The beauty of country in all of its minuteness and subtlety leaps out at me. I feel reeled in, pulled forward, there is no labour in this walking. These images are another portal into being with country when I am in another time and place. Just like every place has a feeling, each image carries with it an imprint of that feeling (le-an). There are significant stories associated with many of these images… they too fill unfurl and be visible over time.
Filed under Walking
Walking in
connected silence, in
conversation with country.
Words as feelings,
passing through the soles of my feet.
Tone changes as we leave
pandanas forest and rise over dunes.
Serge of excited babble as we
descend,
onto a stretch of white sandy beach.
Blue, blue, blue
screaming at me…
Hurry up! Dive!
But when we get to the freshwater paperbark,
you tell me
sleep.
Conversation finds its way into
a dream-space
Black and blue dancers
float under the canopy.
Rising.
Falling.
Never touching the ground.
There is a beach I used to walk on a lot when I was growing up.
Each year I would hear the beach calling to me, or maybe it was the mountain above which cast its shadows on the sand.
My feet knew when they walked on the sand that something was talking; my heart knew to listen.
The feeling inside me grew; it’s still growing.
Sometimes, there’s a song in my heart that’s so loud, I feel like I’m going to burst… when I’m on that beach.
One time I was floating in the sea, looking back at the beach. I felt weightless and free. Another time I stood and watched the clouds pouring through the gap in distant mountains. Another story was being told, one from the east.
If I lay down on that beach and never got up, I think I would become the sand. Maybe the waves would wash over me and reflect an image of the mountain, the one that whispers stories to my heart.
