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Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Duck!

Such a beautiful Canberra night to be on the bicycle. Riding back from the art school to Bumblebee's school at dusk is a trip through inner North Canberra green spaces. I found myself gazing at the skyline on the left, which was pale yellow at the horizon deepening into what the watercolour pencil people call Night Green but is actually a deep greeny-blue. I glanced to the skyline on the right of the path, and it was pale pink darkening into Night Green. I looked right around, trying to stretch my neck like an owl to see behind, to find the point at which the colour shifted... the pink went around until it reached the silhouette of Black Mountain, and then reemerged from the mountain as yellow.. then it went around the horizon as yellow until it reached the trees towering up beside the bike path when it turned pink... AAAARGH!

That was the point at which I looked forward and saw a dawdle of ducks on the path in front of me.

No feathers lost, and the ducks and I shared a moment in time just looking at each other. Nice critters, but in no hurry at all. I, on the other hand, had to try to get to After School Care before they sent my child into foster care. So regretfully I dinged my bell and they toddled off into the darkness. It does get dark early these days, doesn't it?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, and how fkn awesome has the night sky been filled with moonlight these past few nights. After RIGPA (Buddhism course) the other night, following a very trippy meditation, I thought my insides were going to bust out with complete awe as I rode home at about 10pm along Girrawheen (which I usually abhor cos its so dark) but there was the moon in all its glory and my darling Mt Ainslie glowing....
And then of course there's being woken at 5am because its like trying to sleep under the MCG lights.... Grrrrr.

Ampersand Duck said...

Ha ha, yeah, love the night biking. Not too fussed on the early morning riding, but it's better than sitting in early morning traffic...

harry said...

Night bushwalking is totally rad and cool. Although you do have to pick your walks to avoid injury. Luckily you can do it with a bottle of red each which I heartely recommend even if one of us did fall off a cliff and we all went tromping in the swamp to look at a particularly nice tree and only realised there was a path to the self same tree after the ooze was settling in our socks.
The last one was a fullish moon but cloudy overhead, on a firetrail that wound down a hillside to a stretch of the Hawkesbury river at low tide that left bioluminescent critters lying on the mud. A good half hour was spent laughing our heads off tramping in the surreal flashes of yellow. 5 hours later we made it back to the car.
At times like that it's hard not the think that the whole world has been built just for you.

Ampersand Duck said...

Sounds like you found some little bluetops along the way... another thing that used to be a nice Canberra past-time before the bushfires ravaged all the stocks in the forests.