Last Saturday we went on a bush walk in the Perth Hills, along a part of the Bibbulum Track. To the wonderful sounding Abyssinia Rock. A perfect day for it. Bright and sunny with just a hint of a slight breeze. It felt like a spring day.

The walk is through open jarrah and marri forests. A bush fire blazed through there several years ago, and we could see the charred and blackened trunks and the grotesque shapes of trees hollowed out by fire. It was amazing to see how the forest has regenerated over time. Some of the early spring wildflowers were blooming.  Yellow hibbertia or guinea flower glowing brightly. Very tiny little purple flowers poking up through the soil. One of the things I love about some wildflowers is that you have to bend closer and focus to see their tiny exquisite beautiful details. I have to take time and thought to appreciate them. A bit like life really!

We walked for over an hour, along the trail through the forests. Over a hill and along a ridge that looks out through the trees to the distant grey-green hills. Then down the hill where the forest grows denser. Over a tiny trickle of a stream out onto the huge but not high, wide, smooth grey dome that is Abyssinia Rock. At the top of the Rock I added my rock to the small cairn of stones there.

We’ve had some recent showers of rain. In the dips and hollows of the Rock were small clear rock pools that reflected back the wide blue sky dotted with fluffy white clouds. Around these pools were green swathes of moss.

But it wasn’t until I peered down closely at the rock pools and the mosses and lichens growing there, that I discovered a miniature world of exquisite detail and fragile beauty. Tiny, dainty flowers of pale pink and white. Dozens of different kinds of mosses and lichens. As varied as the big forest that we’d just walked through. Pale grey circles of lichens. Lizards about eight inches long sunning themselves on the rock, but quickly scuttling and darting away to the safety of their crevices at the sound of my heavy boots.

A beautiful, quiet contained world for such a brief time. A few days of hot sunshine and little rain and it would all disappear till next year’s late winter rains. A very short life barely noticed. But doing what they were destined to do by the great Designer.