With a happy family off to school and work, animals and house all sorted, and no pressing need to be in the bakery, I have a day of bookwork ahead of me.
But first I head out along one of my favourite tracks for a walk. The morning feels calm after the tumult and motion of yesterday, when the trees roared in the wind and the paddocks and hillsides of long grass flowed continuously, the wind rippling and running through it, caressing the leaves and blades, smoothing the stalks, combing the fat seed heads, sweeping across and up and around and down the hills.
Today there is only a faint drizzle and stir of a breeze. I walk through tall gums and under heavy, silent cypress, the roadside full and rioting with grasses and weeds, seed heads bending under their own weight and dripping shining droplets. A family of magpies sits in the branches of a wattle tree, the babies learning to warble. Fantails flit and trill. I reach the top of a hill and the track sweeps down around the shoulder, leading me on as the sun almost breaks from the clouds and fills the valley with golden mist. The hills are patchworked with paddocks cut for silage and paddocks locked up for hay, black-dotted with cows and cream-dotted with sheep, lines of pines and cypress, patches of remnant bush and plantings of new, plantations creeping down the farthest hills. On days like this I could walk forever, down into the valley and up the hills on the other side, and so on to the sea.
But the track comes to an end, at a padlocked gate beneath two Moreton Bay figs, an old shearing shed among gums behind it. I stand and listen to the rising wind, and turn and walk back up, the wind driving in the drizzle now. The paddocks are not rippling today, they are wet and heavy with overnight rain. The gums are strong greys and greens, thriving and enticing. Behind a row of pines, the air is still and the drizzle floats quietly in. A grey thrush calls and a young fox trots ahead of me, seemingly oblivious both to me and the rabbits I can see ahead of him, exploring this new morning world. He turns away into the grasses, the rabbits lope off to burrows in the pine roots. The track curves round beneath the gums again and the hills are clouded in grey now, the rain sheets in on the wind , wetting my face, turning my clothes dark. Drips fall from the trees and hanging bark rattles softly in the gusts.
I have a day of bookwork in front of me. I’ll go home and stoke the fire and pull the kettle across for a pot of tea, and rug up in the office. I’d rather be outside or buried in a book. But with this hour tucked in a pocket inside of me, I can face anything.