Left late in the afternoon. Low cloud settling over Mt Keira. Up in the direction of the Jumpers. The tree that had once been attached to the broken branch that had held up the daft mountain bike jump had itself fallen down, so jumped across its fractured branches. I was walking quickly, even running at times, because I was worried about the light. Also needed to get breathing and to summon the late afternoon heat. Up to the Jumpers where I knew there were the remnants of blue car. It lay right beside the track. I’d walked past it on the way to the non-existent Broker’s Nose 4wd. So this was a calculated target. I had no doubt that it was there. I figured that at this time in the afternoon – really early evening – that there would be no one else around. The descending clouds made all the greens of the forest more intense. I walked up the steps beyond the archery centre with a sense of rapidly disappearing from view. Didn’t take long to reach the Jumpers and the wrecked blue car. Took more photographs than I needed and then prepared for the cut. For some reason this time, I forgot to put on my gloves. A bad oversight, but luckily with no bad consequences. If anything, my lack of long trousers was more of a problem as hot slivers of metal shot off against my legs, becoming ingrained like burrs in my socks and shorts. But I was consumed in the cutting, which can’t be halted once started, which can only be stopped once the square is removed. Once again, for some strange reason, I was having trouble maintaining a neat straight line. It occurs to me now that perhaps I was pushing the angle grinder too deep. Rather than lightly making an incision, I was roughly carving the skin from the larger shell. I could see the grinding blade rapidly wearing down. Although I carried a spare, I was determined to complete the job before the single disk was altogether spent. Eventually, with some final grinding and manual twisting, I pulled the piece out. More photographs. I also took some photographs of the overall scene. I continued to take photographs most of the way down. Each time I stopped and balanced the metal square against my leg and each time it cut into my skin. Mt Nebo was grey and yellow in the distance. The softness of the clouds. The softness of the forest. The most intense yellow flowers that I rapidly walked by without any effort to hold on to them, to somehow preserve them here.
Trail to the Jumpers
Blue panel
Cut out
Square