A different kind of blog today.  Some pictures taken on a roadtrip inland, back from Sydney.  I had been visiting my Mum in a nursing home, her Dementia rapidly advancing.  Such special and emotional time, in a relationship that had been, well, frankly, fraught.

The trip took forever, but the landscape had something for me.

 

Miles in to miles.

 

Me and the road and the boulders.

It was an aching drive and an opening drive.

A stupidly long and boring drive.

 

More and more distance between Mum and I, yet how big she is in my heart along the lines of rust metal fences, broken down road and yellow wild flowers.

 

Slowing for each small town, a pub or a church, and letting the big country get inside, open the walls, let the breath get big. Surreal. Crazy tired. Slightly dissociated.

 

White flowers now, like fields of snow under the parched sun.

 

Past Armidale with memories of stories from Dad and his travels and onward north, to the boulders that split my heart, big from the ground, pouring the love from me and meeting it strong. Safe. Pink glow, late sun.

 

This country is in me. It’s here for me when nothing else is. It fills the spaces inside me and loves me.