The Nomadic Alternative – Page 128

wanting to get up and stretch his legs. "They resemble fidgety birds of passage who feel happy and inwardly calm only when they are on the move ..." Unencumbered freedom of movement was the pivot round which all their other activities revolved.

They constructed only the flimsiest of houses, often little more than rough windbreaks of a few branches to protect mothers with small children from the howling wind. Once abandoned these simple structures were free for anyone else to use. The Yaghan felt uncomfortable in caves, but sometimes roosted under the overhang of rocks.

They wandered in small bands, but would congregate in larger parties round the carcass of a stranded whale, remaining together as long as the meat lasted. Far from lacking domestic affection, the children never cried. "They are always happy and contented, whether it is cold or hot." Parents worshipped their children and went frantic when they were lost. A childless life was an empty life. Yet the newborn child had to suffer the full fury of the elements, carried on its mother's back even when she went swimming. Only in torrential rain or snow did she seek the refuge of a hut.

Darwin found a "skill comparable to the instinct of animals". Gusinde judged their technology perfect and conceived with intelligent purpose. This was to allow them to move around the country they loved, matching the movements of the seasons with their own wanderings.

"We will return", they said, "when the green shoots appear - when the sursa crabs crawl from their shells - when the red leaves of the Southern Beech fly - when the water turns brown with algae."

Their terminology of the phases of the year were hinged to changes in the weather, the cycle of vegetation and the migrations of animals and birds. And it has that quality of the Eternal which haunts the seasonal poems of the early Irish hermits or Japanese haiku. During the three months from December to the end of February the fungus, Cyttaria darwini, grew on the knobbly parts of the Notofagus or Southern Beech. The Yaghan divided this period into seven temporal phases. "Fungus arising - Fungus full-blown - Fungus hole-ridden - Fungus with the hyphae all loose - Fungus soft with