Primavera...

... for Knots in the String.

“I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.” LM Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

I am.

Because of moments like the weather over the last two days. Mild, azure skies where early morning sea fog and river mist lift like a bride’s veil so that the sun can percolate down and allow the Terrier to stretch out in bliss. Days too, where the sea or the river begin the day like burnished silver mirrors and then the sea-gates open without warning, letting in a stonker of a seabreeze that caps everything with white wavelets and is filled with the scent of salt. I love the fact that there is a warmth in the sun out of the wind, but that in the wind, one needs a good jumper (sweater) and a zip-up gilet (vest). I literally bubble with the fresh air - enlivened, filled with hope.

That’s what October does.

Driving back to the coast after ballet class this week, I thought on the fact that this week means I’ll be on the wrong side of 73. I continued the thought. Am I any different to some 40, 50, or 60 something because I am 73? Oh granted, there might be more walnut-shell wrinkles on my face than the afore-mentioned’s. But what does it signify really?

I talked to my husband about it and between us, we decided that age is immaterial, that we should cease paying it any credence. Talking about any limitations to our lives because of age is age-ism pure and simple. Thus, as long as we fulfill active briefs in life and do it with humility, enjoyment and mindfulness, then surely that is all that matters.

Every year, on the 16^th October, my husband and I do a walk on Maria Island. This time, we caught the ferry, batting into a powerful nor’east swell which belted the portside (see Instagram). We climbed up troughs to the crest of waves and bashed down into the trough on the other side. It did actually throw my balance deficit right off for quite some time.

We have no itinerary when we walk on the island, just go where we want, making sure we are listening, seeing, touching, smelling. Whenever we go there, we see something we’ve never investigated before and this time it was Waddell’s cottage, built in the 1890’s and restored in a very basic way as evidence of the island’s historical past.

There are many other such buildings tracing its history through the convict era, through probation and through a basic effort at commercialisation.

Now of course it is tourism and potentially suffering through being loved to death. We feel a cap needs to put on daily numbers to preserve the integrity of the island. Others may disagree.

We came across a Mum Wombat and her little bub.

We found a little bandicoot who shut his eyes at one point as if to say, ‘If I shut my eyes, you’re not here!’

I even managed to practice my ballet!!

How lucky to celebrate the day with a man who enjoys it as much as I do, who even as I take a selfie of us both, manages to make us both laugh! We ate ribbon sandwiches cut into squares because we were hiking, (not having a pukkah tea with the memsahib) next to a waterhole with native ducks diving and Welcome swallows swooping amongst the reeds, whilst above us the eucalypts creaked and groaned in the wind, bark hanging in great streamers off the aged boughs.

The land is dry, too dry, but as I post this column, we are having good steady rains with a weather change. 25-30 mls would be nice and will give us time to ease the throb and ache of feet and legs after 16,000 steps.

My husband always cooks my favourite dinner on my birthday: BBQ-ed haloumi burgers, followed by Prince William’s Birthday Biscuit Cake (from the back of a very old Hello mag). I can’t honestly remember how many years we’ve been having the same meal on the same day, but it works for me – especially after a long walk. Neither of us drink, but by dinner we’re usually mellow and content after a good day so it’s immaterial.

Finally on that 16/10 evening, whilst he rested his throbbing feet (plantar fasciitis), I walked the Terrier under a full moon as the day slid through dusk into night. It’s so quiet on the coast mid-week. I ran into no dogs nor people, the best kind of birthday, and whilst we walked, the dog and I, all I could hear was what was left of the day’s sea chop washing onto the shoreline. A kookaburra laughed in the distance and oyster catchers piped shrilly as they flew a low sortie along the foreshore.

The day was a gift from the gods and I’m grateful. Five months ago, I was being wheeled into theatre for a rather nerve-wracking bowel resection followed by further surgery two weeks later. I couldn’t see further than that fortnight, let alone five months away. I still get so very tired and yet here is my body back to hiking! So what’s not to love about life and what it has to offer?

Music this week? Because its spring and because we’re dancing to Einaudi’s work just now, this is gentle Primavera.