These places are special - I feel such an affinity with them. Wild, remote, on the edge between land, sea and sky. I love the colourful little flowers, huddled around the lichen-covered rocks, the white-washed buildings, the vast, vast horizon. Low trees clinging on in the wind. Stone walls, the moving ocean. Clouds running across the blue sky. Rocky islands, hazy in the distance.
I had a reasonable night's sleep, considering how much my back was aching after the walk yesterday. While I'm walking, everything feels pretty good - it was just doing things around the camp site , then trying to get comfortable once "in bed". I've managed to tune my pack pretty well - I've never been so comfortable on an overnight hike. And my new boots are brilliant - I put a preventative blister plaster on my right big toe and little toe but no issues after the walk today. This is a great hit-out for the other walks I've planned.
Approaching the Lightstation
Rodondo Island from Lightstation
Wildflowers on the path
Wallaby enjoying the beach at Waterloo!
Beech forest
So, I woke at 5:50am and got up shortly afterwards. Hit the trail just before 8am and didn't realise until 15 minutes later that I'd forgotten my trekking pole. Didn't go back for it. It was an undulating walk with great coastal views, including one spectacular and vertiginous lookout atop a giant quartz/granite boulder. The view from there of the lightstation was very striking - it looked like Pilgrim's Celestial City, all white and hovering between earth and heaven. Some of the track passed through Antarctic beech forest - nice to have a change from the ubiquitous eucalyptus! I saw a lady with 3 children on the trail - they were camped at Little Waterloo too. Impressive - the oldest was probably 16 (a boy) but the other boy and girl looked younger, perhaps 12-13.
Yellow-tailed black cockatoos in flight
I nicked some toilet paper from the (flush) toilet here at the lightstation - a precious commodity! The walk back will take a bit over 3 hours - no problem. And tomorrow it'll be 4+ hours out back to Tidal River. Then home to my darling Nadia and our cute fluffy Ruby.
I was thinking this morning, as I walked, that I'm not beset by the same sense of longing I once had, especially in places like this. I remember John O'Donoghue's book "Eternal Echoes" - to "be longing" is an indication of the divine spark in all of us, yearning to be reunited with the Great Flame, the Universal Breath, the One Spirit. This longing is the greatest sense of "belonging" we can have, because it unites us all. I think I'm paraphrasing but that's what I got from it.
The sting has been taken out of my longing because I belong in my little home with Nadia. Do I still feel longing, sitting here in this windswept place of wild beauty? ......... yes ......... but ......... it's different. It is something closer to love, and to quiet happiness.
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