Breathing

When I step outside here, I hear the wind, the waves breaking a few backyard fences away, and the stand of big gum trees up the road blowing in the wind. That's all.

The air is warm. Dry.

It's the kind of free space I wrote about in January.

That might be the thing I love most about Australia, and Western Australia in particular. Even in the middle of the cities, somehow you can always sense the vastness of this land. The mostly-emptiness (though "empty" is a tricky word) — the spaciousness on the horizon. Standing at the edge of the Indian Ocean, I look up and down the coast and feel such relief knowing that unlike in California, there is an end to the houses, and it is never far. Breathing is so easy here, in this expanse.