Having completed our following of the Murrumbidgee River, we had a yen to explore one closer to home. Our journey along the Lachlan River began in November 2019 and is still continuing, due to interruptions from Covid 19, but in this post I want to concentrate on the headwaters of the River, before it reaches Wyangla Dam (or even half way to there).
Lesson one: Our suppositions about an experience will differ from the actual experience, always.
Despite having read some descriptions about this section of the Lachlan River, nothing prepared us for having to view its very beginnings from the back of an overgrown graveyard.
In our lives, we can often imagine what an experience may be like, but it is not possible to know for certain, and we cannot anticipate emotions ahead. We may imagine a lot of possibilities, but when we get there, there will be only one way through the experience (despite a lot of possible "what ifs" beforehand). We certainly could not have imagined what being in lock-down or living through a Pandemic would be like until it actually happened, and I'm sure this is the case for many others.
Lesson two: Side tracks are worth exploring for ourselves, despite other people's opinions.
We followed every accessible side track to the River and found many interesting vistas and ways through, despite some tracks supposedly being closed and/ or inaccessible according to others (which proved not to be the case when we reached them).
Our life journeys are individual journeys, and different things will have different levels of importance to each of us, so we need to each choose our own side tracks, rather than allowing others to choose them for us, based on their opinions.
Lesson three: Just because life seems dry, it does not mean we won't find enrichment if we take the time to look for it.
Having begun our journey along this River at the end of a drought year, we were surprised to find that it contained flowing water all the way along its infant course (we expected water holes at best).
If we spend our lives taking things at face value, we may miss some enriching experiences, merely because we have not looked deeply enough for them.
Lesson four: We need to do our own exploring, and not rely on the information of others.
The limited information we had about this section of the River proved to be very inadequate, and we found lots of lovely places by creating our own travel agenda. The most detailed travel article from a magazine was based on pursuing Clancy of the Overflow and, in the end, merely gave us an approximate location of the starting point of the Lachlan.
Information from others is always based on their perspectives (or even perspectives altered across time), so it pays to take the time to explore things for ourselves, and to find our own perspectives in our own time-frames.
Remember: It's a funny thing about life, once you begin to take note of the things you are grateful for, you begin to lose sight of the things you lack. Gemany Kent.
