enlightenment

Perfect World

At the edge of the Earth the wild things are

The red-tailed black cockatoos swoop over us as we take a break at the five hundred metre mark, sitting on a series of smashed volcanic boulders with a vast view across the lower ranges. The hidden valley is filled with massive trees on steep slopes punctuated by level benches, small dells and tiny plateaus. Everything is bright green and the endless ranges scroll off into the blue mists as we clamber onto a flat-topped tetrahedron sunken deep into the edge of a basalt cliff.
 

            Slabs, giant boulders, wedges and menhirs of convoluted, quartz-veined stone have been blown her from the heart of the ancient volcano, many miles distant across the rainforest gorge country. Brobdignagian rocks stand embedded where they fell into the shattered scree of this primordial fumarole, standing sentinels that have witnessed the passage of aeons.
 

            We investigate a high stone throne from which the core of the old volcano is visible in the distance. The natural seat once stood at the rear of a large flat shelf cave that still provides protection for some campers and their fire. Now, as with so many other caves once used by local indigenous people, the felling of huge ancient trees has brought down much of the protective overhang and the protection is not what it once was. In many places the caves were dynamited over the last century, when ‘pioneers’ destroyed them to drive off the blacks who had cleared the land for them at gunpoint.
 

            The pioneers didn’t end up having a good time.
            Almost all the sacred sites of the Kooris that were found by the Eurosurpers were deliberately destroyed. In recent times - since the dawn of the new millennium - any sites that elders or others divulged to the government agencies that are responsible for their protection have been completely destroyed. It’s still going on today. Telling anyone anything of significance - even informing those responsible for administering the national parks all around us and protecting the sites for the heritage of all - is against far more than mere tradition. In practice it brings about the irrevocable destruction of some of the last truly magical places in this part of Gaia – and it’s an accursed death sentence for the bloodline of those custodians who divulge the information.
 

            The reality of the extraordinary things embedded in the living landscape – and the beings that share this globe with us and use it for their own purposes – is beyond the understanding of those who haven’t experienced the mysteries hidden all around the island cities and towns of the Great Southland. These things are beyond the ken of most who have witnessed them. They’ve been here forever.
 

            We’ve avoided all the sites that don’t want to be intruded upon, in these rugged hills studded with ancient special places. The currawack calls to tell us it’s time to go home or the light in the deep rainforest gullies will be dangerously dim. There are still a couple of interesting things to investigate on the way back to the valley floor and a cleansing swim in the summer-warmed platypus pool awaits us. Every different walking track yields different vistas and new stretches  of landscape we’ve not yet seen in many years of patient exploration. Some days some places won’t give you access – something stops you. Some places never allow you to penetrate them, unless you’re willing to go against all your survival instincts. Those instincts are there for a reason and we’re all still connected to the messages the land has for us if we take the time to attune ourselves to its harmonies and discords.
 

            All the places have primordial names around here, all the hills and rivers, caves and dells, grottoes and lookouts, campsites and other places. Only a few are known to me. All these places have memories, imprinted moments of impressed motion or emotion - and minds and agendas of there own that the contemporary inhabitants ignore at their unknowing peril. The hills are alive and we are their instruments, pupils and co-creators – or their prey. That’s the choice for those who live in the shamanic zones that still exist in many parts of Paradise , away from the chattering minds and busy hands of humans.
 

Being able to live with the living green world (and not merely on it) is a matter of sensitivity, integrity and conscience. You need a heart, mind and courage to coexist with nature and not become a tree-killing logger, soil-destroying farmer or loud cowardly predator. Paradise has its own long-term agenda. It ain’t Kansas , Dolly.
 

A large green frog butts up against the windowpane. Every second is punctuated by its continued incomprehension as it attempts to reach the moon through the invisible barrier. It’s a matter of moments to open the window and free the frog. It takes far longer to decide to do so, far longer for the glacial processes of verbalised thought - that block the natural instincts and responses – to surrender their grip and allow the body to do what it can and must.
The frog escapes the python winding around my feet.
 

-         R.A.

image - author’s
-         See also
-          Free Life - http://www.geocities.com/r_ayana/FreeLife.html
-          Free Thought - http://www.geocities.com/r_ayana/WhatIsTruth.html
-         New Illuminati - http://newilluminati.blog-city.com
-         Her(m)etic Hermit - http://hermetic.blog.com

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