The neighbours are having a 21st birthday party
so I take the chance to head up to the hills.
Friday afternoon hills,
walking in along the Bibbulmun from the Discovery Centre 
carpark to Ball Creek Hut. 

I’ve crossed the sprawling city in traffic
and cut along the short walk through the hills
and the horizontal afternoon light,
heading east.

I register a few trees and the sound of 
small birds, but it all plays
as backdrop to my going to get there.

I overtake a couple of hikers with smiles
and set up camp near the firepit to the north
of the hut. 

The night is still and cold with stars,
flames,
later the moon,
and eventually the sound of trucks
gearing down, probably on Great 
Eastern HIghway to the north.

In the morning I eat breakfast and watch as
the small birds emerge from the powdery 
bark of the wandoo forrest all around,
with space between trees as there always is
below them.
One bird has a yellow breast. 
Some are larger.

After breakfast I pack up and leave
just as a group of walkers arrives at the hut.

I step out on the trail, the sun behind me again,
walking back through what was half sleeping
last night.

Towards the end, on the side of a southern-facing
decline, banksias, balgas, zamias, 
sheoak, jarrah and marri all around,
still burnt from last fires, 
maybe half a dozen years ago—
ready for a new burn to clear
the undergrowth—
the horizon line of the next
ridge of hills to the south and west,
the air still,
sheoak needless on the ground,
the gnarled yet soft-looking trunks
of the banksias,
the light pouring in from above and 
to the right,
I’m suddenly filled with the meaning 
of this place,
and the meaning of this place in the world
as a whole.

I grew up not too far from here.
And I had a different feeling 
of this place back then—a surface layer
feeling that I knew masked hidden depths.
But for whatever reason they’ve revealed
themselves now, with the depths of 
the rest of the Earth, the depths of
humanity too. 

The world is alive at these depths.
Is living in its connections.
We stand on the crust of the Earth,
yet stand in our home.
Who we are.
What this place is.
What has been sacrificed.
What has come before.
And what is now made for 
a future place, as foundation,
for what comes next.