we are on school holiday dreaming time here… and mid winter holidays… I took us all to get some ‘big sky’. It’s a funny thing this, hunting for space to breathe in. It’s not that Castlemaine isn’t the perfect place for pounding the earth in the mornings, seeking some solace in the macro of the immediate environment, or breathing deep into the fiercely icy pinpricked sky at night… it’s just, no matter where I live… I always seek out some desert big sky to really expand my lungs and breathe deep.

BUT… as someone who is always trapped by my own environmental consciousness… (and because I”m becoming quite comfortable in this land of blog… perhaps because I feel that tam, you and I are the only ones reading this week after week!)… I think this quote from aldo leopold summed up my emotions upon return:

“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.”
― Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

So.. instead… I spent my birthday in Broken Hill (mad max II museum in silverton to be exact)… a jot in a road that cuts through some of the most abused country I can remember viewing… I could have focused on spinifex or brahminy kites… the abundance of pelican on menindee lake (above the sad old darling river beyond the wall damming it)… instead… Broken hill at night and my denim, linen and thread interpretation of that.

Can’t say I remember ever looking forward to arriving back to my clipped, landscaped (yet somehow nurtured) part of the world back in central victoria before, as much as I did last week! Although… I did breathe wonderfully deep for a few days at Lake Mungo… and the sun shone on us like it wasn’t here! ooroo…

week 9

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