Verdant in deed (yirtangu)

It may be the desert but it's not brown. It's not that sandy. It's not that hot.

Coming in to Blackstone today from Warburton

Now, with unseasonal rains, it's verdant, lush, luminous, cool and somewhat muddy. A green so vibrant as to knock you into submission.

Yirtangu. In 2007, I once travelled a delightful trip with an Aboriginal colleague from Wanarn to Warburton. With us, an experienced woman who understood a lot of language and even more of its contemporary complexity in the Lands.

The countryside was as green then as now. It sparked an unusual conversation amongst us. We exchanged words. Verdant. A particular word in English, evoking the landscape around us. Not well known, but perfectly suited to our time.

Yirtangu. The Ngaanyatjarra equivalent, given in response after a moment's thoughtful contemplation. Language rich with its knowledge of seasons, rich with its reckoning of daily life. Rich with the lives of  ancestors before him.

Later that weekend, a woman came to sell me a painting. I had tired then of buying small canvases, rough, crafted for a box of groceries. As soon as it was unrolled, however, the woman in the car and I both smiled. Yirtangu. For a $100, a box in deed, memories of the lush green desert then and now.

For Inge and Robin