Dadirri is the Australian Aboriginal word for it – lost in the quiet still awareness and the inner deep listening, we connect. We empathise with the land, its peoples, and with ourselves, as these do with us. It is a form of mindfulness that is otherwise elusive, one that can only be attained by belonging and being.
The soil is life and we live as it, the trees speak and we talk with them, the water laughs and we frolic with it, and the rock pulses and we embrace. This word, dadirri, is one I came across a long, long time ago, in the Red Heart of the land of my birth, and while the word’s depth of significance has been battered due to my naivety, my entrapment by and interactions with the material world that I have lived in, there are times when it rises to the fore, when ego diminishes and words disappear. I stop, intently.
The poplars just ahead of me are whispering as I write this. I have written about these poplars before, these trees that speak the words carried by the wind from places far away. And, at times, I stop – and listen – I connect with those words and from where they came. I am with you, of our world, and you with me, of our world. Listen.
This past Sunday August 22, the day after my quarantine ended here in Ontario, I headed out to find the rock.
The time I had previously been with the rock was on July 17, where my friend and I, laden with the climber’s tools, journeyed into the heart of a disused Singapore quarry. High above the rain dampened faces of the quarry’s floor we found the sun, and with it the glow of the welcoming ancient granite below, it’s warmth beckoning.
For many, such a pursuit, the whim to engage with the rock, is a fleeting joy to be experienced, a feat to be conquered. For others, however, there exists in such a place a message awaiting to be known. A message that speaks about fear and trust, about working with the ebbs and flows of what nature has given us, of meditation and awareness, of purpose and belonging. To have heard this message is to have heard what can be, if only we allow ourselves. It calls.
And so it was for the past five weeks, an urging, a summons to, as soon as possible, return to a place where the world made sense.
The time to get to the rock was a spot of this journey, the people that wandered through the forest trails nearby were a spot of this journey, the other climbers that were there were a spot of this journey. I appreciated what existed, and I felt grateful for being able to walk through these. However, it wasn’t until I put my hand on the dolostone of the escarpment, and I allowed myself to feel it’s rhythm through my body, that the journey came to life. And, at that time, once again, on the rock high above all, I allowed myself to be lost in that moment in time, and blossom.
There are those of you who may not understand what this is and I cannot explain, but for those that do, we’ve connected.
I stop intently, and cherish what I know.
Crossing Boundaries - Views of the World 
Thank you for giving me a word to express the experience of fully being part of the world. Thank you for the time you take to connect to the world around you, and for sharing your world with others. Climb well and climb on.
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Thank you for taking the time to read and share your thoughts and feelings. I’m thrilled to know you have a new word with which you can understand our world through/.
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