Not much of a mountain really if you can drive to the top of it
but in this mist and ice a boy can pretend. Wind down the windows
and an icy wind hits your face and dad yells from the front seat.
Looking out there are patches of ice and snow on the side
of the road but the trees are shadows against
the whiteness of the cloud we are driving through.
At the peak dad parks the car and we pull on beanies and gloves.
On a clear day you can see for miles, all the way back to Lithgow
and out beyond Forbes in the west - or so Tom told me.
But today the mist is so thick you have to push through it.
I walk up to the fence around the repeater tower that relays
TV signals to the farms. I can see one leg of the base
but it dissolves quickly into cloud. Ice forms on the tower
over night and on sunny winters morning you can hear it
crack and fall through the tower, bouncing off metal
on the way down. Dad told me that years ago,
just after it was built, a man was standing underneath
when an ice shard shattered his skull. But today
it is too cold for the ice to melt and the area under the tower
has been fenced off. Besides in this fog you couldn't see
an ice speared body more than a few feet away.
You can drive to the top of Mt Kosciuszko.
ReplyDeleteNot much of a mountain if you can drive to the top of it......
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