What did you get for Christmas?' they ask. Always ask,
Every year,
And every year I brush it off, for what words are there
For what I had? Even words to remind myself come hard, but to tell others,
Especially these,
At work,
Never solo, never silent, never unconnected,
Could they understand what I could tell, if I could find the words?
What did I get ? I got . . .
. . . sun- and moon- and starlight.
I got skies every shade of blue, from the red-, orange-, yellow-streaked green-tinged paleness of dawn
To the deepest near-black blue of starbright moonless midnight.
I got all skies, in fact, parti-coloured, streaked and puffed with white
And grey, all greys that ever were, grey to purple sometimes, grey almost to black as the storm clouds bred and lowered.
I got the chill soothing of mountain creek water on a ticklish throat,
And its bone-numbing bite on bared feet and legs.
Got waterfalls and their rivers that lead to and from;
Got the creeks that joined to make the rivers,
Got the bogs and soaks that birthed the creeks
And the rains before they soaked into the earth to start the cycle once again.
I got the heady scent of Prostanthera and Kunzea
On a fog-shrouded ridge.
All senses other muffled by the mist.
I got a silence so profound I felt at times that I could hear again;
Hear the clump of boot on granite,
The rustle of gaiter through scrub and grass,
The snap of a twig underfoot.
And, perhaps,
Then
And there,
I could . . .
I got tired of trying to work out which of the towering tumbled tors on Big Brassy was the highest
So I climbed them all.
I got the cautious companionship of wombats by night,
And the flittery, jittery flight
Of bats at hunt.
Got the shiver and rustle of scrub as lizards and small furry things
Frighted at my passing;
Got the sullen slither of a sluggish brown snake on a cloudy day,
And the uncaring slide across bare foot of a whitelip on an afternoon too hot for startlement.
I got to share a still sun-kissed rock through the last hour of day
With a small bronze skink;
Got to be the unwitting saviour of another
From the breakfast-hungry coils of a snake
Startled into carelessness by my approach.
I got an early morning flight of gang-gangs, staring into the same cloud-buried river valley that intrigued me,
The bob and dart of pipits from rock to grass to shrub and back,
The crimson flash of rosellas through snowgums,
The knowing curiosity of the yellow-eyed currawong,
The whirr of buttonquail from the grassy plain,
The sly superior mockery of the ravens,
The soar, hover, plunge of kestrel and eagle.
Got butterflies and moths of every shade and size
From the tiny copper-blue Zizina floating, dead, in a tadpoled pool,
To a green-and-black lacewinged beauty
Feeding on the snowdaisies in the Rolling Grounds.
I got bruised and scratched and stung and bitten;
Got lips chapped and split and bleeding,
Burnt first by wind and then by sun.
I got the crouching lion of the north, Jagungal,
In storm and stillness,
Light and dark,
Day and night.
Green-grassed, white quartzed, the lichened summit stones,
The granite bouldered rolling ridges;
Got him shy and private, swathed in cloud from forest to rock;
Got him bright and open as a full-blown summer rose.
I got him in all the season's moods save its sudden shocking snows.
I got stride, slip, stumble, scamper, scramble, squelch, plod.
I got the tangling, twisted bleached-white limbs of burned-out alpine scrub
Twisting through the snowgrass,
Tangled over rocks,
Still singing their silent chorus with the snowgums.
I got hot and sweaty, wet and cold, tired and hungry.
I got to live to a different rhythm, to measure time in other ways:
By the turning of the earth,
The waning of the moon,
By the ache of hip, twinge of knee, rumble in the belly.
I got to crouch behind a concrete pillar on a wind-blasted mountaintop
And watch as the world slowly formed
And shaped
And coloured itself with the growing light of a new day;
And then turned and hid itself within dark swirling dampness.
I got the curious isolation
And dislocation
Of walking in heavy fog,
Carrying one small bubble of perception
Through the soft grey nothingness the world had become.
I got a fingernail-thin sliver of crescent moon rising just before the sun and then leading it into the west.
I got one perfect day on the Main Range
That began
And ended
In fog, but all the hours between were made to order,
Clear skied, but for the small streaks and puffs that came to break the boredom of solid blue,
With the biting blow-you-sideways winds of days before and after
Dropped to a breeze just enough to keep the air from stillness. And, so, I got . . .
. . . out to the Sentinel by the straight route -
Heart still dancing its samba-beat upon the summit rocks -
Then back by one yet worse,
A boottip, fingergripping scramble of mossed and crumbling rock
That, when done, had me knowing I could do it all.
I got the joy,
The fierce, sky-ringing exhilaration
Of mountaintops alone
By midday, dawn and dusk.
Got the warm deep satisfaction that comes
When you aim
And try
And do.
I got to love the mountains more
Every day,
Every hour,
Every step,
Until I was them and they were me and we were all,
All life
All love,
All time and place.
I got so used to solitude I felt at times I was the only human there -
Not only in the mountains, but in all the world,
For the mountains were the world -
And all the petty ills ands vices of man
Were nothing -
The wars and famines, the bigotry, hatred and oppression, the politics and arguments and waste,
All were meaningless and touched me not
(Not even the cricket)
For I stood outside them, and apart from them.
And, so, I got to be both more
And less
Than human.
I got me, heart and soul.
I got the world.
I got life.
I got real . . .
. . . oh, a bit. This and that. Enough.
And you?
.
