There was much activity on the beach throughout last night, it was a full moon after all, and I know how it shone on that hard white sand. How it shone on the twitching stick-eyed lunar crabs and the silvered grasses on the dunes.
In the early morning you could see trails of pawmarks, large and small, see them clearly, a network of tracks.
In summers past I have seen dingoes at dusk trot silent and demure along the edge of the dunes, becoming invisible and fading into the landscape as I watch. It seems that the pack has grown, and celebrates its own existence. One dingo girl, with rusty flanks, comes to the edge of the shadows and her form bleeds into the very air: she comes when we dream, and her pup chews our shoes. My own cubs slumber in their membrane of silk, unseeing. The rusty one pays them no attention at all.
But here, this morning, as evidence of their joyful dancing, these looping trails tell me something more: that their paws swung round a wild arc, spraying sand with the impetus of their heavy flung bodies, feet driven into the sand deep and angled. Circles, running, one way and then the other.
Over and over.
It must be the moon, coming down in floods.
I’m told they don’t hunt in packs, and that this lot are the most genetically pure in NSW, which I suppose is a good thing. But I do know they have eaten all the brush turkeys, and those kangas, whose mythical leaps over low lying tents have entertained us folk for years, have been driven away or eaten. Only that mob living up the way in the paddock full of Belted Galloways seem to remain, protected perhaps, by the Belties. Dingoes don’t go near cows, it seems.
Last night, beneath that splendid moon, with only the faintest of yips, those dingoes danced wild circles, white sand flew up in plumes and scattered the ghost crabs, and not far away was I, with a headful of moon and the drumming of surf,
dreaming, as I do always, of you. How can I help it? In the face of such a moon as this?
Tis just for an instant: the tide comes in at dawn, and as I watch, smooths all signs of dancing away.
11 comments:
how strange! we photographed the same moon!
i was camping once with my family in the desert. we were just sleeping in swags, and a pack of dingoes nearby howled and howled for hours. very spooky.
Stunning photos and entrancing words, fifi.
I've been eyeballing that new moon, too. Something about the moon draws me in every time.
Oh, those dingoes... look dangerous to me. But beautiful.
Lovely words and pictures, as usual with you.
I absolutely love those pictures fifi! The one of the moon is my absolutely favorite, followed by the tide on the last one. I couldn't stop looking at them.
The moon was so bright here last night in the southern hemisphere of London that you could almost read by it.
ganching
As usual, your pictures are inspiring.
I too contemplated photographing this moon. I was running past the Sydney Opera House on the morning of the Björk concert, to be held on the forecourt. The moon hung over the Opera House, but its spherical shape contrasted with the sharp peaks on the Opera House sails. In contradistinction, the covering of Björk's stage was (more-or-less) hemi-spherical, suggesting to me the greater harmony between the natural world and Björk than with the SOH with its traditional activities. I thought "I should take a picture of that and blog about it"...then I thought "but compared with Fifi's blog, my efforts would be miserable". So I ran on past and turned my back on the moon, to run past the old wharves on the other side of the Harbour Bridge.
I learn so many things from your posts, Fifi...thank you!
Another hauntingly beautiful post!
Thankyou Fifi!
That beach looks beautiful! Sounds like the perfect balance of peace and excitement! Lou
i loved the pictures like everybody else did. beautiful place you stay in :-). fifi was the name of a princess in an enid blyton book i once read.
Thank you for visiting the American slum where I dwell on the internet. :)
Beautiful pictures. Beautiful writing.
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