I used to live walking distance from a nature reserve (which is a nice way of saying the developers hadn't got there, yet), a big, scrubby patch of bushland.
It had fire trails and walking tracks running through, so you couldn't get lost there unless you made a fairly decent effort.
You could walk for hours and not see anyone.
As long as you didn't go stomping off into the undergrowth, you weren't likely to encounter, or enrage (like that takes any effort whatsoever) the local brown snakes, so it was a pretty safe place.
It was quiet. I liked it.
There was mob of kangaroos that I'd see occasionally. They'd stop for a bit of a look, stand up, flick the ears, then get back to grazing.
I remember the old man roo standing tall, with that unspoken look - That'll do, you're close enough.
I've always thought it was a pity that there was no one to tell me the stories of the place, or the animals and the birds.
It's like standing in a book store. You know all the books that you can see have stories in them, stories to tell, stories that make sense of the world, but nobody taught you to read.
I sometimes feel somewhat short changed that it wasn't until I was older, that the days spent walking the golden grassland, surrounded by the sounds of life, that I met people who were connected to the land, who understood the things that I had, at times, simply stared at in wonder.
Perhaps it was better that way. I found, made, my own connection to the land, and the life on it, of it.
I remember I was on a train in Germany, or maybe Poland, passing through a pine forest.
The dark green canopy, dull, mottled grey trunks, and the copper/straw fallen needles.
Suddenly, in an opening in the forest there was a pair of pheasants, bright gold, and red and blue.
Nobody noticed them but me.
The train rolled on, into the light, into a grain field, dotted with red poppies, and nobody noticed them, but me.
People are like that. There's a world, full of life, around them and they're too busy staring at their newspapers.
