Desperately seeking Desert

Hello!
Well the title really is meant to say desert, not dessert, so I'm sorry if you were hoping for a tale of an exciting mudcake experience or something of that sort! If so I'm sure I'll be able to comply sometime in the near future, as the seeking (and/or making) of sweet things is a fairly frequent occurrence for me. Just not this time.

I went on a "Desert Trek" last week. Basically a whole bunch of people went camping out near Broken Hill.

Some of us rose before dawn to watch the day come awake.

Many hours were spent around the campfire sitting, singing, cooking, eating, praying, laughing, sharing and listening to stories - or just watching the glowing, sparking embers.

We spent time alone, time just to listen and to be.


We spent time walking, adventuring, climbing rocky hills and ridges, chasing goats, climbing through gorges and round water-carved pools. Hanging with good friends.

I lapped up the wide wide desert skies, soaked myself in the golden wintery sun and the potent campfire heat, and felt the spirit breathing life.

It was very very good.

Sometimes the night was beautiful
sometimes the sky seemed so far away
sometimes it seemed to stoop so close
you could touch it but your heart would break
sometimes the morning came too soon
sometimes the day could be so hard
there was so much left to do
but so much you've already done oh God...
- Rich Mullins

Thanks for chance to step out of it all and bite beautiful reality.

A Kite is a Victim

A kite is a victim you are sure of.
You love it because it pulls
gentle enough to call you master,
strong enough to call you fool;
because it lives
like a desperate trained falcon
in the high sweet air
and you can always haul it down
to tame it in your drawer.

A kite is a fish you have already caught
in a pool where no fish come,
so you play him carefully and long,
and hope he won't give up,
or the wind die down.

A kite is the last poem you've written,
so you give it to the wind,
but you don't let it go
until someone finds you
something else to do.

A kite is a contract of glory
that must be made with the sun,
so you make friends with the field
the river and the wind,
then you pray the whole cold night before,
under the travelling cordless moon,
to make you worthy and lyric and pure.

-Leonard Cohen

Sunset Date

I saw the sunset tonight, for the first time in ages. Last year I often used to go on little 'sunset dates' - just me, the sunset, and whatever sunset-watching place I chose.
I haven't found many good places near home this year. There's a major hill about half an hour's walk away which would be brilliant. I'll have to go on a hike there some evening soon.

Anyway, I was out wandering tonight and the sunset was beautiful. Not a hugely glamorous 'look at me, look at me' type one, more a quiet glowing, growing, and fading. There was a soft blue pirouette of clouds across the west, and the sun sank golden through them. For a while there it looked like an otherworldly landscape, a cloud in front rising up all dark like a mountain peak in the sky, with shafts of light spilling round it and washing out to blend with the blue.
It grew orange for a while, strength started to ebb, then just when you thought it was over shot a bit of pink back into the lingering clouds, like a last little wave.

spring.. round about where I live.

Peas please!

Dandelion clocks - telling time the faerie way

Couple of handsome birds out for a stroll..

Freesia. [if only you could post scents..]

Look! Blue sky!