I went on a trip, just overnight, with Cynthia. She is an artist, almost 70 years old, a wild woman, my neighbor and friend. We were visiting some property that she purchased with a group of people 30 years ago - a remote parcel in rural New South Wales.
We drove out of Sydney on a very dreary, chilly, rainy Tuesday morning. I didn't know what felt more ominous; navigating the dark, crowded, unfamiliar streets of the sprawling city, or venturing into the rugged wild of the outback.
With a gradual thinning, we went from city to town, to suburb, to farm and ranch land, eventually through some charming old small towns, and off the main road. We headed along a main dirt road where we saw mobs of grey kangaroo hanging around eating grass and scratching their bellies. Unfortunately, we also saw too many dead animal corpses in the ditches on the sides of the road - kangaroos and wallabies, three wombats, some foxes, and I don't know what else. It made me sad to be part of the system that moves at such speed, callously leaving devastation in its path.
Other than the sound of our vehicle and the birds, it was quiet. The rain had stopped and the sky was clearing. Oh, and we had Cynthia's 16 year old boarder collie, Tui, sleeping on a cushion in the back of the truck. We listened to the rhythm of her breathing in between chatting and singing along with Bob Dylan on the CD player.
We kept going down smaller and rougher rocky roads. I couldn't believe that anyone would actually try to pass down these "roads," let alone stay out there, let alone live out there. To me, it felt like wilderness. Part of what we were driving through was national parkland, but about half of it was actually privately owned. There were houses and shelters tucked away all around the valley and a few people lived there full time. The part that we were going to, owned by nine people, was 500 acres! I felt very strongly, the presence of the spirits of the original stewards of the land. We didn't see anyone the two days we were there. It was a decompressing, purging of the modern world, and a soaking up of nature.
I wrote a poem about it.
If I say
If I say the road was bumpy, it means nothing.
The canyon wall was shear and very jagged.
The stars and planets were so so bright!
There were small green birds pecking at the road.
There were large black birds –
a pair, with red under their tail feathers.
They only eat the seeds from one kind of tree.
A big black animal moved through the trees as we
arrived.
So many kinds of Eucalypts everywhere we looked.
We saw three dead wombats.
We heard Bell Birds ringing sharp and clear.
Lemon trees were planted in the enclosed area.
It was winter, but there were lemons.
There were rows of garlic growing, and lavender back
by the dunnie.
The grass was covered with small brown balls of
kangaroo poop.
We peed on the ground with the sun shining on our
bottoms.
There was wind, a flash storm, and a rainbow.
We made a fire in the stove and drank tea.
Cynthia had beautiful old plaid woolen blankets –
green and turquoise.
I went for a pee under the black sky.
I thought of the line from the song
“The stars were so many there, they seemed to
overlap.”
It didn’t begin to describe all those large,
bright, heavenly bodies.
I watched pink clouds appear in the morning along
the ridge.
Then the sky got light grey, then blue.
I
walked silently to the edge of the grass
Looking for sleeping animals.
I
heard the wind moving like the
Breath of the Earth.
I looked closely at the details - the worlds, the
systems
on the ground.
There
was a Mother Oak with pods
That had been torn open
And eaten by the black birds with the red tails.
I shivered in my pajamas, but didn’t want to
leave.
The sun was warming my back. All alone.
You have to try to imagine.
I can’t really describe it.
You have no idea… …
