When I started my journal in earnest on December 21 1995, I wrote of summer as the time of the year when I would ‘let time spin out a little’, when all I had to do seemed to fit into the available space’. I also said that ‘flames licked at the edges of even the most benign of days’. These flames that I almost see out of the corner of my eye have been smouldering away ever since the day when I might have been about four when my father drove me along the  road that ran past our property when flames were literally burning along either side of the road.

At first as this summer drifted by in a series of pleasant days filled with family get-togethers it was easy, too easy, to forget that we badly needed rain. Then in the early afternoon of January 22, dark clouds gathered, the wind blew and it rained. The power went out and it rained heavily for two hours. While I was waiting for it to clear, I went to visit cousin Jill. When I came outside to go home, the sky was no longer dark, but a dirty yellow – the color of smoke, or dust. It almost smelt like smoke too. I drove home along a road I know well, but the surrounding landscape had disappeared behind the sky and I felt like the last person left on an abandoned planet.

I was reminded of the trip Bernie, Sophie and I made through the Painted Desert on our way to Monument Valley, in late April,  sixteen years ago. That day the dust that veiled the desert delivered us a surreal landscape in blurred shapes of cream, sage green and faded rose – the palette of some of Georgia O’Keeffe’s landscapes.
(That trip led to several stories I am yet to publish. Now, since the blog offers me a space to do so, I must go back to it.)

In spite of the fierce winds there were no trees down. I arrived home safely and soon the sky cleared and the landscape returned. Over the next few days I began to anticipate the end of summer, and diminishing risk of bushfire.
 
Next came the heatwave and with it my anxiety. I started checking the CFA reports almost hourly, and I was back where I have been done in many other smoke- filled summers, like the one when Father was dying or the one when Canberra and much of the north East of the state burned. 

What happened on Saturday February 7 is now a matter of public record and countless stories of loss and devastation. Although I have made long diary entries and written about fire quite often in the past, the more reports I hear in the media and from individuals who have since visited affected areas, the less appropriate it seems that I should add my recent experience of a worrying week to those I have heard or read. That the northern end of the Black Range didn’t burn, that our house is still standing and we are unscathed is a combination of luck and the work of CFA women and men who put in long hard hours to stop fire crossing the Goulburn River at Molesworth. 

Now with the luxury of hindsight, the numbness that set in when that thick smoke came in with the wind change is only just receding and I am beginning to be able to think – first of all  rethink our fire plan and our presence in a remote wooded area, since pumps, sprinklers and generators are not likely to save us from the serious forces of nature -  and write again. .

. . . and so, on to poetry.

With a poetry reading Hiarts coming up I needed to get back to getting some poetry together for a reading. 

Thank goodness for the arts, and the highlands community for pressing on during  such a distracting difficult summer. 

The mood at Hiarts may have been a little flatter than last year, but here’s to the arts – performers, painters photographers, storytellers, caterers, conversationalists and everyone else involved for keeping on going and playing a part in moving the community mood along. I enjoyed getting some poetry together, and after listening to David Kelly’s koala poems, Peter Bakowski’s evocation of travels and Peter Burns rural reflections, I was reminded yet again about the way quiet but persistent music of poetry play a vital role in our survival - as writers, readers and listeners.

On Friday, March 13 a  storm finally washed the summer off the Black Range. When it struck, a continual roar of thunder shook the house. Tim, who set up my wireless router  for me had just left and I was looking forward to testing my new up to the minute technology when the power went out and the whole house filled with a shimmering light. I could have been in the middle of an episode of the X files and about to join Mulder’s sister.  For two hours the dogs and I huddled together on the sofa and watched the rain spilling out of all the gutters. That’s Mother and Father nature for you. We are never very far away from extinction, and according to that famous writer Anon, 'As God said no more fire – the rain next time. It was something like that, but I might have it the wrong way round.

For the next few months, don’t expect to find and blackened leaves at the back door. I’m hoping for fog instead of smoke. I might even finish the collecting up of leaves I hadn't got around to before last summer, and then, even do some writing.

Sari