Alright here we go.

A good few Fridays ago, D-Man and I headed off into The Blue Mountains to go look at stars and be existential and “deep”.

D-man met me at work. A few minutes after I finished I was out and we headed off to the car. Loaded stuff in, hopped in, drove off. It was not long before we were making a detour to D-man’s place so he could go and grab the tripod that he forgot to take with him.

Naturally this added a bit of extra time to the drive. Despite my finishing work at around four in the afternoon, traffic was plentiful. Despite the detour only being about eleven minutes, it was enough for the traffic and our travel time to increase significantly. But we dealt with it.

As we were driving out of Sydney we could see traffic heading into the city backing up, and it was backed up for quite a while. Traffic out wasn’t great, true, but traffic in was horrendous for that time of day, and for that day alone. Usually it’s the opposite. But it wasn’t something that affected us.

So we drove up to Katoomba and we checked in to where we were staying for the evening, and we set a bunch of stuff down, then headed off for dinner. We found somewhere nice enough, and it was okay, and I told D-Man that he should start a burger review blog. Told him the whole idea too, because it would work best if it was one that he did.

Actually, before we ate we were tossing up between two places to do so, and it was dark and we had to consider time as there was still a bit of driving to do. The place we went to, it was decent enough, but after – and I don’t know if he was being serious or not – D-Man said we should’ve gone to the other place. But anyway.

So we ate and left and then we quickly popped into a place where a friend of mine works but he had the evening off. I’m fairly certain we then left Katoomba and headed off to where we were going to take photos of the stars. We may have headed back to where we were staying to grab a few more things, but I don’t think we did.

We drove off and we took the turn we needed to take, and we parked in a little spot just off the road. Winds were fierce, and the spot I picked had smaller trees above. I figured that if a branch fell, better a smaller than a larger one.

We sat there for a while and talked about life things. You know, the kind of things that are reflective that you talk about when you’re in your twenties when you’re trying to figure things out, and then talk about in your thirties… when you’re trying to figure things out, even though you were in your twenties and will when you’re older. We talked for a while, and there was perhaps too much ruminating and how people are and experience and all that stuff, and eventually we got out of the car to go up a hill in the dark.

D-man had, a couple of months prior, injured his foot and was still wearing a support shoe. It was windy and he was injured, but I was ready to go and so was he. Had one strict caveat though: The moment D-man wasn’t feeling it, or it seemed to dangerous and he wanted to turn around, I would, no questions asked. Life is too short to not experience things and the wonder of what’s outside of heavily urbanised areas; it’s also too short to take exceptionally dangerous risks.

But we went up and we were fine, and we set up and got photos and saw the stars. The wind was heavy, though not constant, but our being in an open space and exposed to it all did make things feel a bit more sketchy. But up there, among it and more obviously under the stars and under The Milky Way, and things just washed away.

Was it complete wonderment? No. But the process of setting up and making sure our gear was safe, and looking at the stars and how the shots turned out, and all that stuff really held focus for however long we were up there, and it was beautiful. We joked around a bit, and we took our photos and we had fun, and then when we were ready we headed on back down.

It was pretty cold too.

Packed our stuff back into the car and drove back to where we were staying, and crashed for however many hours we slept. I can’t remember what time we got up, but we woke up the following morning pretty early, got our stuff in our room together, prepared and left so as to drive to another location before sunrise.

At this point I made D-man listen to Nadja’s “Thaumogenesis”, the title (and sole) track from their album, Thaumugenesis. I’d been meaning to have him listen to it for a while, and I wanted to also test it as a driving track, see how it worked. It matched the early morning darkness well, as well as the transition to light.

Where we were driving to, I actually wanted to reach by first light, and we didn’t leave early enough for that. However, we did get to the spot whilst the sun was still rising, and though the main event had passed, we still were able to get some of the “announcement” and its remaining morning light in a fairly open space, and it was just a nice thing.

We walked a bit, took more photos, went back to the car and then drove further into where we were for a while, and eventually turned around due to how time-consuming it would’ve been had we continued.

Had breakfast in Lithgow, then made our way back to Sydney with some stops along the way, including a pointless argument probably induced more by lack of sleep than anything else. Overall, however, it was a good time.

I don’t want to read over this as it probably doesn’t read well. I could do better, but I started writing this about five weeks ago, and it’s already long enough. I wanted to try and express a time and experience, and I could do better, but this will do for now.