Evening in September, spring in an Australian temperate zone, the last vestige of the sun dipping below the horizon, directly ahead far away but seemingly at eye level the high snowclad peaks of a range of mountains are etched sharply against the darkening sky. Before me the River surges in all its glory, breathtaking, awesome, deafening, stunning the senses. At least a thousand metres wide, roaring with springmelt, frolicking and tumbling over the landscape eastwards along a well-worn course.
Momentarily the air above the water mists and shimmers into a million colours. The noise lessens; I see the waters still surging but gentler now, their course a little deeper than before. An early shooting star draws my gaze upwards to see the mountains, lower now, not so sharp. Again the blink. I find myself looking down on an undulating terrain where a quiet stream wends its way along a curving course, smoothly joined here and there by creeks sweeping in from north and south like access roads to a freeway. Watching the flow, I see the stream itself merge with a much larger river perhaps a kilometer away to the east. Final stanza.. The third eye has closed. Away to the south west the mountains are but a shadow of their original majesty. Closer to hand, a a creamy-coloured swathe marks the line of one of the creeks I saw earlier, comes to a halt at the foot of the low hill on which I am standing, a mound apparently composed of river pebbles. By the looks of things, the original watercourses are still there, much reduced and all underground. The incongruousness of it all strikes me as I walk down the hill, through a gateway to where the car is parked by the weathered granite outcrop I call devahome, both of which would have been buried a hundred metres deep by those surging waters but for a few zillion years. The ?creamy swathe? is african lovegrass; samples of soil taken by James Hedley from there and immediately adjacent show startling differences. Are we on the way to some equally incredible conclusions, I wonder? Maybe. roger First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win. - _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx
