I found myself driving today through a less-visited (by me) landscape to get to another lake. I’d been there before, but maybe not at this time of day, this day of the week, this week of the year. Two days after so-called ‘Australia Day’, warm but not hot, a Sunday morning, and hundreds, thousands of walkers striding along the limestone beachside clifftop, ouring one way and the other. The road busy too. Houses on the other side, a cafe or two, very few trees. A south westerly breeze already sliding in. I kept going past suburbs also mostly treeless, pockets of bushland, rooftop tiles lining the horizon. I moved onto larger roads, drove over a freeway, detouring big box stores to come at the lake from the eastern edge, trying to drive its shoreline, but finding more houses, fenced off areas, though there were spots here and there for walkers and bikers. I emerged from a series of cul-de-sacs and took a busy road around, by the edge of another busy road, circling the lake’s northern edge, then coming down it’s western side, more open grassland and trees, into the edge of a small city, through more houses, and eventually a kind of park on its western edge. I had been there before a couple of times. I parked and walked to a little jetty and looked out at the water, the sea breeze stronger now, the water cleaner than the lakes I usually visit, able to see the sandy floor. I watched a coot go down and rise up. A swan swam underneath me. A loud ‘poing’ of a dark-coloured musk duck came from a large group of about 15, circling and sometimes flapping together, mostly males with their large flaps under their beaks, sitting low on the water with tales like platupi; a dozen other males here or there. Some crested grebes sat upright with lighter feathers, their heads a mix of regality and ruffled-ness. Some other grebes with Pacific black ducks—almost archetypal ducks. Some pelicans further away. Wood ducks on the bank behind the paperbarks. I chatted with a man and his wife, talking about the lake, the ducks, his experience swimming iat the ocean nearby when a bird came up next to him. “Cormorant?” “Could’ve been.” They moved off and I turned my attention back to the lake. 

And then I was suddenly struck by a deeper level of that place, faint at first, like an initial trickling line, speaking at a deeper level in me. I tried to listen. It rose and thickened like the rising of the lake after first rains, filling out, filling up. The spirit of this place. I  listened and let it in, silencing all else, giving it my lowest levels of attending. It was like a kind of breathing on another level. And I kind of let go an inner sigh. The hour long drive had been worth it. The place opened itself up, spread itself out like the lake that it was. The largest lake around. And I went with it, trying to stay awake. It seemed in that moment somewhat feminine in quality. Unlike the lake I visit most often. Though maybe not related so much to birthing of things, like other lakes I’ve been. Though still a kind of femininity to the essence of this place. I know a small part of the stories, and the imagination of its name. And these stories seemed to ring true enough this day—in what the lake was saying, in what I was able to hear. And I was grateful.

I walked away from the water, along its bank towards a trail sign, then up the hill to a statue of a woman, which seemed in place, right enough, and true. 

And I reflected that my experience of the journey this day told enough the journey we make each and every day towards truth. We venture off towards a goal we feel somehow called to, but maybe not quite sure we’ll make, nor whether it might be worth it—after all, there are so many other things to do. But despite all this we go anyway, maybe not yet knowing even why, and pass through certain places we might not feel at home; slightly unfamiliar or uncomfortable places, upon which we might throw all sorts of judgments and opinions. But all of this is merely preparation. Preparation for a getting closer. For a kind of letting go. Maybe we realise we’d even been to this place before, but hadn’t necessarily seen it in this way. The smallest door. The smallest resigntion. And a whole river of water can come flooding in. Opinions and judgements left behind. We wake up inside the essence of something—the truth of the matter—and find that essence inside. We find ourselves also in such moments. And find ourselves forever changed. And I think the same is true of the place, of the essence or the truth we discover—also changed—in those times, on those days

The path to reality passes through personal judgement and opinion, but on arriving there, those things do not matter. Reality matters. We find it in ourselves, and we find ourselves in it. This is the real striving behind science. Though we are much more involved and essential to the process than we often admit.

I then drove the freeway back through the city, the lake and country with me, still having to return home. I sat on cruise control watching the other cars, the large trees by the side of the road, a raptor—harrier maybe—gliding between the rooftops of big box stores, the roadworks resting there this day, the lane lines constantly changing with the widening of the freeway. I wound slowly through the city, still with the lake and country, along the windswept river by the side of the road, refuelling on the edge of the highway, taking a straghtline home.