The Writer's Block

AS we enter the seventh day of June, I plan to spend the day working with other volunteers and staff from one of our local natural resource management groups. We will be smoking and heating seed from native plants that will be used to re-vegetate a farm which has been degraded by years of farming. The area to be planted is alongside a creek which leads in to the Stokes Inlet, an estuary within the Stokes Inlet National Park. The location for this exercise is my family's small farm overlooking the Pink Lake, 100km east of where we currently live and work.

As I drive the bitumen road to my destination, I reflect on the wild days enjoyed so far. We have worked in the garden , sinking our fingers in to the dirt, marveling at the life in the soil. We marveled at the daddy long legs spiders in our house, and the speed with which they could create their simple but deadly and effective web traps. We rode our horses in the morning, feeling the fresh air on our faces as a new day began. It is cold! We have walked on deliciously green clover and phalaris pastures, watching kangaroos graze in the low winter light, and we have driven over bridges crossing flowing rivers and noticed cows balanced precariously as the nibble sweet feed on the river banks. We have marveled at the setting sun and the way it has brushed the sugar gums golden as it lazily dwindled in the western sky. We have been having a wild time and savouring as much as we can!

But my attention is grasped by radio reports of wild weather in the eastern states of Australia. As I drive, I hear of flooded valleys and homes washed away. People have drowned, livestock have been lost. At the same time, a Severe Weather Warning is issued for the area we live in. Gale force winds. High tides. Sheep weather alert. The drive home will be a wild one as the storm will hit this afternoon. Quite literally, a wild time lies ahead!