These ferns were photographed on a spring afternoon in readily accessible rainforest, a short drive west from Apollo Bay, along the Great Ocean Road,
(photo copyright Doug Spencer, taken at 3.38 pm, 29 October 2018, Maits Rest Rainforest Walk, Great Otway National Park, Victoria, Australia)
Maits Rest is one of many places that ought detain you, if you decide to drive along The Great Ocean Road.
Along the Great Ocean Road – and just off it – are many and varied wonderful places; not all of them are within sight of the ocean.
Your best plan is to devote at least six days to your Great Ocean roadtrip, and to base yourself for at least two nights apiece in at least two different places.
Some ferns’ fiddleheads are delicious, provided one chooses the right kinds, and provided one prepares them appropriately, to make them safe to eat.
Obviously, do not pick them in any National Park or Reserve, and never pick very many from a single location.
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Fiddlehead Fern is a beautifully crafted song that sounds as if it has been around for many generations, but was in fact written this century by Cahalen Morrison.
Its debut recording was on 2014’s I’ll Swing My Hammer With Both My Hands, the second duo album by Cahalen Morrison and Eli West.
The author sings lead and plays banjo on this 2013 “live” version. Eli West is playing an octave mandolin/flatback “bouzouki”.
Today’s other selection makes no mention of ferns, but it is, I think, a perfect musical accompaniment to ferns, so exquisitely shaped.
The Creator Has a Master Plan was authored by saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, and its 1969 original version was an epic, with extended sax heroics from Pharoah and words sung/chanted by Leon Thomas.
if only Leon had sung the words in a language that I could not understand!
For this sceptic/atheist, at least, the trite and silly lyric was more than I could bear…but I loved the feel of the piece.
Salvation came on October 29, 1993, in Calgary, Canada, at the hands of someone you may well never have heard of – Jessica Williams. (born 1948, Baltimore, USA)
Dave Brubeck described her as one of the greatest jazz pianists I have ever heard.
Her 1990s recordings offer substantial evidence in support of Dave’s estimation.
(I like Herbie Hancock’s piano-focused recordings, but I have spent more time listening to Jessica Williams’)
In October 1993 Jessica Williams had a couple of gigs in Alberta, and she agreed to make a record at Calgary’s Sundae Sound Studios.
Arrival is one of my favourite solo piano albums.
Jessica’s Calgary treatment of The Creator Has a Master Plan is blessedly wordless, but full of spirit.
It ought equally gladden the hearts of atheists, agnostics and Believers.
Alas, I doubt that the record can still be found, and it looks like nobody has YouTubed it.
Happily, Jessica Williams’ 2001/live! at maybeck also offers a glorious version: