Tears partway up the mountain because she’s collected too many rocks and we tell her she can’t carry them all to the top. When the pockets of her red parka burst with treasures—sandstone, mudstone … mud?—her brother hurries ahead to avoid the cataclysmic chasm in her reasoning. I gather the speckles, arrange them lovingly at our feet, and say (I hope) soothingly, “They’ll be safe here until we come down.” But who needs summits? Before me stands a natural wonder: a waterfall ablaze with fiery tresses, brimming with Cambrian glitters and Earth’s furor, wild as mountains, resolved as bedrock.
Linda Kohler lives in Kaurna Country, South Australia. Her work appears in Five Minutes and elsewhere. lindakohler.com Instsagram: @linda_jkohler X: @lindajkohler