Mountains Belong to the People Who Love Them
Slow Journeys in South Korea and Eastern Australia
“An outstanding contribution to Australian nature writing”
“Synge’s preoccupation with the present moment and the sacred nature of everyday experience … gives the collection its strength”
“… a delightful and surprisingly rich book, full of beautiful poetry, personal insight, and a great deal of beauty and pleasure. To read it is to become wise …”
“… beautiful acuteness ... an intense meditation on her private world and her spiritual quest … we are privileged as readers to take part in this discovery … [and to] embrace her humility and joy at being part of another culture”
“I spent a spring in South Korea with my then twelve-year-old son in tow, a wondrous experience. My job was to teach a little bit of conversational English in an alternative boarding school on a mountain in the far south and we were given board in a house belonging to a rice farmer’s widow. The school was situated on two campuses which necessitated walking up and down the mountain to take my classes. Instead of my son attending to the schoolwork expected of him by his Australian teacher, he broke free and roamed the woods. As for me, inspired by Basho who wrote ten haiku daily as he traipsed the length of Japan, I pledged to write one every day before bedtime. Effortlessly, with no plan to do so, I accidentally wrote my first poetry collection. Post Pressed published it; a decade later following with this second edition which includes my account of an Australian trek with the same son. This time, we traversed forests of the Gold Coast Hinterland Great Walk with a group of meditators for a week. David King, a keen trekker of the Scenic Rim himself, provided the cover photograph and various other images. (David King, Mount Lindsay, photograph, c 2010.)
The collection gave rise to two adaptions. One is my poet’s film about the Gold Coast Hinterland Great Walk. Slow Days on Old Pathways premiered at the Queensland Poetry Festival and is now on Youtube. Check it out! The second adaptation is by Australian composer Stephen Leek. He took a long lyric poem about a school hike to the mountains and developed a major choral work. ‘Excursion to Jiri San before the mid-term holiday’ therefore inspired the lyrics for Leek’s Jirisan Sunrise which premiered at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre in 2011 with orchestras, three choirs and William Barton on didgeridoo to commemorate the ‘Year of Golden Jubilee of Korea and Australia’. ” - Lesley Synge
To buy the book, contact the author.
To read a short story inspired by Mount Jiri, see ‘Heaven’s Gate’ in Other Works - Short Fiction.
Gold Coast Hinterland Great Walk excerpt.
Leaves. I’m here because of leaves. Above, below. Emerging, living, dying. They breathe out and I breathe in – I grow heady with their oxygen. Even here, at the edge of the rainforest, their colours and shapes defy belief. Their decay releases a pungent earthiness, and tomorrow when I start the Great Walk, their litter will cushion my feet.
To come to them, I’ve turned away from things. Life in automatic gear – familiar, habitual, comforting, yet strangely stultifying. What the Buddha, teaching in Ancient India, defined as samsara.
Samsara’s speed seems to be picking up. Life’s all fast lanes, fast connections, fast food, speed dating and fast bucks.
So here I am in Green Mountains, an hour’s worth of fast driving south from the city of Brisbane. After fleeing south along the freeway, my car has nosed west and climbed the narrow road. This is the plan: rendezvous at Green Mountains, slow down, trust the unfolding of the journey.
here i am, leaves
in my simplicity
as you are ...
“Compelling. I was very moved by this collection [which] adds to the tradition of journeys of wonder.”
“Keep this one on your bedside table.”