  “Remember the reed warbler we heard today?” I ask without apologizing for my apparent non sequitur.  Andy’s exasperation with me shows in the tight, pursed-lip expression he gets when you start to step on his story.  “Geoff said when they breed, you can’t hear yourself think,” I add before Andy’s annoyance can intimidate me into silence.               

At the mention of breeding, Andy unclenches his mouth.  An audible breath escapes from his lips as he exhales.  “Honey, I have a feeling that before this is all over none of us will be able to hear ourselves think,” he replies before pecking me on the cheek and turning in for the night.               

It is not difficult to travel with strangers once you get into the rhythm.  Especially if that rhythm has a chance to fine tune itself.  To allow for the flashiness of the snare drum.  The boldness of the kettle drum.  The pertness of the triangle.  But add a pair of cymbals to the mix and it’s easy to upset the balance.  Add two pairs of cymbals . . .               

“I saw Mick kissing Joanne,” Andy whispers to me.  “Did you see him?”  

I nod without speaking.  My throat is dry.  It scratches and burns.           

©Copyright Margaret Dornaus, 2010

 

Hello world!

 

 

Down Under Dream by Margaret Dornaus

 

 Welcome to the world of my new blog!  Here, you’ll find information about my life as a travel writer–a life I’ve had the good fortune to enjoy for more than a decade.  One that’s taken me to such exotic locations as the Australian Outback (the sunset view above is one that I captured at an Outback billabong while the beach at left is one of Australia’s most beautiful) . . .  and to more humble locales, virtually in my own backyard.  Here, too, you’ll find excerpts from some of my travelogues, announcements of upcoming projects, and links to many of the stories I’ve published already.  Feel free to explore the world with me (click on the links–About Me  & More Stories–here or above to find out more about me and my travels), and feel free to leave comments of your own along the way.                

Happy Journeys,                

Margaret                

Yours truly . . . Out back in the Outback by Dave Houser

 

 That’s me, at right, surrounded by a bunch of “billies” in the tiny Outback town of Pooncarie . . . You can learn a little more about my adventure there in the following excerpt from my recently completed travel memoir, House of Thorns :             

     . . . When we stop for lunch in the tiny dot called Pooncarie, we’re amazed by the road traffic.  A convoy of El Caminos in every imaginable color has converged on this dusty back road village.  Mick tells us that a B&S Ball is planned for this evening.  “Bachelors and spinsters,” he explains.  Otherwise known as “billies” and “nannies.”             

            “I haven’t seen an El Camino in years,” Andy warbles as we gape at the long line of Cowboy Cadillacs double-parked on the side of a sheep paddock.             

             The B&S Ball is a once-a-yearly brawl designed to help potential mates from outlying areas find each other.  Clearly, it is the social event of the season.  We stop in for a preview at the dust-covered field surrounding the giant party tent staked out for the evening’s festivities.  At two o’clock in the afternoon, the pioneering bachelors have already circled their wagons and are heavily into swilling beer after beer as they perfect their ballroom swaggers.  By the time the dance band kicks in at eight, they’ll be lucky if they’re standing.             

            I sidle up to a group of these wildlife bachelors with my camera.  Their welcoming response gives new meaning to the words “photo opportunity.”  Soon, I find myself ensconced on a billy’s lap; I’m surrounded by half a dozen others.  One of our group’s guides is muttering something about not being able to take me anywhere. . . .  

©Copyright Margaret Dornaus, 2010