…as tired night lets go and day edges in.

Endless rain isn’t everywhere. I bow to this hero tree, growing bravely in the little desert of the Pinnacles, Western Australia. We met a few days ago.

July 13th, 2009

With my offerings, I walked out to the tree. Opening the front door, its clunky sounds give way to the softness of dripping rain – there are just bits of it randomly falling from leaves and twigs and clouds. I move from the inside realm, and into the presence of pre-dawn, still and pregnant, as tired night lets go and day edges in.

I scoop water from the water bowl, the soles of my feet prickling with cold, toes turned up to avoid it. Step by step across the stones, then comes the spongy wattle mulch underfoot, and the muddy ground below the tree.

I sing quietly, waving around the little incense stick and seeing into my dimly lit bedroom. One blind is up, one down. There is the inside world, the house world, warm and controlled. I have turned my back on it for a little while. I have left it with my feet bare and walked the soil of ages past and now, to greet the tree which stands patiently in the dark and then in the dawn and then in the day, never entering my room, but standing ever outside it. I look through the window, and inside looks distant and tame. Someone else lives there.