a space never inhabited

written 20241008.

“think and write about a space you’ve never inhabited - something you’ve watched from afar (in awe, fear, envy, etcetera), but never engaged in.”

the olm has not once trekked into the subalpine wetlands. travelling to the west, you come to the mountain range right on the border marking the furthest extent of the alps, and that’s where the wetlands are, in the flatlands between peaks. one way to reach them is to climb the spur past the reservoir. it’s a hard climb, but past that it’s a straight shot if you know the trails. olm is fit enough, and trusts her wayfinding, but those aren’t the things keeping her down in the lowlands.

exploring the mountains she does know, the olm’s become acquainted to their cycles and lifeworlds. she sees how scribblygums prefer the sunnier aspects and brittlegums the shadier. she can differentiate her grasses and sedges and rushes and heaths, knows the names for the orchids and peavines that appear from late winter, knows about the crimson slime mold she can now and then find slithering in the hollows of trees.

she doesn’t know a single thing about the wetlands, and that’s both enthralling and frightening. they’re remote. there are not many photos to work from. the ones she’s seen are of sunken wet heaths. forests gather at the boundaries. fogs descend to just a few metres above the moss and peat. she imagines it silent and cold even in midsummer, although that can’t be true. the same bushfires that swept choking ash into the city for weeks passed that way too.

names for things that inhabit there: bog snowgrass, coral heath, sphagnum moss, tassel roperush. no idea how they all fit together. their umwelten. undescribed insects preyed on by undescribed amphibians. saturated grasses and sedges and rushes and ferns conspiring to keep the forests at bay.

an entire space, in short, completely unknown to an olm who still barely even knows her lowland mountains. remote and intimidating, but enthralling too, and she worries that if she does make the climb up into these sunken fastnesses, that realising she understands nothing of them and maybe needs to understand nothing of them, she may just remain up there, gradually and gratefully dissolve into her surroundings.