Every summer I am torn between the fact that I sometimes feel I was originally created from a spare sunbeam, such is my love for this brilliant golden season. Its warmth sooths me while the garden and the great outdoors vie for my presence, both with such promise that I have difficulty in choosing between them. It’s the flipside of summer with its natural horror of what lays in wait as Sol sucks the life out of all nature’s plant life that causes the contradiction.
Scanning the far off horizon for any signs of smoke through the almost blinding white glare, caused by the unrelenting blazing sun unmercifully radiating down, seemingly to enjoy the triumph of drying out the last vestige of green from the fields and gardens spread out before me
As the dreaded hot northerly winds starts whipping the dry scorched earth into gritty choking sandstorms, one can almost sense the ever alert fire watchers catch a collective apprehensive breath, as they pray to God that no one or thing lights a match or sheds a spark.
The cold shiver of fear almost blocks the brain from registering the wispy spiral of smoke gleefully being whipped into a full-blown funnel that’s quickly spreading into the telltale cloud of doom, far down the valley behind the mountain ranges snuggled there.
It’s started, a lightning strike, a carelessly thrown cigarette butt, or a sick mind banishing a box of matches, the conception at the moment isn’t the main concern, that will come later. For now we fight.
in The Dandenongs Melbourne
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