Samhain Sunset

Samhain, Halloween, the time when the veil thins between worlds, the time of the harvest season Mardi Grass in the southern hemisphere of the globe. On the hallowed evening the sun sets on Nimbin as Mick sits on the wide verandah, mulling over the day.

            “You Bunjalung?” eye ask him as the coffeepot expresses itself, gurgling in the kitchen of the town house.

            “Yes,” he says, eyes locking with mine, “from here and on the coast. I’m the blackest fella around here now.” He smiles widely as dreadlocked Hawk and a pair of capped, hip-hopped teens seat themselves around the bowl.

            “So you’re from the saltwater and the freshwater – you have the best of both worlds?”

            “That’s right –and I have relatives all the way up the east coast, all the way from the tip at the top to the coast down there at Victoria. And here, too.”

            “So you have a place to stay all the way up the coast?” asks one of the caps to the sound of a different gurgling.

            “I have a woman in half the towns on the coast – and a kid with half of them.” The all-male circle laughs. Billy travels around the group as the sun touches the last stretches of volcanic ridge surrounding the valley and township sailing into the night of the crone, the night of the ancestors who join the circle of life for a few hours. A chorus of laughter erupts on the street outside and one boom box begins to compete with another as vehicles fill the town with visitors.

            “You guys are lucky,” says one of the caps, “you still know all the land, eh? Can go anywhere, you mob.” A kookaburra calls tentatively, then stops.

            Mick waits a few moments before replying. “I’m one of the lucky ones,” he says. “At my age I can go all the way up and down here, but that’s also because I was pulled aside when I was young by the old fellas.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “When all the other kids were running around I was smaller, so I was always left behind and the old fellas noticed and told me to stay with them. So they told me a lot of things the others didn’t learn and now I have to go to some places to do certain things.” Evening began to spread feathery wings of amber and flame across the sky.

            “You had extra initiations, then?” Mick nodded his assent.

            “Some of my nephews come with me, but they can only go so far when I have to go on and do things, you know.”

            “Only some people know the stuff then? But it’s still all there?” These young men of Nimbin needed to know that magic was still in the world, as they packed and passed and the first stars quietly erupted into the deepening twilight sky.

            “In some places it’s still all there – but of course much has been lost, too.”

            “At least,” eye say, “you know what you’ve lost. Our ancestors had so much taken from them, we don’t even know that anything’s gone. We don’t know what we’re missing.” Mick looked into me again and laughed.

            “You’re right there, that’s for sure!”

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