SOFTLY GENTLY

The snow started falling long before the trouble arrived.

Soft flakes drifted from a darkening sky, slow and graceful, as if the mountain were offering an apology before delivering bad news. I stopped to watch them. Tiny white flecks floating through the air with all the menace of a Christmas card.

That was my first mistake.

Within minutes the weather was off the chain. The ridgelines vanished. Sky and ground merged into the same blank page. I stood in the middle of it trying to work out which way was downhill.

The wind arrived swinging. My confidence quietly slipped out the back door.

Then, through the haze, I spotted a line of snow gums. Twisted old survivors, bent against the weather, as if they'd spent a lifetime arguing with winter and refusing to lose. They became my compass. Black Sallees behind me, Kareela Hut somewhere ahead, and the Supertrail waiting below if I could find it.

I stumbled on through the storm until a lift pylon emerged from the white like a message from civilisation.

Later, I sat thawing beside a heater while the blizzard rattled the windows.

The mountain had gone from poetry to violence in less than an hour.

I was simply grateful to still be in the story.

Check out the close-up!

Oil on stretched canvas / 100cm x 76cm / framed in Tasmanian Oak and ready to hang

* This painting is still drying and will not be ready to ship until early August 2026.