At the Gold Coast Writers Festival I met up with Lesley Synge who was a tutor for a creative writing workshop I attended at TAFE when I was starting work on my novel Cave Hill. Lesley and I swapped copies of our latest publications. I was pleased when she rang and congratulated me on Cave Hill, saying how she enjoyed the read. She praised the effort I’d put in to bringing the work to publication and thought the writing was of high quality.
Lesley is involved in Buddhism, having spent some time working in a Buddhist community in Korea, and continuing a deep involvement with the faith since that experience. Her book, Mountains Belong to People Who Love Them, opened my eyes to a spiritual connection with Nature somewhat different from Australian Aboriginal spirituality but still very powerful. My interest in landscape tends to focus on geomorphology and aesthetics, and  having read Lesley’s work I am feeling somewhat undernourished in terms of spiritual empathy for country. Perhaps I should walk more slowly when I immerse myself in the mountains and forest, with less of a goal of getting there and spending more time in meditation and allowing the landscape to speak to me.