Mann Bluff campsite, early morning, before the sunken cloud started lifting to briefly bury everything and then burned off

This is the result of two weeks of convoluted (mostly off-track) summer wandering in the Kosciuszko National Park, between Round Mountain in the Jagungal Wilderness, and Dead Horse Gap. The pack was heavy at the start but the heart was light. Even lighter at the end (apart from it being the end ...).

64 | BWA February 2018

'What did you get for Christmas?' they ask. Always ask,Every year,And every year I brush it off, for what words are thereFor what I had? Even words to remind myself come hard, but these, at work,The four-walled, TV, mobile, latte crowd,Never solo, never silent, never unconnected,Could they understand what I could tell, if I could find the words?What did I get for Christmas? I got ...

... sun- and moon- and starlight. I got skies every shade of blue, from the red-, orange-, yellow-streaked green-tinged paleness of dawn To the deepest near-black blue of starbright moonless midnight. I got all skies, in fact, parti-coloured, streaked and puffed with white And grey, all greys that ever were, grey to purple sometimes; grey almost to black as the storm clouds bred and lowered.

I got the heady scent of Prostanthera and KunzeaOn a fog-shrouded ridge.All senses other muffled by the mist.

I got the crouching lion of the north, Jagungal,In storm and stillness,Light and dark,Day and night.Green-grassed, white quartzed, the lichened summit stones,The granite bouldered rolling ridges;Got him shy and private, swathed in cloud from forest to rock;Got him bright and open as a full-blown summer rose.I got him in all the season's moods save its sudden shocking snows.

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Gungartan Saddle, early morning

I got the cautious companionship of wombats by nightAnd the flittery, jittery flightOf bats at hunt.Got the shiver and rustle of scrub as lizards and small furred thingsFrighted at my passing;Got the sullen slither of a sluggish brown snake on a cloudy day,And the uncaring slide across bare foot of a whitelip on an afternoon too hot for startlement.

I got to share a still sun-kissed rock through the last hour of dayWith a small bronze skink;Got to be the unwitting saviour of anotherFrom the breakfast-hungry coils of a snakeStartled into carelessness by my approach.

I got an early morning flight of gang-gangs, staring into the same cloud-buried river valley that intrigued me;The bob and dart of pipits from rock to grass to shrub and back;The crimson flash of rosellas through snowgums;The knowing curiosity of the yellow-eyed currawong;The whirr of buttonquail from the grassy plain;The sly superior mockery of the ravens;The soar, hover, plunge of kestrel and eagle.

I got a silence so profound I felt at times that I could hear again;Hear the clump of boot on granite,The rustle of gaiter through scrub and grass,The snap of a twig underfoot.And, perhaps,ThenAnd there,I could ...

66 | BWA February 2018

Valentine Falls from the edge of the main plunge pool

I got tired of trying to work out which of the towering tumbled tors on Big Brassy was the highestSo I climbed them all.

I got to taste the last of the old year's snowFrom vagrant driftsHuddled in hollows,Sheltering in the shade,Hiding from the hungry sun.I got the chill soothing of mountain creek water on a ticklish throat,And its bone-numbing bite on bared feet and legs.Got waterfalls and their rivers that lead to and from;Got the creeks that joined to make the rivers,The bogs and soaks that birthed the creeks,And the rains before they soaked into the earth to start the cycle once again.

I got the unintended artistry of a multitude of spiders,The Gothic tracery of webs diamond spangled and prismed by dew.Got jewel-bright beetles and enamelled grasshoppersCouched in flowers, crouched amid the grasses, glimmering through the leaves.Got butterflies and moths of every shade and sizeFrom the tiny copper-blue Zizina floating, dead, in a tadpoled pool,To a green-and-black lacewinged beautyFeeding on the snowdaisies in the Rolling Grounds.

I got a twirling whirling upward swirling swallowtail spiralHigh on the Grey Mare Range in the hazy glow of a lowly westering sun.

I got my tent pitched just in time to shelterSafe and dry, from the evening storms.Got to sit snug and smug, as rain hammered and lightning stalkedThe thunder-shivered hills.

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Sunset on Little Twynam

I got bruised and scratched and stung and bitten;Got lips chapped and split and bleeding,Burnt first by wind and then by sun.

I got to wake to a world inverted,With the clouds below the sky,Below the mountains,Below me.Got to sit and stand and walk and watch as it slowly rose to engulf us all.And thus I gotA day without a sun;Got to navigate the Kerries and Disappointment by guesswork and memory; From the Valentine's gentle valley,Past Gungartan's toppling trig, To the ugly shock of Munyang without map or vision.

I got stride, slip, stumble, scamper, scramble, squelch, plod.

I got the tangling, twisted bleached-white limbs of burned-out alpine scrubTwisting through the snowgrass,Tangled over rocks,Still singing their silent chorus with the snowgums.

68 | BWA February 2018

Late afternoon light on the Main Range from the Grey Mare Range

I got to crouch behind a concrete pillar on a wind-blasted mountaintopAnd watch as the world slowly formedAnd shapedAnd coloured itself with the growing light of a new day;And then turned and hid itself within dark swirling dampness.I got hot and sweaty, wet and cold, tired and hungry.

I got the curious isolationAnd dislocationOf walking in heavy fog,Carrying one small bubble of perceptionThrough the soft grey nothingness the world had become.

I got a fingernail-thin sliver of crescent moon rising just before the sun and leading it into the west.

I got one perfect day on the Main RangeThat beganAnd endedIn fog, but all the hours between were made to order,Clear skied, but for the small streaks and puffs that came to break the boredom of solid blue,With the biting blow-you-sideways winds of days before and afterDropped to a breeze just enough to keep the air from stillness.And, so, I got ...... out to the Sentinel by the straight route -Heart still dancing its samba-beat upon the summit rocks -Then back by one yet worse,A boottip, fingergrip scramble of mossed and crumbling rockThat, when done, left me owning the world.

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Climbing South Ramshead aka "The Place Where the Falcons Fight" (as a tribute to Cootapatamba "The Place Where the Eagles Drink"), and the battling (or possibly courting - who knows with birds?) trio of peregrines I watched up there.

I got great swathes of snowdaisies,Adding their silver-green and whiteTo the patchwork-quilted hillsides.I got orchids known from other timesAnd other places -Their seasons subtly shifted by the breaking of the drought -And one soft pale greenhood I had not seen before,In a place I had not been before(and would not care if I never saw again).

I got fitter, and stronger,In more than just the body.

I got the joy,The fierce, sky-ringing exultationOf mountaintops aloneBy midday, dawn and dusk.Got the warm deep satisfaction that comesWhen you aimAnd tryAnd do.

I got to live to a different rhythm, to measure time in other ways:By the turning of the earth,The waning of the moon,By the ache of hip, twinge of knee, rumble in the belly.

I got to love the mountains moreEvery day,Every hour,Every step,Until I was them and they were me and we were all,All lifeAll love,All time and place.

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I got so used to solitude I felt at times I was the only human there -Not only in the mountains, but in all the world,For the mountains were the world;And all the petty ills ands vices of manWere nothing -All were meaningless and touched me not(Not even the cricket)For I stood outside them, and apart from them.

And, so, I got to be both moreAnd lessThan human.

I got me, heart and soul.I got the world.I got life.I got real ...

... oh, a bit. This and that. Enough.And you?

Dead Horse Creek feeder, below South Ramshead, morning