John points to plants and trees used as combat weapons during World War II and in ancient Aboriginal homeopathic remedies and beverages. More than twelve thousand species of insects dwell among this dirt and trees, symbiotic with the white-lipped tree frog, colossal blue Ulysses butterfly, and cassowary. There are stories about every single tree we pass, myths about trees inhabited by ancestral spirits or childhood tales passed down from John’s great-grandfather.
As our hike ends, he gathers the five of us around a cluster of rocks. Here, he explains, are the mothers of the artistic tools used in indigenous artwork; paints concocted through years of sediment infused with iron oxide; clay and ochres in shades of brown, red, yellow, white. John’s ancestors have dabbled in this medium for thirty thousand years. He taps the rocks on a flat boulder, crushes bits into rock powder, dips his fingers in a nearby stream, mixes the powder and water with his fingers into varicolored paste, and swathes our arms with dots of burnt sienna and white.
“It’s a blessing and honor that the rain forest welcomes us here,” John says reverently, holding his palms upward. “Let us remember to tread lightly on her and all her family, and to go forth in peace.”
He is a friar in hiking boots, a deacon of the forest.
We come to a picnic table under a thatched-roof awning, where a friend of John’s is percolating traditional bush tea over a campfire.
“Come, sit down for a bit of tea and damper!” his friend says.
“What’s a damper?” Tate asks.
John and his friend look at each other. “Well . . . it’s a damper. You know, like a biscuit.”
The kids look at me.
“Cookie,” I say.
Their eyes brighten and they run to the table, then stop at the rounded mounds of baked flour. Tate picks one up, takes a timid bite, gives a polite smile and nod.
“Well,” says John’s friend, “it’s more like bread.”
“I’m okay for now,” Reed says, not touching his damper. Finn devours his and eats Reed’s. I take a few dutiful sips of tea and swallow the taste of steeped twigs and leaves, breathe in its smoky aroma. Kyle chugs his tea and takes seconds.
I have just taken my children on a walk in the forest, an outing we partake in weekly in the Pacific Northwest. There, we brush past ponderosa pines. Here, we plod through prehistoric plants. The Oregon soil we cross is ripe with our familial ancestry, yet here the rain forest dirt percolates with our cradle, our origin. These roots spread wide and deep. I watch as the leaves swirl humbly in my cup.
We say thanks and good-bye to John, then head back to the park entrance and hop on a bus for a five-minute ride to a more modern path through the rain forest: a suspension bridge through trees to a swimming hole called Mossman Gorge. We dip our bodies and float in bone-chilling freshwater, buried in the veins of the world’s oldest patch of creation. Underwater stones scrape John’s painted dots off our arms, flecks of rock powder dissolving into the gentle waves that make room for us this afternoon.
I glide on the water’s surface and watch goose bumps rise on my legs, then submerge my ears and hear the gurgling life underneath. I listen to my kids squeal at the thrill of the gentle current pulling them where it wants. I gaze at the sheer splendor of the leaves above me, leaves seen nowhere else on this planet.
Sometimes, even when I’m standing on a remarkable slice of terra firma, I’m besotted with wanderlust, my heart thumping for the next unknown place and my mind wondering what’s next. But right now, in this rain forest, floating in crystal waters after a walk on ancient, sacred soil with my flesh and blood, I want to be nowhere else. Nowhere. This, right now, is home. I can hear God through the rustling of the prehistoric fan-shaped leaves, the scurry of alien insects on the bark, the familiar laughter of my children slipping on stones in the water. Everything here is unfamiliar, but it’s familiar. We are transient, vagabonds, and yet we’re tethered.
About Australia, travel writer Bill Bryson says, “This is a country that is at once staggeringly empty and yet packed with stuff. Interesting stuff, ancient stuff, stuff not readily explained.” The Daintree Rainforest has one more unique quality: it’s the only natural UNESCO Heritage Site that bleeds seamlessly right into another one next door. Packed with stuff, indeed.
Today, we will snorkel in the Great Barrier Reef next door. The kids have been eagerly waiting for this day since before we left for China, and while they’re passable swimmers, they’ve never snorkeled. I’m confident they’ll love the boat ride out to the reef, but I’m curious how they’ll fare with the wet suits, unwieldy fins, suffocating masks, and tiresome snorkels.
A wet suit is the most unattractive, unflattering garb ever invented, which I’m reminded of because the kids roll with laughter at Kyle and me when we hand them their assigned suits. A few minutes ago we arrived at a platform out in Agincourt Reef, one of the 2,900 complex systems that make up the entire 1,400-mile reef. As soon as the boat parked, there was a mad rush to get in line for wet suits, so Kyle and I ran to the line while the kids waited at a picnic table on the platform.
We demonstrate the process of squeezing our adult bodies into still-damp wet suits, and I feel like I’m stuffing a watermelon into a pair of girl’s panty hose. The kids find this uproarious.
“We look like spies!” Finn says when we’re all dressed.
“Yeah! Let’s go look for a hidden jewel and plan a heist!” Tate replies.
Kyle takes a photo of them with devilish spy glares, finger guns poised. They continue their imagined life as spies while I gather our handful of masks and fins and look out into the rippling aquamarine waves. The sky and water are monochromatic. It is a canvas of blue, textured by shadowy-small waves.