April
8 April
The sun is definitely hot now. Summer is fast approaching. Tara and I are in Discovery Bay. This morning we caught the ferry over, a
comfortable tug of a ferry.
We love the time we have before walking to catch the ferry home again. We buy lunch and a drink and sit on the stairs next to the sea, watching the cool, green waters of the bay.
Suddenly a fish leaps out the water, one, two, three times, leaping to safety in the green sea.
We walk slowly to the ferry and sit upstairs to see the coastline of Lantau slipping by us. The tower of the monastery peeps out through the foliage.
In Mui Wo, a large bird of prey, a Black kite, is soaring near the ferry
pier. I love to watch these graceful birds glide above the sea and
then dive down swiftly to hunt for fish.
9 April
The Bauhinia blakeana is in full flower and the large pods are
growing. The Hong Kong orchid tree flower appears on Hong Kong's flag. The trees flower profusely and the flowers are pale pink or a deeper fuchsia pink.
There are some giant eucalyptus trees growing near here. They are
magnificent.
I walk past the buffalo, enveloped in green and chewing
away to their hearts content.
The roots of a large ficus tree catch my eye with their wonderful,
flowing patterns.
As I near the Wang Tong village, I walk past an old building with
ornate metal gates now standing empty and derelict.
Late in the afternoon I walk out onto the rooftop. Lin Fa Shan rises up behind my home. The sun is about to disappear behind the
mountain. Bright white rays cascade down the slopes and reach out
across the sky.
12 April
I met a friend to walk up the steps to the hill overlooking Mui Wo. It’s a grey sky day but not cold. We rise up and up with the view of the bay expanding to include the hills and hidden away valleys of Mui Wo.
On the way down I stop to look at a plant. I try to make sense of it
until I see that the petals of the flower are impossibly long. It reminds me of the other worldliness of a passion flower.
The flower is lime yellow with blood red stripes from its center and a row of white teeth encircling the stamen, a Strophanthus divaricatus, native to southern China. It's used medicinally for the treatment of snake bites. It's just amazing.
15 April
Walking down to the Mui Wo shops on a calm, grey day. I walk along the waterfront and look out across the bay. I can see a large yellow wall divider that is floating in the sea. It’s from the construction at the beach. It’s floating near the canal and I’m sure someone will take a boat and fish it out of the water. But in the meantime there’s an egret that looks extremely happy, standing on the large yellow raft peering into the water, very pleased with the birds eye view of the darting fish. The egret walks to and fro nodding its head and concentrates on the fish below.
21 April
Country of Origin race is a team race around Lantau. Amy, Jemima
and I started out in the morning, it was forecast to be hot but on the tops of the mountains there was low cloud and a fresh breeze. I
never stop feeling a sense of wonder and gratefulness when I’m on
the trails. The race took us along a new trail for me. There were
rolling hills and views down to the sea and the airport.
25 April
On the trail I see one bright splash of pink. A small bush is covered in buds and there are a few early blooms. The rose myrtle is starting to flower again. Soon the mountainside will be covered by different shades of pink.
Low clouds have been resting on the mountain tops for days now. Summer is coming, we’ve had the first few thunderstorms passing through and a refreshing downpour soaking the dry land. The grass has noticeably responded and the greens are brighter and there’s a sense of growth and movement. The streams are flowing more strongly and there’s a lovely sound of moving water.
I saw three swallows on the ground, they looked incongruous out of the sky where they flit and speed around. Their little bodies are
streamlined and they were picking up grass and sticks and dropping them until someone passed by on a bike and they took flight, carrying a small twig or piece of grass, it’s time to build a nest.
29 April
Jono and I decided to run the route of the Run-swim race, a race that incorporates trail running with ocean swimming. We headed off in the late afternoon. We ran down to each pier where the swims start and stop. Past the derelict prison and up into the hills through an abandoned village. We ran past houses that the jungle was reclaiming. One house had eyelashes of some kind of succulent.
Some of the village dogs in the more remote villages objected loudly to our passing through their territory. As we walked across a beach on what felt like the other side of nowhere, it felt surreal to run to such a remote and faraway place when just on the other side of the hills, all the bustle of the city and the friendly happenings of the bigger villages were going on.
We found a path that connected us to the next beach. It was more like a tunnel, it was so enclosed by the bushes around us. We kept on bumping into Orange Magpie moths, Obeidia tigrata, bright orange with black spots, that would flutter ahead of us for a while. The feel of the path changes as it gets dark.
The world narrows and closes in, it gets more intimate and insular.
Finally we descended to the coastal path and back into the lights of Pui O. We stopped for a cool drink and then headed back to familiar Mui Wo and home.
30 April
Today was overcast and grey, I had to go to Central, on Hong Kong Island, and on my way out I grabbed an umbrella in case it rained. I dashed down to the pier on my bike, locked it in the sea of bikes at the pier and boarded the slow ferry.
The slow ferries are open at the back and there are two bollards that make convenient seats where I can watch Mui Wo receding as we sail towards Central. I sat watching the wake leaving a white trail in the jade-green of the sea.
As we moved through the ocean the sun came out and warmed my
shoulders. I realised that Lantau was under a large hovering cloud
and there was clear blue sky everywhere else.
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