Like a lot of people, I’ve watched the footage of the insane floods in Nepal. Actually I glimpsed some footage in horror and then looked away- watching people’s most intimate moment of terror felt… too intimate. Instead, I listened to the news reports in detail and read/listened to numerous experts, journalists, and climate leaders basically saying “I told you so”. Glaciers are melting, people will die – specifically brown people. Hop Hopkins’s words around having “disposable people” comes to mind…

“You can’t have climate change without sacrifice zones, and you can’t have sacrifice zones without disposable people, and you can’t have disposable people without racism.”

I can’t quite see something like this happening in Sydney, New York, London – can you? Preventative work would have been done, plans made*, infrastructure built. Of course, there’s nowhere safe from the impacts of climate change, and these big cities are wildly vulnerable (just not necessarily to floods). But there are definitely countries and regions which will and are feeling the impacts of climate change much, much sooner and stronger. And they’re predominantly the countries in the Global South. The UN warns that millions of people are at risk from glacial floods in Himalayas in years to come. Millions. Hop Hopkins is saying, address racism and you address climate change. How? it feels big, hard and intersectional in my brain – which I suspect may not be smart enough to articulate it, but I can feel it. It’s something about redistributing wealth with equity (no more 1%), tackling racism, addressing classism. stopping fossil fuels being burned and ensuring politics puts people and planet before profit and power.

A friend and I exchanged voice memos this week, she’s feeling flat; a dear family friend of hers was in Nepal and is currently one of the unaccounted for in the flooded region. No words.

How do we move ourselves through these times. How do we want to be in the world amongst all the “very very bad things”?

In my voice memo I sent back to my friend I shared some of things that help me. Mostly art and nature. I’ll paint pictures of birds and go walking/running the local bush. But I’ll also dream up projects that allow me to project my heart and hope into the world. Inspired by this person, this summer I’m planning on walking the length of Lutruwita/Tasmania (around 400km) in less than 2 weeks inside a giant puppet of the Tasmanian Azure Kingfisher to raise funds for conservation. I’m certain there are easier way to fundraise; but it feels essential to bring art into the conversation. I’m calling it my performance art project. It’s also why I created Time Rebel – a climate-justice cabaret, The Stuff of Dreams animation and The Platypus Party. All projects around big, horrible problems which are ever-increasing in scale and frequency. But to all these problems I find that again and again at least part of the answer is community and creativity. This is where you’ll find me.

I have so much love, gratefulness and respect for the unbridled artist. The musicians, comedians, painters, and entertainers and performers of all kinds out there. They bring us back to smiling, to laughing, back to feeling awe, connection and to the very spirit of being alive.

Special mentions of to comedian Kyla Cobbler who makes me laugh out loud, Amanda Palmer for reminding me again and again that handing-your-whole-heart-over to the world is maybe the most important thing we can do.  And to childhood educator and entertainer Ms Rachel who’s quite possibly the most hardcore of the hardcore activists out there. Standing up and advocating for children everywhere. The music from Massive Attack, Dolly. Gurrumul, Kneecap, that speaks to so much and poet Wendell Berry who passed on just a few days ago (Aug 31). Another giant gone. I love his writing. Like so many of us, he left a mark on me. A couple of lines from the end of his poem ‘Below’ are forever etched in me and have shaped my perspective on life. They go:

“All my dawns cross the horizon and rise, from underfoot. What I stand for is what I stand on.”

And then there’s this poem of his too…

“When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

Finding peace in the wild. Yes.

But it’s not enough for me. I also do everything I can to change business as usual (to protect the wild and all life). So while you might not find me locking on to bulldozers and getting arrested (at this point in my life), you will find me in a giant bird puppet walking across the country or performing a climate justice cabaret. And always, always in the garden.

*I have heard on the radio from numerous experts that much planning and research has been done already, just not enacted.

• Support Nepal – If you’re able, the ABC is supporting the Emergency Action Alliance member charities and their local partners based in Nepal.