JACK

the winter runner

After selling all his possessions, Jack jumped in his van with his dog Rosie and fled from winter… for good. He’s more of a summer guy, you see.

“Haven’t worn socks in 6 years,” he said. 

I found him during his sixth year of summer at a place called Archer's Point - a croc-filled beach on the coast of Cooktown, four hours above Cairns.  He was slumbered under the shade of palms with his dreaded-head leaning against a mound of coconuts. Rosie sat by his side licking out the flesh of one he'd cracked open for her. 

I sat with him under the coconut palms as he told me of his life since 2011. How he’s jumped from one place to another chasing the sun.

When I asked how he filled his time and made his money, he replied, “I fix trees. Look after parts of the earth that are forgotten.” 

Before Jack could read his mother gave him a picture book about different kinds of trees. When he learnt to put letters together, he began reading everything he could about them. And eventually he became a professional tree surgeon - otherwise known as an arborist. Most of his life he's devoted his time to planting, gardening, and healing the things that make our paper.

Jack alternates his summer's between Australia and overseas, between places of solitude and places with people (because he believes it’s important to share his love of the land). 

On weekends, Archer's Point is filled with campers. Parents gave their children money and sent them to Jack, who seated by his mound of coconuts, was often mistaken for a food vendor in business. 

I watched as he whispered to the children to put the coins in their pockets while their parents weren't looking and then showed them how to climb the palm by tying his socks around the trunk and using it to leverage themselves up. 

“It’s fun having them around. They look after Rosie while I go fishing. No longer have to worry about her wandering into the mouth of a croc,” he said.

Jack’s favourite summer was in a German forest where he stumbled across an abandoned log cabin, lived off wild blueberries all season and found trees not even he knew existed.

“I must have eaten something hallucinatory a couple of times because some days I’d be out of it and the blueberries would be the size of my fist.”

He’s only had one bad summer since starting his winter strike. It was in Austria and just when he thought nature had his back, he walked right into a hornet hive and tumbled down a hill where he lay swollen until the next morning. Though when he woke he was surrounded by maple trees with hazelnuts growing out the trunks. Hard to snap open and he got shards through his skin every time, but once he figured out a way he was in heaven. 

“Hazelnuts are my favourite,” he said with closed eyes. “I almost forgot about the hornet stings.”

And that’s a little bit of the life of Jack. He gets a badge for chasing the sun, and for tending to trees and living under the shade of their leaves.