THE SOUTH WEST: Nornalup Inlet: Deep River And Kayak

rained all night, rained as if there were no tomorrow, nothing but
tears without recourse, without release: and slept there, long-faced,

in a weeping tent: but morning: in the morning the sky opened pale,
   sluiced of its dark and the bleak, its hands tender with promise, and

a mist lay thin and sparing, clean, it lay light, a hush of breath in the
mouth, it lay shy, it lay calm, soft vapour on the water, water upon

water, hand in hand, lingering, for the moment, a moment and a half:
then, and so, slipped the kayak into the white and grey, spaded the

blades, paddled sliding between the granite knolls, seizing the water
and the day, stroking them, making them mine, dug nosing into the

Nornalup that yawned among the karri eucalypts that rose above the
mist, shaping, and figuring, and cut dipping into the polish glaze of

the smooth that here, and there, way over there, dimpled as mullet
flicked, mullet that jumped flickering as the hull glided as it slid as

  the blades bit, fed: and pulling through the water, slicing the drag,
   through, through the water and past it, left, right, and left, arcing,

and spearing, making purchase, driving for the river, Deep River,
under the wings, fringed black, of white-bellied sea-eagles that

  feathered the thermals, lifting, and banking, as they rounded, and
   rounded, slowly, eyeballed through the slightness of the gauze of

the veil that napped with damp the air, the water, the wetsuit, the
yellow polyethylene, the aluminium shaft, the lycra gloves with

palm patches that gripped the sleek of the shaft that axled, thrust,
planted, levered: and the flat of the wet wrinkled behind, beyond,

silky, smoky as platinum: and then the river, took a channel into
   the river, tapping forward, blading softly, blading quietly, for the

water was soft, the water was quiet, barely moving, it seemed that
it barely moved as it fingered its course, pressed the drift of its way

through the karri forest thick with green and reaching and weight
of shadow, forest that clung to the banks, keeping to the river and

keeping the river, meek river, discreet river, slender as it loitered,
easing, taking its time, river of dark water that patted, and bumped,

it knocked at the hull that it shouldered, sparking: and so paddled
deep, rode gliding, finding passage, searching into the heart of the

trees, feeding into the day that grew bolder and bluer, reflecting,
echoing: paddled the river as far as the river allowed, to the foot-

bridge where a bushwalker sat dangling his legs, and trailed a
blade, swung steering, edging, pushed against the water, stopped in

the calm: ‘hard yakka, mate,’ he shouted, and stuck a thumb in the
air, ‘but worth it in the end,’ he shouted, and he hoisted his pack

and waved, was gone: and the kayak, yellow-bright as the flowering
   of wattles, bloomed on the water as we rested there, and the river

   held us as we rested, Deep River, dark river, river of forest, river
of quiet, that runs slow, runs fresh, to the Nornalup and the salt