This country can make you feel like a God.

The humidity through the day made every breath heavy and warm, and the droplets of sweat rolled quietly down our arms, creating a sheen like armour. As I walked to the nearby cafe and garden nursery with my friend Sam, I soaked up the leaves in their brilliant, desperate luminosity—as if the air were on fire with the life-force of an awakening land.

The simple act of walking down the road becomes a journey of allegiance, as our bodies react to the world around us and announce our place here.

Hours later, sitting on Sam’s balcony which is covered in greenery, I am listening to the sounds of rain birds and lorikeets as pink and green lightning makes fingers in the sapphire cloud, and it’s a strange moment of belonging, and of the triumph in relishing another day in the tropical reaches of the Land Down-Under.

But with this comes a sense of foreboding.

I’ve been saying for a good six months that Donald Trump was going to win this election. I poked and prodded my American and Australian friends with the nightmare, telling them I would be brushing up on my survival skills and begin building my fallout shelter on election day.

I never really thought it would happen.

But now, as I sit here in what could very easily be considered paradise; a world of fierce and stunning extremes, I feel sadness.

I feel fear. 

A net is closing in around us. That world—pregnant and full with possibility, with wildness—is now in serious peril.

I’m discovering, chillingly, that I am not afraid for me. I am afraid for this world that we have already pushed to its limits. Our keeper, whose patience and kindness we have already exhausted. Our caring host, whom we have already abused—who we have torn apart, screams be damned.

There has been a lot for us to worry about during the lead up to this election, and through this draining and emotional day—numbers and faces and policies and zingy one-liners.

But after the counting was done and the guillotine had begun its inevitable descent upon the Democrat dream, I turned away and intended to give myself a break. Instead, I allowed myself to truly feel.

There is a menacing static in the air today. I feel it floating with the warm spring winds from across a deep, dark sea.

With this fear comes defiance, and with defiance comes hope. We need to see the truth behind the trick—these moments are human made, and they can be human challenged just the same. I urge everyone who feels the same fear that I do to take a walk. Remember who we really are.

We’re not political puppets. We’re not pawns for a global game of chess, played on a virtual board made of propaganda and dollar signs. We are not numbers in a line, toys in factory—built to consume.

We are creatures. We are hearts and souls and keen-eyed warriors. We are guardians. We are the soil you run through your fingers and the storms that roll through the mountain pass.

If Gods run wild in any place, I have no doubt that it is here. But soon, they may be hunted down like dogs.

The real question is: will we let them?

~

Author: Erin Lawson

Images: Instagram/Donald Trump ; Instagram/Erin Lawson

Editor: Erin Lawson