From the category archives:
Living on a mountain, my eyes are directed as often to the skies as they are to ground level. Clouds fascinate me — and I’m not alone — as the wonderful Cloud Appreciation Society website shows. I especially love it when massive cloud banks like this one, snagged on the mountain range, are lit by [...]
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The view from the inside of a cloud does not extend very far. Today, past the first dim line of trees, I see no mountain ridges or rainforest gullies or even eucalypt forest. They might no longer exist. If the evidence of the eyes counts, the world might end 100 metres from my verandah. I love this intimacy with [...]
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The days veer between hot and dry with winds that would push a fire to an inferno, and cool and cloudy. This particular day the clouds came so low they met the earth, and my mountain was transformed once again. These days of mystery and dripping moisture are probably my favourite weather here. I love [...]
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Clouds never cease to surprise me with their inventiveness, their capacity to confuse the senses and scramble their connections to the mind. In one almost cloudless sunset sky recently, at a time when I thought I knew the moon was half-full, I briefly also thought I saw a huge crescent moon. Pink and perfect, it [...]
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After a severe thunderstorm, with crashes and breaks and rolls that came much to close to my cabin for comfort, the rain stopped just in time for the end of the day. The rain had been welcome, but I wanted a fine tomorrow. Over me, thin low cloud still swirled grey and damp, and the [...]
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Thanks to Fleur Mcdonald for her kind remarks about Mountain Tails — read her review here.
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My world looked different after the rains stopped. Blue sky seemed bluer, white clouds whiter than ever before, brighter than memory allowed. Grey skies had dominated for so long. My native animal neighbours appreciated it too, coming out of shelter to feed and scratch and dry off. Not having seen many since I got back [...]
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January has been very hot, up to 36 degrees here — of course interspersed with odd days where it plummeted to 13 degrees. It’s not called ‘climate chaos’ for nothing. Outdoor work needs to be done before the day heats up too much, in my opinion, so I aim to be up around six and [...]
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Lolling on the couch the other evening, I happened to glance up. In the low rays of the setting sun, an odd bump showed on top of one of the bracing rafters. It was the biggest spider I have ever seen, with a very fat, light brown body. As its legs were bent around the [...]
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Here’s proof that the earth is round. The sun had set on my horizon, down here on my tree-rimmed earth. Green details had given way to black filigree. The huge bank of clouds to the north had almost ceased to reflect the sunset. Except for way, way up high, where the top of this massive [...]
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High mountains belong as much to the sky as to the land. They often meet with clouds in secrecy, their intercourse hidden from us land-dwellers. I can see the lower edge of the clouds almost boiling up the deep upper gullies, frothing and rolling, but I can’t see inside. The ridge and its peaks remain under [...]
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Very early one morning I happened to catch this connection between nature and man. The heavy cloud was just cruising, waiting for the sun to warm it up, when a cheeky jet plane shot right through the middle of it and up into the real daylight. There it shone, a silver streak that made my [...]
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Exisle, my publishers, have made a special arrangement for my web site visitors — you can buy Mountain Tails at a special 20 per cent discount by ordering from the Exisle website and quoting the coupon number MT2009; you can use that coupon any number of times.
A candid meander through my life up here on my remote mountain wildlife refuge, answering the oft-asked question 'Why do you live way out there?'
