Boab Twilight

Boab Twilight
Great Northern Highway, Central Kimberley, Australia

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Heading east toward Fitzroy Crossing on the Great Northern Highway you catch glimpses of strange ridges of rock to the north. They rise out of the rolling outback like a reef from the sea. They are in fact exactly that, an ancient coral reef that once defined the edge of a shallow tropical sea that covered the Kimberly region over three hundred million years ago. The inverted looking Boab trees scattered among the limestone karsts remind me of undersea creatures.

The breeze shifting the grasses was warm as the rocks radiated the day’s heat. The quiet of this evening was that of the open Outback, utterly silent until you stop the noise of your own breathing. Small sounds at my feet cause me to look down and mutter an epithet as an inch long ant skitters out of the leaves to the top of a boulder, pausing there to survey its domain. It has to be the most astounding ant I’ve ever seen. I look at it and it looks at me.

As I walk up through waving, sharp-tipped grasses, a red kangaroo leaps into view, easily clearing twenty feet per floating bound. It gains the top of a flat shelf above, and looks over its shoulder at me before vanishing among the rocks. Standing exactly where it did, this scene, lit only by the twilight sky, is the view.

The piece is titled Boab Twilight, but for me a part of it will always be The Ant and the Kangaroo.