DANCING IN THE LIGHT

I’M A MORNING PERSON.I always have been.

I enjoy being up before sunrise: it’s an hour in the day that is truly mine. I often venture down our laneway in the early hours of the morning. Sometimes I listen to a podcast, sometimes I listen to the birds — galahs, magpies and willie wagtails, who are all just waking up too.

Just a few months ago, it felt like summer was taking an age to rear its head after relentless months of drizzling rain and soggy ground. Back then our laneway was muddy: the type of mud that sticks to the soles of your shoes. Each time a vehicle travelled along it left perpetual tracks. The depth of the tyre imprint remaining even after the ridges dried and crumbled. They became potholes that joined the list of potholes already littering our laneway. Full of water, they grew in diameter week by week. Donning my gumboots and clumping down the laneway for my early morning walk, I walked around them, concerned at the width and depth of the puddles.

The constant trickle of water that percolated down the laneway was eating away at the gravel. The water wasn’t just leaking from the dams, it was leaking from everywhere. Hidden springs reappeared before our eyes, dribbling the clearest of water. So clear, I pondered whether I could bottle it and sell it under the label ‘Parkwood Springs’. The New South Wales Central West’s very own spring water.

Morning after morning, I woke to a horizon enveloped by cloudy grey skies and a hidden sunrise. It cast a dull grey across our paddocks. The birds were singing their morning ditties, but it was almost as if they were singing in prayer for the sun to come out. There was a slight breeze which I could always feel when I reached the top of the hill, but the breeze was never ambitious enough to push away the all-encompassing cloud cover. The sunrise teased from behind the clouds, casting shades of rosy pink and pale purple among the grey.

The top of the hill is the halfway point of my morning walk. This is where I usually tap the nearest wooden fence post and pivot to make my way home. Often, I choose the cross-country trail for the return journey; the small track left by the sheep as they walk in single file towards the dam. But a few months ago, it was too wet to even attempt this cross-country excursion through the paddocks.

Mustering was all the more difficult with the ground so soggy.

The ewes don’t run as well in the mud. They hate wet feet, and I don’t blame them. Even the lambs, who are usually so agile and quick to move from paddock to paddock, detested the long, wet grass and moved at a blathering pace. Some paddocks we avoided all together.

Murray’s Creek, that only flows during times of intense rainfall, was constantly running. Downpour after downpour made our low-lying creek paddocks unpassable for vehicles or livestock until the water receded. At least the dogs loved to run and splash among the green pasture puddles.

At last, after what felt like months of unyielding cloud cover, warmth began to stir. The birds were singing in a higher key. There was excitement in their chirrups of song as they too could sense the warmth that daybreak brought. Out in the paddocks, the winter grasses turned. Before I knew it, they swapped their lush green foliage for sunburnt, crisp cladding. Underneath, summer pastures began to sprout and small bundles of green appeared from dry and caked soil.

It was still early on one of those cloudless mornings, and my husband Alex had already eaten breakfast and was out the door. A Bureau of Meteorology devotee, he was pleased to see a bit of sun back on the radar and fewer deluges of rain. Five years ago, he’d looked at the weather app with angst and despair, hopeful of just a small shower of rain to ease the all-consuming dust that covered our land. For the past two years, he has looked at it in anticipation of a sliver of sunshine to dry out our waterlogged paddocks. That’s the life of a farmer who relies on the weather to care for his land.

This particular morning, he’s mustering lambs. As my son Jimmy and I walk down our once-again-sunny laneway, I’m dodging those lingering pothole puddles and Jimmy is merrily sploshing through them. I’m suddenly halted by a joyous sight: it’s the lambs, and they are racing.

You can tell from miles away the difference between a mob of ewes coming down the laneway and a mob of lambs. Ewes walk at a steady pace, experienced in their way and knowing the laneway so well. Lambs, in contrast, view the laneway as their own skate park half-pipe. Each table drain and muddy pothole is a chance for them to defy gravity and attempt to reach heights never seen before by a fat crossbred lamb. They bounce from left to right, then right to left. They nibble at the paspalum on the side of the laneway, nodding their heads as they taste fresh summer growth.

As the lambs make their way towards the yards, the morning sun glistens on their freshly shorn, snow-white bodies. I find myself enthralled, not by the lambs, but by their shadows. With elongated legs and rotund bodies, were these in fact the silhouettes of puppets dangling from strings and rods? They dance along the laneway in animated glee. Their obscure figures rise and fall at a cantering pace. Their bobbing heads mimic the bobblehead dogs people buy for their car dashboards. I’m just waiting for the puppeteer to appear, holding their carboard cutouts of stencilled lambs, metal coil springs for their legs.

As the dancing puppets move beyond my illusioned viewpoint, I’m transported back to the laneway, where Jimmy sits at my feet with the ever-so-loyal Border Collie, Jiggy. She’s panting after her big muster and happily accepts my toddler son’s rather heavy-handed form of gentle patting. She doesn’t mind one bit.

As we follow behind the trail of lambs, the shadows of the morning sun have already changed. The light continues to dance as the sun rises, so pleased to finally have a moment for itself, to cast its rays free of cloud beyond the tree-lined laneway.

It feels so liberating to finally shed the woolly jumpers and jeans. They’ve lingered in the cupboard at the top of the clothes pile for far too long. With hats on our heads, sunscreen on our skin and boots instead of gumboots, we soak up the warmth and dance in the light.

Alexandra MacAlpine lives on Parkwood, a sheep and grazing property in the Central West of New South Wales. Follow Graziher on Instagram to see her ‘Thoughts on a Laneway’ reels.