Issue link: http://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25125
TEXT: CHRIS KOENTGES -0 C OJ OJ C • O Meandering north from Sydney, along Australia's east coast toward the Great Barrier Reef not so long ago, I hit a partic- ularly unsettling spell of restless nights. Alternating between riding the bus and hitchhiking, I'd slept on a different patch of planet every night for three weeks straight. A lunchtime nap one day caused me to miss the ~ pub wouldn't open for a couple of hours so, with vague ~ thoughts of resuming my siesta in the shade of a gum tree ..J I beside the creek, I began to hike. of sugarcane-Proserpine's raison d'etre. I found the creek, L... ::J but en route to my perfect patch of shade, I came across a young Aboriginal boy. In a lame attempt to amuse him, I grabbed a chunk of bark lying at the foot of a Ghost Gum tree and, without a word, slipped it into the gently moving creek. It quickly snagged along the water's edge. The kid giggled at my inep- titude. He ran to one of the other gum trees nearby and ripped off a sleeker piece of bark than mine. I was obviously ~ dealing with a bark-boat veteran because his vessel found a channel , cutting an impressive wake as it surged out of sight. Not about to back away from the challenge, I prowled along the rocks looking for a more appropriate hull. Vl leech-ridden stream of muddy water called Cedar Creek. The reef-bound bus out of the lazy cane town of Proserpine and I found myself with the prospect of a hard half-day's limbo. All the town offered in terms of entertainment was a pub and a I dug out a root shaped like a Winnebago. The kid had a branch that looked like it had been designed by NASA. We went best two-out-of-three, then four-out-of-seven, before I lost track of the score, screaming encouragement at my boat while the boy dashed back and forth in his bare feet on the jagged rocks along the other side. Eventually he waved good- bye, leaving me on my own, wondering if it had actually hap- pened at all. I've always suspected that the Earth has a sublime The creek is hard to pick out from the nonstop fields capacity for dream. The Australian Aborigines believe every meaningful event that occurs at a particular place leaves a vibrational residue in the Earth. Our world is composed of these symbolic footprints, and the power of each print-each event-is a consequence of the memory of its origin. The Aborigines call this power "dreaming of a place." In extraor- dinary states of consciousness, people can actually tune themselves in to the inner dreaming of the Earth. That afternoon, surrounded by indistinguishable cane fields as far as I could see, I wasn't sure if the Earth dreamt us, or we it.