Hike up into the hills around the Lower Helena Reservoir. The Doomben—’weired’ further up; diversion ‘dammed’ here. I take the higher trails up and up until I’m on mountain bike tracks. There is rain, and washouts have formed through the gravel and clayey mud; elsewhere there is granite and quartz in places. The rain has come after the dry summer; but not soon enough for many plants—and not just smaller bushes but also parrot bush, sheoaks, and even eucalypts—many dead. Some trees look like the red of autumn northern hemisphere; others grey and lifeless. It’s like a fire has gone through, without the blackened burn marks; but a similar effects remain—a swathe of dead bushes and trees, though not so cleared— some of the signs of fire without the flame: The flameless fire of the long dry summer. (And I can’t help wondering if the land needs some of them gone—if not by fire then by thirst.)