We’re in a bath in the middle of the forrest
and I’m telling Katie 
about some of the nature of this writing
and the writing of this nature.

Any worthwhile insight
comes as a gift.
And anything worthwhile
in the writing of it
is given as a gift
back to from where it came.

We paddle up the Marbeelup Chapman Brook
and out into the Djujulyup Blackwood and
head upriver. It is calm and cloudy
and humid-hot and quiet.

Peppermints hang out
over the water, light green
against the rest of the forest
all darker green marri and jarrah and karri
and I assume blackbutt,
maybe other eucalypts.
There are tuarts all grey-green
and huge, further upriver;
malaleucas too.

In the water we have to dodge
the odd fallen tree.
“How long do you think it takes 
a log to decompose in the water?”
Katie asks.

There are one or two pied cormorants
shifting positions on the dry parts
of fallen logs.

Towards the end of our paddles
it starts raining softly—warm
rain spun inland by a cyclone 
further north, off the coast. 
The drops hit slowly,
deliberately.
“Let’s see if we can avoid them.”
But we don’t need to. It is
warm, and still, and we are 
happy to sit in the boat
and watch the way the rain
falls into water with a round
splash—the whole surface 
of the river drumming to life 
as if little crickets or frogs were splashing.
It is more an experience 
of water rising up from specific spots
than of water falling down…

….here, where rivers meet,
where currents meet,
where spiritual streams
and streams of time
do meet.

Hamelin Bay, bottom end of Wardandi Country.
It’s morning and people are crowded by
the remains of the old jetty.
They stand in the water,
just beyond the small boat ramp,
for a look at or photo of 
the local stingrays.

We begin walking that way 
and I notice in the water
the slow moving
form—like a kind of cloud
shadow—of one of the large rays.
It glides slowly, lazily, rhythmically
along; its outer edges rolling across
the rolling waves of the shoreline.
He’s in the shallows, 
and probably looking for food
in the churned-up sand.

We turn before we reach the crowd,
having seen what we have already seen. 
And then we see him again, all of us
headed the other way now,
and watch him go as we pass.
Coming towards him we see another one,
smaller, its wing tips rising up 
out of the water. Then the larger one is carried 
by a wave 
into the even-more shallows, his wings also coming
up and out of the water.

In this old and crumbled-down place of 
limestone, cracked and deathlike,
rises up this source of movement and life,
attracting people towards it. 
It has a place in the summer and other
journeys of so many,
fitting with some higher logic
and lawfulness into the sourcing
of a larger whole.

Another point at which the past is present
and from which a new future 
can begin.

Down here, bottom of Wardandi country,
where the Southern Ocean meets
the Indian, and the Djudjilyup Blackwood
flows out to meet them.

We’re sitting in our car on the shoreline
taking a work call
about landscape restoration.

But outside the water is flowing
on the high, incoming tide
and southerly wind,
as two dolphins make their way
upriver by the edge of the tour boat,
and an osprey screeches from the top
of a Norfolk pine above us.

Part way through a sentence 
I have to stop and look out the window
when I notice a splash 
and see the osprey coming up
from the water
with a fish in its claws.

The place comes into my awareness,
comes into the call,
which comes into my awareness
and back into the place.

Landscapes and humans and restoration
and humans and landscapes.

I have been away for a week
and come back to find
Galbamaanup Lake Claremont
below a metre
on the gauge.

The water is a muddy
colour
and the scent is 
of rich and watery worlds
drying slowly out.

There are the teals and black ducks still,
black winged stilts,
a white-faced heron;
the swamphens won’t go far;
a couple of swans with later-season young 
still not fully coloured—
I wonder if there will be enough water
for them to take off 
when their wings are strong enough.

I hear the sound of the pied 
butcherbird. 
Manatj is there in a flock
in the figs;
and they’re all taking off 
as a raptor—
probably kestrel—
flies by overhead,
many of the other birds moving in 
one contraction
towards the lake’s centre.

How alive this place is,
even as it nears (watery) death;
the bird life is just 
one expression of this.

It reaches out to me,
and I welcome and observe it,
holding it 
within the whole.

It is a great teacher,
this place—
a place of knowledge.

I try to give back as 
much as I can,
by listening,
by holding it
with the 
whole of the Earth,
the whole of the
human being.

Mouth of the Margaret River
and I’m walking up the southern bank 
to where it starts to curve and bend.

There’s someone fishing 
from the shore,
so I head back and sit on the grass
by the water’s edge.

There are a lot of fish in there—
in the brown water
amongst the grass 
near the bank;
I probably would have thought bream,
but they look more like mullet.
Whatever they are, they’re not
heading out the river’s
closed mouth until winter’s rains
push it open again,
if that’s where they’ll go.

I look over to all the fan flowers
on the northern side, closer to the ocean.
The wind brings the shouts of kids
up from the sea.

The fisherman walks past behind me and 
throws a line in a little further downriver.
I choose not to betray the fish at my feet
to him—but he can probably see them
anyway.

I walk up to where he was originally fishing
and look upriver. The wide wings and light
and dark of an osprey flying upriver, low 
on the northern side above the paperbarks.
I hear the sound of another one, high and 
shrill somewhere out of view.
There are more fish in the shallows here.

I can feel the power and presence
of the place a little further upriver.
I never go there,
but I feel it reaches out to me—
flows down on the bed
of river, flooding in.

I observe it from the place I make for it—
global reaches.
There is a conversation.

It ends with something like:
“Be responsible
for these deeper layers
in all the work
of the world,
human being.”

On my final evening in the forest,
I’m looking out at the bird bath
and there is wodan the bronzewing pigeon 
standing on the rim. 

Chunyart the 28 parrot is also there, 
all green and blue and yellow and black,
flapping around 
on the ground and 
on the other side of the rim from wodan.

Chunyart is making a lot of noise now,
but wodan is untroubled—
he stays put and waits for chunyart to go,
then leans down and drinks.

Soon wodan too has left, and chunyart returns.
Then another chunyart.
And before long they have also gone 
and the bath is empty again.

There is so much coming and going
from this cup of water in the forest—
like a kind of liquid eye of attention upon the world
existing also within the human being:
living things arriving, entering, bringing something,
leaving something, departing again.

As I do too,
the very next morning.

Guided to the intersection of the 
Marbeelup Chapman Brook
and the Djudjulyup Blackwood River
by wodan the bronzewing pidgeon.

He leads off the main road, then 
flies down the left side towards
the meeting waters,
away from the campground 
and old boat launch.

I sit under the big marri trees 
trees by the waters edge.
The sun is out and the water
is reflecting off the Djudjulyup
onto the branches and leaves.

The place is a strong place. 
The Noongar signs suggest
reflection.

And so I sit. 

And for some reason the reflected
movement of the water on the branches
speaks to me of all images
reflecting a reality in our own 
watery awareness—
a reflection through which 
we can choose to pass through to 
deeper layers of truth,
reality, being,
if we so wish.

I filled up the water in the bird bath
again today.
Soon after, chunyart the 28 was back. 
(I even startled one when I came outside.)

While sitting at the outdoor table
a red-capped parrot arrived 
on the branch above the bath, 
looking at me,
looking at the water, 
eventually dropping down
and drinking. 

Then came a smaller bird: grey, with dark head
and dark eye. He was cautious—
hopped around it from tree to tree, branch to branch.
He watched as a smaller bird from yesterday—
the one with the greenish tinge to its head—
checked things out.
Then he flew to the bath’s rim, hopped a couple of times, 
and jumped right in.

The small bird then returned and drank a little,
together with some friends.

And most recently a larger dark bird with white eyebrow
bent down for two small gulps
and was gone.

All of them have passed through the water, 
as the water has passed through them.
All of it passing also through me.

These beings of warmth 
on this warm day.

Some of the limestone has fallen at the south 
end of the beach, so it’s hard
to walk around the corner,
even at low tide. 
The welcome swallows are still there.

The water pours around the corner from the 
Southern Ocean, pushing up
into the Indian.

People wait by the jetty to see the 
small triangular and large rounded
stingrays. The rays cruise past
lazily in the shallows, their wings
rippling under the water.

People put in and pull out boats and dinghies 
at the ramp. The rays dodge trailers and boats
and hands and feet.

I take a swim a little further north. There’s
seaweed and limestone cloudiness
in the water. Someone points
to some dolphins 
about a hundred metres out.
I take in the warming sun 
after a cool night, and look out
at the old jetty stumps sticking out of the water,
and the island just off the mainland.

What is this place?
What is it really?
How can we ever know?
What am I doing here?
And the answer comes almost immediately,
even before I think I’ve formulated 
the mood of the question.

To help. To serve. To make better. 
And care. Surely this is 
the only reason for being anywhere.
Surely this is the only
task there really is.
Surely this is the only way anything 
will reveal itself truly.

Places transformed, transfigured
by the seeing—
by the seeing in thought—
by the ‘I’;
so that the I receives the
place as it pours in, 
the seeing process reversed;
then rays the essence 
of the seen places back out upon
the world again,
recreated,
as if the Earth 
can pass through the eye
of the I—
coming out a Sun.