It’s been 18 years since I left Sydney to live on a mountain, set up a studio with my partner and raise a baby girl. We had no idea how we were going to make it all financially work-out, splitting away from the city to a rural area with low employment but somehow everything always just fell into place. At the time some of our friends said don’t sell your house and leave Sydney , you will never be able to get back into the market ! Of course on the inside Celeste and I said Yay ! Who’d ever want to return ? For us it was a no-brainer. Trade-in a small old semi-house for a mountain top vista ?
About half of my place is covered with original rain forest. Its rare and untouched. Normally one associates rain forest with hot climates but this is cool and temperate, full of tree ferns and lichen and chocolate coloured wallabies and wombats. Wisely this rainforest, to protect itself, creates boundaries of harsh prickly plants and stinging nettles to stop intruders. We have also ensured with a lot of fencing that cows and other heavy hooves cant get in – encouraging the forest to spread back into areas that were cleared by settlers a hundred and fifty years ago. Even in the last 18 years the forest has reclaimed so much back.
Over the years we have avoided intrusion but only last week a good friend made a little entrance hole and simply used what was there – a tiny track made by years and years of wallabies and wombats.These beautiful marsupials have kept to the same track keeping the ground-cover pristine thereby ensuring no weed species can establish themselves. The path meanders through the most magical primordial landscape and gently finds itself down at the bottom of the hill and back out onto the driveway. Minimal impact but maximal wonder.
This casual walk takes about 30 minutes but in that time something calming and refreshing fills you. All of our friends who have walked in here notice it. It is a presence. Its what the ancients called the numen. Its where we get the word numinous. It describes the presence of something invisible yet divine that resides in natural and sacred places.
This month’s composer’s choice, as with all my music for One Mind Live, is directly sourced from my natural surroundings. I hope you enjoy!
Stephen Fearnley is an award-winning filmmaker, artist and composer. He composes transformational soundscapes for the meditation journeys of One Mind Live – a unique worldwide online group meditation community. To sample One Mind Live, go HERE