The bush track along which I walk shows signs of disuse. The tree branches and the scrubby bushes are starting to encroach upon the path, no longer being held back by the regular tread of other walkers' feet. Despite that, the track is still wide enough that I don't need to concentrate too hard to avoid having my legs and ankles scratched.
I am totally immersed, my breathing deep and regular, my heart light with ease as I listen to the bush sounds around me - the cicadas with their high-pitched shimmying, birds cawing from deeper in the surrounding forest, and the scurry of the occasional ground-dwelling animal that I have inadvertently startled from their foraging. But most relaxing of all is the deep miasma of the forest smell, deep and earthy and so far removed from the hustle of my day-to-day city life that it conveys an other-worldliness to my usually stressed psyche. I realise as I walk that I have moved so far away from Nature in my life, and that my sudden need to go for a bush walk was a deeper part of me screaming for some contact with the real world. And so here I am, and for the first time in a long time I am not thinking about anything but what is directly about me - the track, the rainforest - and my senses are engaged solely in appreciation.
The day is overcast, rainclouds thick in the sky above, and I welcome that, too. The air is cool around me, and the darkened sky has a bruised look about it, which always fills me with the delicious anticipation of a potential storm. Bring it on, I say, to whomever may be listening.
When it does start to rain it begins with just a few thick drops that smack against my face and my arms. Within a minute I can hear the downpour begin in earnest, but the canopy of trees above me protect me from most of the fall. The new noise of the rain drumming on the foliage above and around me adds to my sense of overwhelming peace.
Of a sudden a small gap appears in the trees and bushes beside me, more a deficit of one tree than a true opening, and through it I can espy a small clearing. It is a greensward that seems somehow out of place with the surrounding bushland, for the grass here is lush and thick, and looks almost manicured as if attended to regularly by a gardener. The clearing is ringed by tall trees that serve to enclose is, such that the only easy entrance into it is through the small gap at which I now stand.
It is too tempting. I push through the narrow gap and into the clearing.
There is no roof here, the clearing is open wide to the sky above, and so the rain is much heavier here. I turn my face upward and catch the raindrops on my tongue. Within a few moments my clothes are saturated and suddenly there seems no point in wearing them at all. I strip off, throwing my forsaken garments and my backpack off to one side. Naked now, I stand for minutes in the deluge, delighting in the feel of the rain against my raw skin, as it seems to wash away my sins with its cold purity.
