Alongside the various conceptual terms (image, signal, interference, multiplexing, etc.), and the various more or less subjective activities (walking, running, climbing, etc.) there are also the set of specific sites (backyard, local park, escarpment, etc.). The escarpment – the escarpment itself, my relation to the escarpment, the conceptual implications of the escarpment – demand some effort at clarification.
I have only to walk up a short rough track to be in the escarpment. The escarpment begins at the limits of the suburbs and rises up through paddocks and sclerophyll forest to pockets of lush temperate rainforest and sections of vertical sandstone cliff. It is, however, as much an imaginary space as a real space – a thin curtain of green obscuring a more generally dry interior. It is like a huge wave in a fictional sea – a wave without any supporting momentum, hanging thinly between dull plains, suburbs and the actual sea.
The escarpment was extensively logged in the 19th and 20th centuries. Photos from the 1920s in the local butcher shop show the whole of Mt Keira without a single tree on it. The trees have since grown back, but the escarpment can scarcely be mistaken for a pristine wilderness. It is infested with all manner of weeds – lantana, scotch thistle, tobacco bush, coral trees, etc. As well, it is full of imported animal pests – deer, foxes, etc. Then there is the evidence of human interaction – dumped cars, trash of all kinds, bits and pieces of heavy equipment, old stone walls, abandoned coal mines, roads, trailbike noise, mountainbike tracks, etc. In short the place is thoroughly compromised, yet it retains this strange resilience linked to its darkness, dampness, coldness and heat; to its slippages, its loose earth, its refusal to stay still. Endlessly fucked up, endlessly interfered with, the escarpment has its own modes of interference. As a medium, as a backdrop, as a thin field of transition, it manages to survive careless treatment, to twist the most intimate wounds into emergent spaces – unexpected contours and scenes of strange, prolific growth.
[I have difficulty keeping up with the escarpment. It moves much faster than I do.]