All is calm. Vastly
different from yesterday, when most of the State was plunged back into winter. With
the Spring equinox still a week away, we shouldn’t be surprised here in Tassie,
for the seasonal calendar hasn’t yet moved on, despite our attempts to fool it
into leaving the cold months behind by declaring the start of Spring on a date
that suits us.
When the village was being
constructed back in the late 50’s and early 60’s, Flat Top was one suggestion
for its name, as it occupies a broad gently sloping area three hundred metres
up the mountain. Thankfully, we were blessed with the Lairmairrener Aboriginal
name Poatina, meaning cavern or cave, which would in its time have been a
meeting place, a shared site providing safety and shelter, one befitting both the
location of the village today and the nature of our intentional community life.
I find myself looking to the
mountain several times a day, seeing what mood it’s in, judging what it can
tell me about the sort of day we’ll be having. Whether light and bright on a
hot summer’s day, stark and grey cold as clouds gather overhead, wistful as fog
rolls upwards from the valley, black and icy after a clear frosty night, or inviting
as the snow beckons you to down tools and come and play, the mountain never
ceases to fascinate me.
So much so, I picked up a
paintbrush for the first time in well over fifty years in an attempt to capture
one of those moods for a village art exhibition starting today, but more on
that tomorrow.
In the lee
of the mountain we
are sheltered
No comments:
Post a Comment