The Waterfall – Finale

Random information about my weekend. I went to the movies this afternoon … saw ‘The Avengers’.

My brain ‘sploded!

 

The Waterfall – Part 1 … and Part 2 … 

… the saga concludes …

The thunderous ovation from the floodwaters surrounded me. I couldn’t hear or see anything else. The tiny trickle of water cascading down the cliff-face exploded into a vicious muddy torrent that pulled me to the edge of the cliff. For some reason I tried to reach my backpack that I’d left beside the little pool. I think I had some strange idea that I’d need it. Like it could save me if I went over the edge.

The oddest things go through our minds when we’re operating in crisis mode don’t they? When I had the motorcycle accident all I could think of was holding onto my helmet (it almost certainly saved my life) and finding my bike keys, in case somebody tried to steal it while I wasn’t there to safeguard it. No matter that I was bleeding out and had bits of my leg scattered all over the place – and bits of my bike were also scattered all over the place.

As the waters of that flash flood threatened to hurtle me a couple of hundred meters down the side of a cliff, all I focused on was that backpack and how it might save me.

Maybe it did.

The ledge that the little glade had hitched itself to gave way under the pressure of the floodwater. The ferns vanished in an instant. I thought I saw the backpack follow after them and leaned out to grab it. I overbalanced and fell toward the torrent.

In two staggering steps I made it through the water to the other side where the ledge continued on past the waterfall. If I’d stumbled I would’ve fallen into the water and that would’ve been the end of me.

With one secure handhold and one foot on solid rock, I waited out the flood. It felt like forever, and the strangest thing was, I looked around and saw the sun still shining in that clear blue sky, as though nothing untoward had happened.

I laughed. Not hysterically, though I was sorely tempted. Just the kind of laugh that says, ‘I’m alive.’

I waited for an hour or so until the flood passed. The rock had been scoured bare, of ferns, of the dappled pool, of the trail back.

I looked in the other direction. That’s all there was between me and a very uncomfortable set of choices. A bit past where I was standing the ledge widened out to what could properly be called a trail. I had enough adrenaline in me to cross those few short meters and step onto it before my legs gave way.

I collapsed onto the ground and shook, and cried, and laughed, probably hysterically, until a late afternoon breeze offered up the smell of a B-B-Q to remind me that all the best adventures end with a well earned feast. (I wasn’t all that far from ’civilisation’. It just felt like a long, long way away)

*

After the bike accident, after six surgeries had attempted to put the jig-saw pieces of my leg together in the right order, I finally made it back to coherence, all bandaged up in a hospital bed, and not knowing if I’d ever properly walk on two legs again. I found the keys to my motorbike, (which was also in pieces) on the chest of drawers next to my bed. It took me the longest time to finally let go of them … but that’s another story.

*

“A weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill except for learning how to grow in rows” – Doug Larson

The Waterfall – Part 2

Here is Part 1 of ‘The Waterfall’

… and so … the adventure continues …

The sun shone so bright it hurt. I should’ve stopped a while back to drink some water from my canteen, but that pesky urge to ‘know what’s around the next corner’ kept me going until I had nowhere to stop and haul it out of my backpack. ‘Note to self; hang the water on the front of my backpack from now on’

I gingerly inched my way round yet another gnarl of sandstone that my ever-dwindling track remained determined to hug with limpet-like persistence. Shuffling sideways, my face pressed against the rockface, I tested another handhold and stepped over a crumbling bit of sandstone.

Suddenly everything around me turned dark. I just about fell off the side of the mountain right then and there!

That’s the difference between being in the sunlight on the side of a cliff and stepping into the shade … on the side of a cliff.

I unpuckered certain orifices and blinked ferociously until I could see into the shadows.

A tiny rill of water had found its way down from the Escarpment cutting a deep cleft into the soft sandstone. The cleft widened out somewhere above my head, due perhaps, to a fault in the sandstone striations, and formed a waystation for slightly foolish humans, and other slightly less insane forms of life. It penetrated deep enough into the cliff-face that it created its own micro-environment. Deep enough that I could actually sit down. Deep enough so that it formed a tiny pool of the clearest coldest water I’d ever tasted. Giant ferns draped themselves overhead and nodded in the slight updraft funneled from the valley below.

Have you ever sat beside a tiny waterfall and listened to the sound? It’s a balm to the spirit and you can’t help but smile at all the stresses and stressors you were somehow so concerned about just a short while earlier.

I sat there until the sun shifted further west and bathed my little hidden glade in golden light. It was time to return. I slowly stood up and heard a sound in the distance, like the rumble of thunder. All the sky I could see from my admittedly limited vantage point glowed a serene and cloudless blue.

The ferns shivered and a sudden hard cold wind flattened them,  bustled its way down the cleft and spattered me with flecks of muddy water.

*

“I beg your pardon, Owl, but I th-th-th-think we’re coming to a fatterfall … a flutterfal … a very big waterfall” – Piglet (from ‘Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day’)

 

The Waterfall

Earlier today Mrs Widdershins, the Widdershins cat and I, were hanging out in our back yard in the sunshine, and watching the antics of the bluejays and robins. The warmer weather had prompted a nest of carpenter ants (Mrs Widdershins thinks) to swarm. They’d hatched a bunch of flying queens who were going about their business of flying and being queens. The birds were having a field day. All that protein on the wing.

All in all an aerial ballet that was a joy to behold. Although, I’m guessing the ant queens weren’t too pleased about being the main course.

… And now we return you to our regular broadcast.

Here’s the story I promised Janna  in the comments of my ‘Shaman’ post.

This is the paragraph in question:

“It was only after a solid year of instruction that my teacher let me venture forth on my own and would not/did not attempt to rescue me. I made it back intact, but it was the scariest thing I’ve done in my life. Scarier even than hanging on by a single hand and foot grip to the side of a cliff-face while a flash-flood created waterfall burst over my head. What? Haven’t I told you that story before? Well … perhaps another time.”

So … In order for me to tell this story we have to travel to the other side of the planet, dip down into another hemisphere, and do a little time travelling … to Australia – specifically the East coast -  about 20 years ago.

If you drive west from Sydney for about 2 hours you’ll reach the heart of the Blue Mountains. I grew up in the eastern shadow of these mountains and vowed that one day I would live on the highest peak I could find … and I  did. It wasn’t all that high compared to the mountains I have in my back yard these days, but as with all things it’s a matter of perspective.

It was a rather magical time in my life when, by inclination and finances, I was living by myself … with three cats and a puppy who thought she was a cat.

In a bygone era, in the first decades of the beginning of the 20th Century, gentlefolk would motor up from Sydney and the surrounding lowlands to escape the brutal heat of Summer.

The area was also renowned for its healing waters, and many a struggling author or consumptive heiress would take the ‘cure’ offered at the palatial hotels that perched on the edge of Megalong Valley.

Walking trails were hewn into the steep valleys and for a time it was possible for those gentlefolk  to walk from Mt Victoria (where I lived) to Blackheath, to Katoomba without ever descending to the valley floor or resorting to the roads on the plateau above.

Over time most of these trails fell into disuse, and the ancient mountain range reclaimed her own.

*
This is, of course, where my part in the story begins.
Sunny day? … check. Feeling restless? … check. Always wanting to know what was around the next corner? … check. Unexplored trail beckoning? … check. Small backpack with essential survival gear? … check. Knowing that after my motorcycle accident I could survive just about anything? … priceless.
I’d explored parts of this particular trail before. It sloped down from the carpark towards the edge of the escarpment, and wandered through gullys where huge ferns created tunnels of greenness. It led under sandstone overhangs where flash floods carved out caves deep enough for the first peoples who migrated to this land to live in, and leave their marks on the walls with red ochre and pointed sticks. A tiny rill of water always burbled alongside the track, no matter how dry the rest of the bush was. And that summer had been a particularly long and brutal one.
I followed the trail until it opened out onto the edge of the cliff. I stood on the precipice and breathed in the scent of sun-parched sandstone. The blue haze from the eucalyptus trees that gave these mountains their name hung thick across the valley below. A hint of bushfire smoke rose against the far horizon.
I sat on the warm rock and dangled my feet into the abyss while I decided if I would turn back, or not. I felt hot and sweaty and the thought of returning to the cool path was truly tempting. Just a little bit more tempting was the unexplored path that clung to the side of the cliff and wound out of sight.
As I headed off I took note of the clouds gathering to the north-west. I rightly judged they would pass me by.
The track soon deteriorated into a ledge that hung off the side of the nearly perpendicular cliff. Even with my bum leg I was sure-footed enough not too be concerned, even though there was no place to turn around. What would I do if the track petered out completely? I’d deal with it  if the time came.
The time came, right about the same time that those clouds dumped a load of rain into the watershed of a tiny creek that cascaded down the cliff-face a couple of meters from where I’d paused in my adventure to admire the view!
… to be continued …
*
“I have been in Sorrow’s kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows, with a harp and sword in my hands” – Zora Neale Hurston, 1891 – 1960  … American folklorist, anthropologist and author.

Getting Back To Work

On her 29th April blog post, frog Nisha talked about the ‘Lucky 7 Challenge’ where a writer goes to their current WIP (Work In Progress) and on either page 7 or 77, go down 7 lines and post the next 7 lines.

Being stuck ‘twixt neither and nuthin’ as far as a direction for any new writing project, I thought long and hard about what I had tucked away in the dusty corners of my files.

When we were packing to move to our island in the middle of the lake, Mrs Widdershins unearthed a stack of papers marked ‘files’, that had probably been sitting in that exact same place since we moved into the apartment. In that pile were several handwritten journals of mine that told the story of the first year of my Shaman apprenticeship. I’d given up any hope of ever seeing them again.

Three cheers for Mrs Widdershins!

I perused page 7, went down 7 lines, and posted the next 7 in the comments section of Nisha’s post, and said to myself, “Self. We should publish that story.”

Self snorted. (rather disparagingly I thought) “Handwritten notes. From 1991. Do you remember how … erm … how to say this delicately … detailed those notes are?”

I’d thought of a less attractive word, but was willing to go with ‘detailed’.

“Of course I do.” I said. “That’s what’ll make this so interesting. You know you want to.”

With a few semi-audible whines Self capitulated.

So there we have it. Along with the projects I already have active; Book 2 of the ‘Gallery’ series – (working title, ‘Journey of Echoes’), a historical mystery, and a collection of short stories, I am now going to dig out those yellowed journals and transcribe them onto my computer. We’ll see what they decide to become.

P.S. It’s stopped raining. The sun is shining, and we might even get to see that giant moon tonight.

*

“Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art” – Leonardo da Vinci 

Where Did My Beach Go?

Before:

… misty mountains … a bit soggy, but romantic.

After:

… more rain … and snow-melting further up the valley.

*

Brutus:

“There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures”

William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Act 4, scene 3

Tagged and Bagged

Frog (friends on blogs) Nisha has tagged me in an interesting game.

But first, a word on such things.

When I first began to engage with the interwebz, waaaay back last century, a certain sort of forwarded email was all the rage. The kind where you have to send the email to four (or 10, or whatever) of your friends within the next half hour, and then something wonderful will happen to you. I only bought it once, oh very well, a couple’a times, and then realised there might be a few possible outcomes. 1 – there could be some nefarious code embedded in the emails and I was unwittingly spreading a virus. 2 – I could send out a hundred ‘forwards’ and no ‘wonderfuls’ would happen. 3 – I’d seriously annoy my friends. 4 – I would become known as an easy mark and gazillions of these things would overwhelm my inbox.

So I made it known that, although I appreciated the sentiment, I wasn’t going to pass anything on, for the above mentioned reasons.

Then I started blogging, the reading and writing thereof, and came across the ‘list of questions-to-answer-and-pass-on-to four (or 10, or whatever) of your Frogs for them to do the same with. I initially reacted the same as I had to the email tag games, then I thought about it a bit. This was a novel way to get to know a bit more about my Frogs. (assuming the questions were designed that way, and not just a ‘I’m-passing-this-on-because-that’s-what-everyone-else-is-doing’ kinda thing)

Still, the ‘pass it on’ aspect of the whole thing doesn’t sit well with me, so in the spirit of adding a couple of degrees of separation, I’m going to answer Nisha’s questions, and then pose a few of my own for any of the readers of this blog to answer, either in the comments section here, or in their own way out there on the interwebz.

Nisha’s Questions:

1.       If you attended Hogwarts, which house would you belong to, Hufflepuff, Gryffindor, Ravenclaw or Slytherin?

A – Ravenclaw – they’re such an interesting bunch.

2.       I prefer Twitter to Facebook. Agree or Disagree?

A – No

3.        Romantic dinner at a fancy restaurant or staying in with pizza and a movie?

A – Yes

4.       If you were forced to marry ONE of the following men, who would you choose and why: Ebenezer Scrooge, Severus Snape or Heathcliff? And for the men, who would you marry: Dolores Umbridge, Madame Bovary or Lindsay Lohan?

A – Erm, lesbian here. Pass. Interesting shape of the two parts of this question. The first part for the women is about being forced to marry someone, and the one for the guys is about choice.

5.       Chocolate: white, milk or dark?

A – White

6.       Favourite Horror movie?

A – Didn’t watch them until a little while ago when I watched “Resident Evil‘ on DVD. Loved Milla Jovovich kicking some zombie butt. But why does Michelle Rodriguez keep getting killed off in action flicks? I’m looking at you James Cameron.

7.      If your personality were a colour, what colour would it be?

A – Blue

8.       What famous mystery would you most like to know the answer to? (Eg. The identity of Jack The Ripper or whether OJ was guilty.)

A – What really happened to Atlantis.

9.       If you were about to be executed(God forbid!) what would you choose as your last meal?

A – The same as what is served at the Captain’s Table during the first human piloted mission to Mars. I reckon I’d live a good long life while I waited.

10.   Favourite CSI show: Las Vegas Original, New York or Miami?

A – In the beginning, Las Vegas, but after the romance wore off, I watched New York.

11.   There are too many reality shows on TV. Agree or disagree?

A – Waaaaaaay too many. To the detriment of really good scripted ones with, ya know, real actors in them

*

My questions, if you choose to accept this mission. There are only a few.

1 – What public legacy (excluding happy healthy children) would you like to live on after you’ve left this mortal coil?

2 – What is the one thing you fear you’ll never accomplish?

3 – You’re lost. No-one is coming to find you. What do you do?

4 – Which insect, and why?

 

 

 

 

 

 

*

“To be or not to be is not a question of compromise. Either you be or you don’t be” – Golda Meir, fourth Prime Minister of Israel (Now we know where Yoda got, “Do or Do not! There is no try”)

 

Rain

For almost of my time here in Canada I have lived in apartments. In OZ, the closest I got to an apartment was when I shared a duplex with two women who were in a rather intense and unusual relationship – but that’s another story.

Apartment living is not for the faint of heart. If you’re unlucky enough to be somewhere in the middle of the building, you are surrounded by the sounds smells and energy of your neighbours.

If you are somewhere above the ground floor then you are also isolated from the immediacy of the outdoors. You can perhaps open your patio doors and smell the roses, or admire your hanging tomato plants. I’ve actually known some folk who manage to grow almost all their summer greens on their 9th floor patio.

Mrs Widdershins and I always had our trellises of scarlet runner beans, and managed to claim our share of bounty before the first frost hit.

I grew up in the wilds though. Where rain fell so hard that it hurt. Where drought ravaged the ancient land and left desiccated skeletons of animals and trees as its legacy. The Australian bush is scruffy, harsh edged and harbours nasty stinging and biting things, large and small, that can kill you in minutes.

An apartment in the city never quite won over my heart, even though I liked living there.

Now I live on an island in the middle of a lake! I step out my front door and am greeted by a sea of green – which reminds me, gotta cut the grass! – rather than going through several fire-doors and an elevator to get outside.

Our various rooms are at different ambient temperatures, depending on their use throughout the day, and I feel like I am participating in my home environment rather than having been another component of a closed-in and controlled climate.

I suppose that as Summer draws closer, more people will inhabit their seasonal abodes but right now, the quiet is blissful. Mind you, on our street there are two lads who are in bands, but they are respectful and only occasionally rehearse at home, and then it’s in the afternoon and/or early evening – très civilised!

Apart from feeling like it’s rained every day we’ve been here (not really but it feels like it) I find myself responding to the rain differently. It splashes over the ends of the gutters and falls like a curtain in front of my window. The ground squishes when I walk out to get the mail. (The asphalt pavements in Vancouver never squished)

The most wondrous thing I’ve noticed (or reconnected to) is how immediate this rain upon the Lake is. It begs to be responded to without the buffering of apartment walls, door, or neighbours.

I must put on my wellies and go splash in the puddles. Walk to the lakefront and watch the mist tumble down the mountain on the far shore, across the lake, and up the shore to where I stand, until nothing is left but a memory of Avalon. 

*

“Don’t threaten me with love, baby. Let’s just go walking in the rain” – Billie Holiday

Bon Voyage Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich - 16th May, 1929 – 27th March, 2012

Poet, Essayist, Feminist, Lesbian

Another irreplaceable woman’s voice taken from us much too soon. If you’ve never read any of her writing, or indeed not heard of her before today, please take some time for your self and explore what she had to say.

*

“The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet” – Adrienne Rich 

“Poetry is above all a concentration of the power of language, which is the power of our ultimate relationship to everything in the universe” – Adrienne Rich

Widdershins on the Lake

The move was horrendous. Here are the salient points.

~ It was raining. really, really raining, with an occasional lost snowflake dropping in just to chortle at the state of affairs.

~ Moving-truck driver challenged a chestnut tree to a duel. Chestnut tree won and truck lost its side loading door. Completely. Ripped the thing right off.

~ The half-loaded, and doorless, truck is unloaded, in anticipation of replacement truck’s immanent arrival. Large raindrops have joined the snowflakes’ gleeful chorus.

~ Accidents happen. Movers seem to be dealing with it, so we head off to the lake, in anticipation of new carpet arriving, before our possessions. (The original carpet is a gruesome combination of 70’s sculptured yellow and 4 decades of hard usage) – ‘scuse me, I have to take a moment to mourn that the 70’s was so long ago. Le sigh!

~ We wait.

~ Still raining.

~ Still waiting.

~ Carpet arrives and we roll it out before our possessions turn up.

~ They don’t.

~ We wait some more, and have expensive cell-phone conversations with new moving truck driver who appears to be lost. How can someone work in the moving business not have a map?

~ Owner of moving business, states, and I quote, “What do you want me to do about it?”

~ Eventually we drive into town to guide the driver in.

~ Still raining.

~ Unloading starts. We discover they have left behind our rather expensive bicycles … not in the apartment, not even in the building foyer. Oh no. These idjits left them OUTSIDE the building.

~ My bicycle is modified to compensate for the missing half of my right knee, and therefore expensive to replace.

~ Only be the grace of Herself, and the fact that the neighbourhood is a very bike friendly place, are our bikes still there after 2 hours. They are rescued and are to be delivered by the idjit who forgot them, several days forward from this one.

~ Mover tries to charge us for the extra time it took to complete the job. He survived the encounter only because he still had to deliver the bikes.

~ Five days after the move, our bikes arrive.

~ Move is complete.

~ Still raining.

~ A week after the move, the sun is shining, the lake is all blue-green and shiny. Widdershins cat has ventured forth past the front step. It’s a good day.

~ I wonder if I’ll ever figure out why there are so many more bolts and screws than I’ll ever need to put the bookshelves back together again.

P.S. Will have pics of lake when I find the camera – my cell phone one refuses to speak to me.

*

“It’s been a long time since I’ve written old-fashioned sword and sorcery; I’m hoping it’s like riding a bicycle” – Lynn Abbey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Abbey