Lakeside Reflections: On ducks, life & Michael Leunig

it's a rainy day and i'm going to be staying inside today uh most of the time i've got my awning set up now and i've made myself a little front porch area and the kayak under cover while it's raining but i just often enjoy just looking out the window and watching these ducks i don't know if you can really see them there's a family of ducks now these little ones running around up the front they're the babies they're kind of like teenagers now uh another little family just floated past that had a whole bunch of little babies and i've been watching these ducks since the day they were born and it amazes me because they come and eat at this spot all the time there's a couple more just over there i think there's five in this family one two three four four five four maybe um no five there's the fifth one there and i've realized as i watch these ducks some amazing things one is that every day i wake up and see them they have almost doubled in size from the day before it's hard to recognize them as the same ducks like they're actually looking like grown-up ducks now yet mum is still hanging out with them and i wonder at what point she says to her ducks okay her little babies you guys are self-sufficient now and we will part ways i mean i guess they'll all hang out on the lake and you know be just like normal ducks at some point and i'm waiting for that point to happen because they're almost as big as her and she's still keeping out of them and if another bird or another duck or any anyone you know a dog or anything comes near she you know whack what what she scuffles them out of the way and she protects them and looks after them and usually it's the father and the mother duck will both take that role on from the time those ducks are born till whatever point i'm i'm thinking it's going to be soon with these guys oh that's mum and dad there with them yeah they're both there still um at what point they say our job here is done and it's just been really interesting to me to watch that because you know from an evolutionary point of view it kind of i reflect a lot on you know how we are with our children you know the way they are so protective the way the father and the mother just sole purpose is focusing on keeping these little babies safe until they are self-sufficient and at one point leaving them be the fact that you know they have this coordinated effort where mummy duck will scoot them off in one direction while daddy duck kind of you know makes threatening sounds and noises towards you know any predator or perceived danger that might be coming towards them i've seen the father duck pretend to have like a broken wing and start flapping around on the ground when they thought you know pixie might come towards the babies and then in the meanwhile while the father's causing a distraction mummy duck scuttles away off the water with her babies you know it's just such a beautiful thing to watch and it just makes me realize you know that's our job with our children it's just basically keep them safe keep them protected from harm chase away the scary bad people and show them how to be independent and once they're grown up and independent let them go on their merry way and i struggle with that sometimes because i really miss my kids and i sometimes wish they were more involved in my life but i watch these animals and i realize that if you've done your job right your children shouldn't need you at all and i take kind of a lot of comfort in that i guess i take comfort just watching what's happening out my window and this is what i mean by connecting with nature even if i'm not out there walking around and looking at it i'm always looking out my window and i'm watching things like the cycle of the grass and these seeding grasses you know that have been green and vibrant and now starting to seed as the weather's going to slowly start warming up and then they'll die off and then you know they'll come back to life again the way the trees flowers everything renews and regenerates itself on a seasonal basis the way the animals go through their breeding season and then their nurturing season and protecting their young and we have so much to learn from nature i'm kind of feeling at the moment that that's really all i can relate to anymore and i spend this time on my own in my caravan reflecting a lot and feeling i don't know i guess i feel like that um you know what's that guy throw on on walden pond um this is my walden you know this is my walden i've created this little set up here to basically hide for a little while and i'm not interacting with any humans there's no other humans around me um there are the occasional other campers that come and go and you know you might wave and say hello but that's kind of the extent of your interaction and then once every two weeks i venture into a shop to stock up on groceries and pick up my medicine and that's pretty much it hello mommy ducky um she's taking her babies out for a swim how cute is it just better than the tv just being able this is why a view has always been so important to me this is why living in a house the type of house i could afford i couldn't afford to have a house on on the edge of the water or in a forest or you know somewhere beautiful to look out the window is so important to me it really is what lifts my spirits and reminds me about what's real and living in a caravan means that i can enjoy a view like this at a really really cheap cost affordable cost and yeah that's pretty much where i'm at head wise feeling really in a good place really happy with my life choice um despite all the craziness of the world situation and all the border closures and limits on my travel and restrictions and lockdowns and things that have happened that i can still connect with a part of the world that has no idea what's going on out there politically or health wise or these ducks have no restrictions whatsoever and they're not bothered by anything that's going on in world events right now they're just living their life staying healthy eating sleeping and looking after each other and that's pretty much what i plan to do from now on one of my all-time favorite poets is an australian by the name of michael lunig who i got a poetry book when i was seven years old this is how my love of words first started and it was a book called stuff and nonsense and the very first poem uh that i memorized in it has been a bit of a theme for me ever since was one called sitting on the fence and it says come sit down beside me i said to myself and although it doesn't make sense i held my own hand as a small sign of trust and together i sat on the fence and when i actually got to meet michael noenig many years later at a poetry poetry slam writer's festival in auckland new zealand i asked him about that poem and he told me that it was actually the first poem he had ever written as well and we shared so much in common in our mindset we just had so much to talk about and i really feel like he's a kindred spirit in a lot of ways and interestingly you know i only just thought about this after i'd just you know been filming these ducks and realizing how much i enjoy watching them that michael lunig funny enough has always used these little funny little ducks in his cartoons and he said um at one point in an interview you know somebody would have asked him what what is the significance of the duck and he said when when when you're feeling blocked a duck will appear it's a kind of form of inspiration i guess and it's just yeah i just sort of made the connection just then i was like you know this fascination with the ducks and it made me think of michael lernig and the ducks and i was like oh i get it now i understand now why just watching these ducks has just brought me the sense of peace and the sense of what's real and the sense of connection there's lots of cockatoos flying around as well which is kind of cool um so there you go shout out to you michael lernig um a guy who's been a cartoonist uh and a source of inspiration for so many of us especially us sort of nature types you know our reclusive um creative poetry writing soul-searching types of which i am sure i belong uh he's provided so much and unfortunately was recently fired from the newspaper the melbourne newspaper the age that he has written for and done satirical cartoons for for 50 years and he the reason he was fired because he did a cartoon um depicting a sort of a similarity to the tiananmen square scene where there's a you know one person kneeling in front of a tank and he drew a person kneeling in front of a tank with instead of a big um you know gun pointing at him he had a big syringe pointing at him and it was sort of his i guess his his view on the fact that you know there are still people resisting um being vaccinated which and he got fired for that i mean do we not understand satire anymore like the whole how many cartoons in newspapers have appeared for years and years and years making fun of or drawing light to a certain political situation and that's all he was doing you know and and it just seems weird to me that he would be fired because of doing what he's always done just because it happened to involve a uh a vaccination needle so that's a sad state of the world uh michael lunig who will probably never watch this video but i hope he does and i hope he remembers me from staying at the ferns in new zealand um i'm sitting here pondering ducks michael and i guess you're probably doing a lot of the same and yeah we just the ducks are real and big love to everyone else out there if you're struggling just remember uh just go watch some ducks for a while and sit somewhere beautiful in nature and everything will start to make sense see ya