Rushlights

 A rushlight is made quickly from what you have to hand. It can be fuelled with dry rushes dipped in tallow or grease or fat. If you don’t have those, use something else. It indicates need, a degree of making do, and poverty.

In 1858 at dusk, while his horse drinks deeply from the Aparima river, James McKerchar lines an old pannikin with stiff clay, then adds a layer of fat. He chooses a dry stick the size of a pencil and wraps it in cotton torn from a rag in his saddlebag. He presses the wrapped stick, as thick as his thumb, into the clay, and carries this rushlight carefully to the campsite, leading his horse by her reins.

He tethers the horse, feeds her the oat chaff he carries, and brushes her down with soft ferns. She’s a good animal, sturdy and clear-headed. James relies on her to find the way when he cannot. In Southland, New Zealand in 1858 there are few roads and almost no paths. 

He’s camped just out of sight of the Merivale homestead. Stars float heavy and full-bellied above. There’s the constant sound of water, and the hoots and booms of night birds in not-yet-felled native forest. Tree frogs croak. There’s no wind, smoke lifts straight from his fire. The sweet smell of baking damper rises from a stick over the coals. He’s eaten this meal for days on end and has started to crave fresh greens, carrots and beets. Or a stew with potatoes. His mouth waters. The damper is thick and sweet, only good when it’s hot. James tries not to burn his fingers, he’s hungry. 

James McKerchar’s mother and younger brother are up at the homestead with Captain Raymond and his young wife. James’ mother is a midwife. She’s asked James to camp near the homestead each night, in case she has need of him. So every night this week, he’s made the long trek back from the blocks in fading light. He carries a book with him always.

When his meal of salt beef and damper is done, James leans back against the saddle, angling the rushlight, to read. The combination of fat, wick, and clay hold the heat and keep the light burning steadily, until his eyes droop and he folds the book back into the oilskin. 

An hour before dawn birds start to sing then halt their swooping calls. James stirs. Something is wrong. He hears his younger brother’s voice, high pitched and urgent, ‘James! James! Come quick, you have to ride!’

The horse doesn’t mind being saddled fast, she nudges his hand for a lump of sugar.

At the house, it’s worse than he thought. James McKerchar’s mother is on the porch, a bundle in her arms. The babe is alive, but needs milk and there’s none. ‘Mrs Raymond died,’ his mother says, the skin of her face is taut with strain, she holds her voice level. She passes James the baby, a boy, ‘Take him to kind Mrs Stevens in Gummie’s Bush.’

“The infant, snugly wrapped in blankets, was handed to me, and off we set. There was no track and no landmarks, but the journey was made and the little one safely delivered into the kindly arms of Mrs Stevens.” James McKerchar*1

James writes that the baby boy “throve.”  Though sadly he drowned years later while working as a surveyor. It’s a wild story. Within it, I kept thinking about James McKerchar’s trustworthiness, Mrs Stevens’ kindness through tragedy.

There was no path.

There were no landmarks.

The journey was made.

Imagine being the person who brings the rushlight of trust and kindness into the wild story.

Usually I hide when blind-sided by life. Last week my smallest dog was attacked and badly wounded. She’s had surgery, and is recovering well. Though I shook for five days after this happened, then drifted into a deeper gloom over the wild-dog random aggression of the world. In recent years I’ve been practising an idea Sarah Wilson puts forward in her book, First We Make the Beast Beautiful, namely: find a way to be held. So, when in darkness, I’ve learned to reach out, even when my instinct is to hide.

Not wanting to leave my dog’s side, and not wanting to actually see anyone either. I emailed a dear friend, told her how I was feeling. I asked her to send me a poem. When the miracle of it arrived I knew then how to write James McKerchar’s story. 

With Carolyn McCurdie’s permission, I’ve included her poem below. In it we are held by trees, by a forgotten place brought to light, held by connection. It’s a rushlight. 

Old Pine Plantation

This is the place you run to. It slows you, gentles you
with sifted light, as if through a lace curtain. 
Pine needles, decades deep, knit stitches of hush;
high tree-tops sway, keep watch over the silence.

The first time you came you were shocked by the quiet.
You wondered, is this what it’s like to be dead?
Then you breathed the earthiness, clean, sharp. Gear-change
in your heartbeat. Unhurried and strong. Strong. Strong.

Years ago, someone planted these trees, then forgot.
Or the plan got lost, or the map. Instead, a wildness
shaped itself, soft, dark, at its own steady pace, 
round a regular pulse of tree, gap, tree. No judgement here.

No failure. Just an anchored space that invites you in
to watch the light, how it floats in angled drifts. 
And in case you doze off, a finger-snap joke: crash, crack,
a pine cone falls and bounces. Gotcha. A flash of white

as a rabbit flaunts its bum at you. Even your laughter’s different here,
comes rolling up from your deep tree roots. And when you walk
back to a world that’s sometimes crass, sometimes grim, you still
hear that beat inside: tree, gap, tree. Strong. Strong. It holds you.

by  Carolyn McCurdie

A writer friend of mine often says, ‘We are remembered by what we complete.’ And while I agree, I find it more remarkable when history remembers us for our character. What a relief it is to have James McKerchar, Mrs Stevens and Carolyn McCurdie’s kindnesses threaded through the large, medium and small violences of history.

References:

 *1: James Herries Beattie. The Southern Runs. The Gore Historical Society, 1979.

*2 Sarah Wilson. First We Make the Beast Beautiful. Macmillan, 2017. 

Note on my retelling of James’ McKerchar’s story:

These are the images, sights and sounds that came to me as I read the bare bones of the story as recorded by James Herries Beattie in The Southern Runs. The setting details are fictionalised versions of a real place west of the Aparima river, formerly known as The Merivale Run, in Southland, New Zealand. At that time the Aparima river was briefly called The Jacobs.

Rushlight - should technically be spelled rush light, but rushlight is how James McKerchar spelled it, and I prefer his spelling.