The Walk

On either side of this walking track, the rocky ridge disappears 800 meters straight down. To the left, I can see a razor edge half a meter from my feet that disappears into a breath taking chasm; straight down to the wild and furious river below. A vertical rock wall cliff rising from the far side of the river backdrops the entire scene, reinforcing the uncompromising vastness of this humanity-trivialising scene. My photo hints at the scale of this amazing place; it tells us nothing, though, of the cold tinged, granite-earthy-wild thing sensory overloading presence of the place.

On the other side of the track, the edge disappears with slightly less of an assault on my vertigo. But fall there and your descent will interrupted by trees as you sky-dive down a slope too steep to climb. Over that edge, you can see the river again as it switches back around the edge of the knife edge ridge I am descending. It’s a young river, a sharp river. Narrow, fast; the centre-piece of this infinitely untouched landscape of unspoilt and steadfastly uncompromising wilderness. It’s the Chander River. Fresh from its descent down one of the world’s highest waterfalls. A harsh, hard, loud if not screaming cascade to defy the senses of any and all who stand transfixed at any of the tourist viewpoints that stand like monuments to suicide on the edge of the unimaginable chasm below.

The track I am descending sheds connection to human places with every progressive step. It’s a monument to a residual of sanity in this risk-managed society bent over to the whims of the commerce of insurance and the generic outsourcing of any sense of personal responsibility for the consequences of our actions. That a track such as this can still exist is a connection back to those times when people made their own judgements and accepted the risks of their actions. It’s a track to defy the oppression of Politically Corrected managerialism that now sweeps the world like a lice infested plague. It’s a track that allows us to enter a realm without the handrails and boardwalks tuned to those legions of couch potatoes who would only tangentially dabble with a world disconnected from the human grid.

Actually, this track is officially closed. The ‘Do Not Pass This Point’ sign stands like a sigh to the oppression of the managerialised world of all-caring but couldn’t-really-care-less State paternernalism. The Track Closed sign is a flag of departure from the fallacious security blankets of our nature-disconnected existence.

Down, down, down via an avalanche of switchbacks, loose scree, criss-crossing animal tracks; down to the roaring watery heart of this monumental gorge. At last – from the days when people were permitted to build such things; when people were still adventurous; before our current all-consuming virtual reality of global consumerism, before the humanity crippling displacement activity of wealth compressed away the last vestiges of awe and respect for the untamed world – I come to some steps. A precarious ladder down the final slope into the river that has created the vertical landscape through which I have just passed.

Stop and sit. In perfect, complete quiet; except for the roar of water on rock, the waves of wind through endless trees and the calls of a universe of birds.

Then, of course, comes the fun of the ascent. There’s two ways out. A three day trek down river to the nearest walkable exit spur. Or back the way I’ve just come. Straight up, step by step, an unrelenting climb. A magical climb that rewards those who are fit and defeats those who are not. Which is mainly why the track is closed. Half way up, there’s a place to recoup, and graze back down to directly measure the progress I’ve made. The rewards I take in were derived from nothing but my own exertion, not at the expense of anyone or anything else. These rewards are real and available only to those willing to invest in the hard core of unrelenting physical exertion. Rewards a cyclist, a marathon runner; a mountain climber will understand. But which are alien and out of reach to those who have self-amputated their capacity to live adventures such as this through the withering of legs and the bloating of body through a degree of self-indulgence that, poignantly, ultimately threatens the persistence of these wild places which which they can no longer connect.

In a blast of astounding irony and tragic pathos, my serenity is smashed by the slash of hurtling helicopter blades. This flying one finger gesture of contempt vomits its way down the gorge from which I have just climbed. As it landed, I watch it rain its human deluge down on the beach that until then carried an imprint of humanity amounting only to the mark of my shoes. I watch as a duo of big bwana fisher hunters deposit themselves into a space that I had gained through a two hour descent (and another two to return). But, on reflection, I feel a deep sense of pity for these poor adventurers who, though they stand where I stood, will have no sense of the journey of achievement and connection with place that only walking can provide. They’ve used their money and their impatience to buy only the last page of the artfully written story that this place reveals to those who listen through the language of effort.

Then I consider that this predilection for cursorily abbreviated connection with the unaccommodating realities of the world untamed by man is a metaphor for all the crises the human world has produced; and is essentially the root cause of the damages we inflict on the natural world we should otherwise hold with reverence and respect. The ugliness of this maniacally fuming helicopter assault is a metaphor of human contempt for all those places that refuse the effort-free inclinations of modern man. Our virtual helicoptered adventurers will never know or realise a full sense of the sacred that is the greatest reward to those who enter wild places on terms tuned to the realities of these places with which they truly wish to connect.

Our actions are too often removed from the consequences they incur; rewards are unearned in the currency through which they should be configured. We have replaced the currency of effort with the currency of cash. To connect with a place such as this; to understand the place; to know the place, we need the lived experience of connecting on terms dictated by that place rather than through the terms the toys of our technology would impose. The experience twisted and distorted through our intent to sample reality from the comforts of our technology coocoons is a cartoon-like warp of the reality we earn through the exercise of our feet. This emasculated virtual snapshotting of reality presents us with a shallow connection to places such as these, and an even shallower sense of what it is we loose through permitting them to be tamed and herded down to the whims of the human economy. Places such as these should never be regarded as ‘resources’ at our command. It takes at least a four hour walk to know that places such as these are bigger than men. Places such as these are beyond men. They are not ours. We learn respect when we enter these places with the reverence that only the true familiarity of connection can provide. We derive this respect when we enter these places on the terms dictated by those places rather than through the terms our helicopters, bulldozers, explosives and chainsaws might impose. The entry fee to this wild free river is a price beyond money, beyond commerce, beyond equal opportunity or any other human value equation. This is not a place to take or accept our commands.

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