For the Love of the Snowgum - Doug Manders - Bog

The parrots screech, the currawongs flee. The sentinels stand, with their fist of iron hold. Upon the hill they stand. The twisted sentinels stand as it bows to the wind. With its arms stretched out to the foreboding storm clouds across the range. The foreboding dark sky dances with the branches in all their twisted glory as the moan of the wind sings its lonely song. With its twisting and swaying, the trees yet again stand before their shaper. As they have always done with the rain and snow, the weather. So foul, the colors of the trees come into their own. For there is nothing quite like them, from the wind-blown icy embrace to quiet valley. Below, with the snowflakes gently, they silently enveloping the snowgum. Yet again, they bow to their shaper with their blanket of snow upon them. In the fog and cloud, the strange-shaped apparitions appear from the gloom to greet you as you go by. When the sun comes out, the branches burst and come into life as they are freed from their icy clasp, with a tingle of falling ice upon the snow below. Once again they stand, as they do. For the sentinels of the mountains will always be there with their colors so grand.