‘The flaw in the pattern’ by Rachael Mead – Resurgence Prize, Highly Commended

13 thoughts on wilderness

1. It is a word for something imaginary.

2. The deep blue bowl of sky, the microbial cities in the folds of my skin.

3. Web, palimpsest, machine – nothing can capture it. All we can say is what it is not.

4. Warping the laws of physics, time drifts with the continents and distance is measured by
….each species’ step.

5. It is not untouched by us, yet finds us irrelevant.

6. Here the leech and the midge are equal to the devil and quoll.

7. To avoid sentences tangled with economic value and square acreage, these quiet places
….should be defined through non-human eyes, distilling their meaning to one simple word:
….essential.

8. Stillness and death can be virtues.

9. It keeps telling us the same thing yet never repeats itself.

10. Memories are sketched with shadow, history scratched deep in the mountain’s bones.

11. Solitude is a state of mind. You can never be alone.

12. The only commandment is that all shall be connected.

13. This is the home of a new genus of silence, a place where travel is tectonic grind,
……weather is never trivial and the present is the flaw in the pattern.