Visions in the Dark

A Mount Olympus Walk: Part 2

[The sun sets on Mt Olympus' south summit] 

Horizontal is good, very good. So too is being out of range of the flying blood-suckers. We lie in the tent reprising our day, trying to focus on the good things. Our muscles are loudly shouting the other side of the equation.

But we’re Aussies being positive: what better to do than dig deep into the book of cliches? “How’s the serenity?”, “You know you’re alive”, “How often do you get weather like this?”, “No-pain-no-gain”, “We may never pass this way again”, and so on. But mostly we just rejoice in being still and comfortable.

Before long the talk shifts to what we’re missing on this trip. Naturally we start with our respective spouses, and soon follow with our walking mate Jim. But we very quickly agree how glad we are that none of them has just gone through what we have.

More pragmatically we think to add scrub gloves and a length of rope to our “missing” list. On the ascent from Echo Point, as expected, we had come across a few cliff lines. These bands of horizontal sedimentary rock long pre-existed the dark dolerite that caps so much of this part of Tasmania. During the Jurassic era magma had forced its way up through the existing rock, cooling to form a vast dolerite layer on top of the earlier bands. The Lake St Clair glacier had subsequently gouged the valley that formed the lake, crudely cutting through this layer cake of rock.

[Tim surveys one of our "jungle" cliffs]  

What that geology meant in practical terms was that we had to negotiate a few near-vertical sections of sedimentary rock. And without any rope to help us haul our packs. Oops! We’d read that sidling a few hundred metres either side of these barriers would usually yield an easier climb. That sounded great on paper, but when you’re as hot and tired as we already were, sidling seemed a poor option. Especially when there’s was a bit of pink tape at the top of your nasty looking 10 metre “cliff” as good as telling you “this way.”

After a slightly desperate pause, our inventive substitute for rope was to use a trekking pole. I extended one pole fully and inverted it so that Tim could hook its hand loop through a clip on the pack. A couple of hernia-threatening heaves from me (above) and Tim (below) finally saw us – and our packs – on top of our first cliff.

But all that is behind us now. Ahead of us, in the morning, is a 200 metre scramble from our lake up a ridge and onto the Olympus plateau. “How hard could it be?” Tim asks, not caring to hear an answer quite yet.

[Looking towards the north summit of Olympus] 

One thing that isn’t hard is falling asleep. We’re soon purring beneath our tent’s nylon dome while the mosquitoes vent their frustration and fury on its mesh. But then something wakes us around 2:30 am. Just perhaps one us has been snoring, although men of our age might also blame their bladders. I prefer to think it’s the universe calling, because when I decide I may as well go outside for a pee, my jaw drops.

The sky is extravagantly spattered with stars. From one horizon to the other, in every direction, there are stars in the kind of profusion that only a child, or a Vincent van Gogh, might imagine. My gasps bring Tim out, and for a time we just stand there, oblivious to the mosquitoes, taking in that everynight wonder that most of us never see, thinking the night sky simply black.

My late mother-in-law painted a sky like this in her piece called “Cosmos”. Our fortunate guests can see it above the spare bed. It too is extravagant, child-like, wonderful. I’m sorry I never asked her where and when she had seen this brilliantly black vision.

["Cosmos" by Joan Goldsworthy] 

Eventually we fall asleep again, knowing that the clear night sky will soon yield to a clear hot day: our summit day.

Roger Deakin – An Appreciation

[a piece written following the death of Roger Deakin, the great English nature/place writer. September 2006]

[Roger Deakin in The Labyrinth, Tasmania - prior to an obligatory swim!]

While Roger Deakin was a staunch parochialist, and a champion of the particular, the ripples of his life and death will nonetheless reach far beyond Suffolk and England. As they have reached me here in Tasmania, Australia's wild island, the former van Diemen's Land of convict infamy. It was here that I met Roger while he was researching "Wildwood". Tasmania fascinated him both as a place where apples are synonymous with the island - many still call it "the Apple Isle" - and as a place where wild forests are under dire threat from human action.

I took Roger into the wilds of the Tasmanian highlands, to a place called Pine Valley. It was wonderful to share this special wild place with someone so passionate about and attuned to the natural world. I recall his sense of wonder as we walked out of typical Australian eucalypt forest into an altogether more ancient forest. "Like walking through a door into old Gondwana" I explained as we exulted in the mossy green darkness of a rare coniferous rainforest whose nearest relations are in Patagonia and Fiordland. After we reached the basic hut that was to be our base for the next few days, Roger made it his duty to keep the coal-fired stove alight. He excelled to the extent that the little iron stove glowed red-hot, and fellow lodgers had to peel layers or exit sleeping bags to prevent overheating.

The next day we went higher into the mountains, to the lake-studded 1400m high plateau known as The Labyrinth. There we ambled between tarns, at one stage sitting at a viewing point high above some of the remotest wilderness in Tasmania. Our 360 degree view took in everything for many miles around. Yet there was not one single road; no cleared land; no man-made structures; no smoke, town, city or building: nothing but wild lands for mile after mile. He was amazed that such wildness still existed in the "civilized" world. I sensed he may have even struggled with the concept that the management of this place has as much to do with leaving it be as it does with "improving" it. That English urge came out in his occasional farmerly suggestions about track maintenance or tree pruning. We had a good natured debate about that human desire to intervene in nature.

But what a privilege for me, as a then unpublished nature writer, to have had such a companion for 3 uninterrupted days. Roger spoke wisely and helpfully about writing, and encouragingly about my efforts at it. His enthusiasm and generosity continued as we kept in touch via email. He provided me with some wonderful suggestions in the nature writing field, and in turn took up a few suggestions I passed his way. As a huge fan of "Waterlog" - a book I had read before I knew Roger - it is his final watery exploits in Tasmania that will remain in my memory. On a cool spring day, with melting snow still lying around on The Labyrinth, Roger couldn't resist the urge to plunge into one of the highland tarns and swim an icy lap. He emerged grinning, refreshed and ready for more mischief. So at the end of our walk, as we waited for the ferry to return us to our car, he repeated the dose in beautiful Lake St Clair. Although we were at a much lower altitude, the lake is Australia's deepest, and it can scarcely have been any warmer. (And for the record, at the former he was informal, at the latter he wore his swimming suit!)

Later, as the ferry brought us into the jetty, I pointed out a snow-clad peak named Mt Rufus. Roger's eyes lit up, and he asked if I could take a photograph of it in honour of his son Rufus. That tiny glimpse of fatherly tenderness made me esteem even more a man, a writer and an activist about whom there was already so much to admire. And now I will return to Roger's work with a sorrow-tinged enthusiasm, just as I will join the queue of those longing to read his last book as soon as it is published.

[PS - "Wildwood" and "Notes from Walnut Farm" were both published after Roger's death, and are currently available. His previous book "Waterlog" is also still available.]