The End

When I read a book, how it all ends is totally out of my hands.  It can be happy or sad or totally perplexing.  I’ve seen movies like that which reach the end and I think “what just happened here?”
When I write the story though it ends how I want it to.  The same with life I reckon.  Because it is live, real time I really do not know what twists and turns are in store.  But I have a plot, beginning, middle and end in mind.  They reckon fail to plan and you plan to fail.  I plan.  Nothing extraordinary there.  It seems everyone plans all the time.
A while back a couple of us planned and went on a northern holiday.  We went northwest to Longreach, Winton and Cloncurry then to Charters Towers and north to Cairns and the tablelands.  It ended with us coming back via the coastal road to Brisbane.
That was the plan, and it turns out that is how it turned out.  A few things stand out about that trip.  A couple were Tambo and seeing the sign that “teddies cross here.”  Taking my mascot “Cattle Grazing” and a kid loving playing with it while we listened to bush poetry.  Barcaldine and the tree of knowledge which was no more and had a substitute plant in its place.  Longreach and the dinner boat cruise on the river which we were told came to an end just around the corner.  Being told to watch carefully how the sky changed as day became night and marvelling how what happens everywhere was a tourist attraction there.
That cruise was special though.  There was a bush poet that recited bush poetry and I and love bush poetry.  I also saw a “shield tree” which I had never seen before.  It was very obvious how an aboriginal had cut the bark of a tree and made a shield.
I did another trip with my bro and we visited Turkey Beach.  A few things stand out about that trip.  Turkey Beach really lived up to its name.  We did not stay.  On the way back something happened to one of the wheels (it was a dirt road) and we needed to find somewhere to get it fixed.  It was in the days before mobile phones but we found a place (I think it was Beaurepairs) and there were two guys standing outside like they were waiting for us.  They fixed the problem in no time.
The thing about both those trips is I wrote the ending.  There were unexpected twists and turns but there was a plot, beginning, middle and end.
I thought today “I write the ending”.  I have a plot and an ending in mind as I write.  But as I write other endings present themselves.  I have decided how I want things to end and what it will take to make that happen.  There are unexpected twists and turns, but  I write the ending.