It has rained so much the river is rushing over itself and its banks slippery on the surface and clean, the ground is a wet sponge and the air is clean with alternating sun and full clouds. A spider man hat waterlogged has been placed on a post. I pass the fence posts to the O’Brien place and visit the lovely cypress with her generous richly marked trunk and open armed branches, drinking in the deep colour and fresh air beneath her canopy, I feel alive and sense the trees are communicating on all sides. I go to the hatch and cant resist placing my belly on the rough concrete over the river feeling the water rush beneath me, so many ancestors so much volume and the sensation of belly over that moving volume and the rush in my ears is exhilarating. I decide to take no photo and remember this again for the feeling and the moment
I head up to Scotland from the western side. At the buddleias there’s a mysterious object, a cat’s eye, loosened from its place in the road by the rains, it appears now thrown up, its interior transformed into a butterfly. Heading homewards I have a moment as always at which path to choose…like the song …to take the High road or the low road. I choose the low one to be closer to the river and away from the sound of the traffic. I look down on the pencil factory where the ceder and the pine lie in clumps and stumps, I look down at the swollen river and the hatch where I was earlier, remembering the feeling of the ancestors rushing by, and almost through me as I lay on top of the concrete, the gate still combs the water as its volume glides through.