These days they translate it as “Sleeping Water” but I first knew her as “The Dreaming Lake”; so she is, and so she does - sleeps and dreams our lives away, day by day, season to season, year after year ...
There are places made by weather, their changes an echo of passing phenomena, of wind and rain and sun and cloud; and there are places that stand aloof from it, sufficient unto themselves, always what they are and what they will be with no regard for the world beyond.
No so with this lake, this water, this place of dreams. leawulina makes the weather, it is her dreams that make it. It is those dreams that call up the winds to howl through and over the surrounding mountains, that bring the freezing, frozen snow and hail; dreams of darkness and solitude that pull the clouds down low and thick and grey upon sullen waters; dreams of warmth and brightness that speak to the clouds and part them to let the sun shine clear and strong. Placid dreams that glass the water; angry dreams that throw it wildly on the rocky shores, that shift the earth and bring the rocks and trees all tumbling down, bring thunder to shiver the hills and the burning flash of lightning to strike them; gentle dreams of birdsong and spring flowers and bubbling little creeks;
foolish dreams, with little gusting breaths of breeze as music for the heedless ripples and waves to dance to; sad and wistful dreams of softly weeping pale mists.
Times there are when her sleep has dreams almost of madness, change and change and change about, from heat to cold, from breathless stillness to raging gale and back, not known or knowable. Times when her dreams - if you open yourself to them, to her - will drive you off; leave you shivering in fear and confusion, not knowing whence comes the fear, nor why. Times, too, when those dreams will beckon you close, loving and loved, an embrace for all, kind and soft and welcoming.
And there are nights - oh yes, it is always at night, these dreams; dark, still nights, windless nights - when the sleep is disturbed, when she rolls and shifts and stirs restlessly in her stony, silty bed - awhile no longer truly asleep - and dreams ... dreams, perhaps, of the day when she will wake into this world and all that we have made of it ... ... leeawuleena ...
leeawuleena is an old Aboriginal name for what we call Lake St Clair.
Bushwalk
