I was face to face with a Tawny the night I learned that their main food source, the Bogong Moth was in the first stage of environmental collapse.  Close up to this beautiful bird that really does scrutinize you so beneath its eyebrows, a wordless conversation took place;  I told the bird how intelligently beautiful it was, and how I was so sorry about my part in the warming summers that the moth needs to find cooler shelter from.  I apologized for the light pollution that interferes with its navigation from the stars, we now know is how they find the cooler caves in the Snowy Mountains.  I told the bird how much I hoped it would survive, as it flew off.

My art making in the sandstone cave is a prayer for the moth, and for darker skies it needs, and for the tawny frogmouth, and for humans to wake up to the amazing interbeing with moths, stars, and birds.  My earthart was made with lichen, present on earth before humans, as both a witness to our shortsightedness, and a petition for its ancient perspective.   Some “bleeding” sap on the bark of a yellow bloodwood nearby seemed to express my grief and overwhelm for all collapses of ecosystems that must have a flow-on effect.  It is a simple piece, left in the cave as a prayer for further awakening of human consciousness to our radical interbeing.

By Kerryn Coombs-Valeontis