Frog talk

I wonder if everyone has a place they like to go when they feel troubled.  I choose between the creek and the lake.  I guess water is the soother for me.

Yesterday evening I chose the lake because in summer it has the magical sound of frogs.  And because it's in a paddock which boundaries onto the bush and it's the bush that had been causing me anxiety.  

Not that the bush itself could ever cause me anxiety, I love the bush, it's my happy place, but I'd been worried because I knew there were two young foreign backpackers somewhere in there, somewhere in the 3,000 hectares (nearly 7,500 acres).  They had been in the bush since Sunday and it's very unusual for trampers (hikers) to stay overnight in the bush.  And they only had light backpacks.

I'd talked with the police who had talked with their friend who owns the car they were travelling in (which was parked near the access road to the forest) and no-one else was worried, neither the police nor their friend.

I'd also talked with a hunter who met them in the bush on Sunday and with track maintenance workers who were working in the bush this week.  The workers think they may have heard voices on Monday but, at the time thought they came from the adjacent farmland. 

What else could I do?  I put my hopes in the track workers.  Surely if the girls were lost they would go towards the sound of workmen?  If they weren't injured.  I was really fretting about them.  Although I knew it wasn't doing anyone any good.  I simply felt there must be something I could do and I hadn't thought of it.

Thankfully, there was a happy outcome.  This afternoon the hunter who had talked to them in the bush on Sunday rang me to say he'd just seen one of them walking down the road from town.  If I had a horse, I would have jumped on my trusty steed and ridden off to investigate.  Lacking a horse I jumped in the car and found the girl just around the corner from the lodge entrance.  Her friend was still in the bush and they were both fine.  Glowing with good health and  happiness after thoroughly enjoying their time in the bush.  They had walked to a hut on the other side of the mountain and had been there all the time, safe and well.  

I will go out to the lake again this evening and talk to the frogs, tell them I'm a silly old woman with an overactive imagination.  Not that they take much notice but I know they are in there somewhere.