Morong Deep

Heart country

The river from our campsite

There are places we go to, and pass through, and then there are the places which enter us, which become us.

Meg and I are solitary people who happened to find each other. We both love time in the natural world and we need it to recharge. We have been through many years when that time was hard to find - between the demands and joys of parenthood and the sometimes relentless need to earn a living.

Through those years there was one place we returned to, when we could - usually just once each Summer - for the chance to be still. It was a 6 hour drive to get there followed by a long walk down into a remote river gorge - the last part with no track, just following the river.

Each year we were that little bit older. Each year the river was still there - looking much the same. Each year we were alone.

We camped by the water under our favourite tree. We ate what food we could carry in with us - cooking over an open fire. We slept under the stars unless rain seemed likely. We wore very little and we swam and we loved a lot.

Mostly, we just watched the river.

This is what we learned.

The woman I love

Morong Deep

This flat pool
upon the river
is like a silence between 
two conversations -
the waterfall upstream,
the rapids downstream,
and in between this 
soundless stretch of water
becoming almost 
         
        still.

But never quite –
each slight ripple of current
catching the light
like the thought which comes
into the quiet places
between words –
the things which are 
always unspoken; 
the meanings 
always unheard.

What the river says
can only be read
in the changing face of the water,
where the floating leaves swirl past,
slow or fast,
where the glass wet slick surface
reflects a cloud
as easily as a face,
with nothing 
needing to be said.

When Gautama,
the Buddha,
sat by a river
it must have been one like this,
where the bubbles on the surface
curl about your consciousness as
mist about a mountain in the morning;
where the thoughts forming in your mind
are currents carving patterns in a pool;
where each rounded boulder seems
set into the water like a jewel
and your presence, or absence,
as immaterial or profound as your
contemplation of that;
where the longer you sit 
the more you will see 
knowing that everything seen
was always there anyway;
where each thing is only as rare
as your own ability to observe it,
and the river reflects your stare patiently,
with eyes of sky blue water
as empty, or full of compassion 
as your own.

In a place like this 
there is nothing to say - 
nothing or everything known.
Where the river flows,
some things will always be hidden -
all things will always be shown.

It was always hot…

See?.

The way down river to our campsite

We look a little older now. Everything else is the same :)