This bit of the story covers the trip through the Red Center of Australia. Since I am nothing if not verbose, it came out as disgustingly long, so I've pieced it out into different bits. I'll be posting them every day or so and you're welcome to peruse any that you'd like. Feel free to leave comments as well.
While we waited in the bus station, I noticed
another guy sort of just standing around looking a lot like us and asked Joe if
that could possibly be one of the other people we would rideshare with. He said he doubted it.
We waited for Johannes to come, and when he
finally did, we had to shift a few things in his car in order to get in. It was only the three of us for now, but he
said we would meet one other guy at the library and then the other girl was
rock climbing in the same area that Johannes was and would join us in a couple
of days. The arrangement of stuff in the
car was going to have to be exact, my instincts told me.
Johannes seemed very polite, but super
mellow. Not stoned mellow, just sort of
not easily inflamed. It was almost a
cold mellow. Swedes can come off that
way at first, I think.
Johannes took us around to get a few supplies
here and there, including fuel for stoves, batteries, supplies for a solar
panel he was gluing to the top of the car, and some groceries. We bought a few things and discussed the
options to make dinners together and share.
There was also a moment where Johannes spoke through the window to some
guy as if they knew one another, like bums sharing the same tin of beans. They both had the appearance of someone who
lives in discomfort and cold.
We went to the library and saw the guy I had
asked Joe about at the station, whose face lit up when Johannes came
around. They did the man hug thing that
guys do. Marco from Holland with the
pretty eyes and the mafia face would be sharing the ride with us as well. We waited at the library while Johannes went
to find a shower because he hadn’t showered in a week. We talked to Marco and found him to be a
really nice, but maybe a little slow, guy whose history with Johannes extended
back a month or more after they met at a har(D)(SH)-style concert. I use the letters in parentheses there because
we were never able to clarify, even after traveling together for a month, how
it was really pronounced. Sometimes it
sounded one way, and sometimes another.
When Johannes came back, he looked cleaner and
refreshed. We started shifting things in
the car and loosely packing them so we could all fit. It would get worse and worse trying to fit
more stuff in the car.
The four of us headed back out to Johannes’s
campsite. After a bit of looking, we
found it, but no one else was around yet.
Apparently he was with quite a few other people, climbing most days,
living for free at the base of the mountains, and just existing on the fringe
of society. We set up camp and it was
surprisingly cold. We gathered some wood
and built a fire. Joe and I got started
cutting up food for dinner.
Joe likes to go big when he meets new people,
which is about as opposite of my comfort as possible. I prefer to not be flashy. I’d rather cook a sensible meal for the first
and then maybe try fancier down the road.
But oh well, that is Joe, and I suppose that that is the effect of
coming from a poor family. Nothing wrong
with it, it is just wildly different from how I prefer to do it.
So we cut up onions, potatoes, corn, peppers and
meat, put them in tin foil, and let them sit in the fire. It was gourmet, especially for camping. I think the guys liked it, but I think they
also might have been a bit intimidated.
The other members of camp started showing up: an
Aussie with one of those voices that sounds like he is talking in falsetto on
purpose (with the name of Jye), two Germans—one very tall (Patrick) and one
very short (Hans), and a French couple (Louie and Stefani). The two Germans and the Aussie were
dumpster-divers and had come home from their trip to town with goodies. Louie and Stefani would join in on sharing
the goodies, but I think they mostly stuck with organic food that they
bought. And when I say dumpster-diving,
I mean that they were pulling out slightly expired yogurts, mystery vegetarian
“meats” whose boxes were soggy and falling apart, and a package of sausages
that they would keep without refrigeration for at least a couple of days. Yuck.
Supposedly these were still good, but I’m not even sure I would eat
expired yogurt BEFORE it was thrown in the dumpster, much less after.
So they spent the evening cooking with mismatch
pots over the fire, testing out the finger-food pastries they had grabbed from
the dumpster, and playing fart tennis with one another. I can banter with the best of them, but at
the end of the night I was glad I was crawling into a tent with Joe rather than
one of them. Call me hoity-toity. They even called themselves "dirtbags."
One thing that came up around the campfire was
that everyone had been calling Johannes “Swede,” which he hated, or “Jo,” which
would be difficult considering Joe went by Joe.
That was something that would need work.
It rained a bit during the night, which I was
glad I had seen coming and had the foresight to place our tent on high ground
for, so in the morning it was wet and cold and hard to wake up. We made our standard oatmeal for breakfast as
the others were rounding up their stuff to go bouldering together. They took off and Johannes promised to come
find them with us a little later. We
finished breakfast, took it easy and then headed off to the rocks.
The campsite was a cool spot, tucked away just
beyond where a fire had raged through the small trees. It was not technically a real place to camp,
but the rangers must have realized they had no case trying to push the
free-loaders off it and the climbers took advantage of that. It was really nice to know that these campers
were super respectful of the place, however.
Every single one of them disposed of trash responsibly, as well as dug a
pit when using the bathroom in the woods.
They left no trace, except for a few scattered coals.
We hiked up to the base of the rocks and skirted
out and around another jut of rock. It
was surprisingly hard to breathe, but it was nice to see the others struggling
as well. Don’t get me wrong, I’m in bad
shape, but I was glad to know that the others weren’t much better.
Johannes led us around the rocks and up through a
small crevice to the top, where we could look out over the whole of the
Grampians. It was impressive, though
cold, windy, and a bit grey. We finally
found the other crew, who were bouldering one after the other on a couple of
spots. The team was a thing of beauty,
in some respects. Everyone had their own
crashpads, but they went one at a time trying the route, cheering each other
on, and spotting one another, ready to catch the person in case of a fall. I watched with a bit of respect.
 |
| The crew tackling a route |
There was something a bit romantic about the
whole thing: braving the weather, devoting all their time to climbing, living
off of only a few dollars per day… I wrote to my dad sometime around this time
and I remember discussing how I had to respect their ability to live on the
fringe, and that it was pretty neat that they were finding a way to do life
differently than the 9-5, the modest house, wife and kids, yada yada. It was daring to think outside of the
cookie-cutter concept of life.
Yet at the same time, they bored me. They made me think of all the groupies from
college, like the guys who think their taste in music is the ultimate. It was cool, sure, that they lived off the
earth, but at the same time, they weren’t accomplishing much. None of them were going to go pro with their
climbing, so why spend all day every day doing it? Why not have a little balance and learn to do
many things with your life?
I think it’s harsh of me. But I like to also think it’s the part of me
that chooses the middle road. I’m not money-hungry,
but I’m also not a dreamer idealist.
Sure, I want everyone to have peace in their lives, but I don’t think
that such a thing comes from veganism or yoga, and certainly not wealth. I exist somewhere in the middle. And I like that about myself. And I like that Joe is usually right there
with me.
But I still respected them a bit for doing
something different. We watched them
boulder, each one getting stuck on a crux here or there. On the back side of the rock we found them
on, they tried a harder route. Each did
it several times with no success, but then Hans tried again and it was like
watching magic. He was like a spider
monkey, with his body holding him so close to the rock that he was able to just
fly up and over the crux as if it didn’t even take that much effort. I think that is how climbing is: you work and
work on one hard part and then one time you attempt it and everything just
comes together.
Then suddenly he was on top of the rock with no
way down! There was no easier route down
on any other part of the rock, and the route he had just taken would mean he
would have to back himself down and over an over-hang, which would be scary as
crap, even with spotters and crashpads.
He wandered around the rock for a while, but found no better way
down. It was just a funny moment because
everyone was in awe that he made it up, but then suddenly he was like, oh shit,
how do I get down? No one had thought
that far ahead.
So finally he decided he had to back himself down
the same route he had come up. Several
of the bigger guys stood under him with arms ready to catch if he fell. It wasn’t as graceful as the way up had been,
but he was able to (very impressively) lower himself over the crux and then
hang low enough to land on his feet on the crashpads.
Everyone congratulated him, but you could feel a
change in the atmosphere. Suddenly Hans,
the smallest of all the boys, had been able to do what no one else could
do. The mood became more about image,
rather than purely fun, as they all realized they would have to match his
ability in order to stay confident.
Eventually every one of them conquered the rock,
but it took many tries and exasperated questions of how the hell did he do
that? Hans was kind about it, not too
boastful, so I thought that was very sportsman of him. But I’m pretty sure that he made it up a
second time before anyone else made it up for the first time. They asked him to show them how he had done
it, and once he got on the rock again, he just smoothly sailed up, hugging that
rock. Very impressive. And once all of them had made it up, they
faced the same scary fate of having to lower themselves back down again.
Stefani was obviously the least skilled of the
group, but she was still much better than most climbers I have ever seen. Louie was very sweet to her and encouraged
her just like he encouraged everyone else.
She wasn’t shy to climb in a group full of guys either. She was a very beautiful girl and when she
would join us for breakfast in the mornings, she would come out in her puffy
vest with hand-warmers and her fingers curved around a steaming cup of
coffee. She also had amazing jeans. I don’t know where she got her jeans, but they
were amazing. I was jealous. Maybe if I spent more money on clothes I could
look decent. Hmmmmm…
Louie seemed like other than Johannes, he might
have been the least skilled of the guys.
He repeatedly tried both sides of the rock to get up, but kept quitting
in frustration because he couldn’t get it even though it looked so easy to the
other guys. Stefani encouraged him like
he did for her. It was very sweet, even
though he wasn’t really willing to talk about it just yet.
That night the fifth member of our party joined
us. Gwen, the tiny German girl who was
also rock-climbing with some other friends, was dropped at our camp as we were
all gathered around the camp fire. Joe
helped her set up a tent and then she came over and I realized how suddenly
these guys weren’t romantics (and when I say romantic, I don’t mean flowers and
chocolates, I meant like the romantic period of literature that is all about
feeling and sensation), they were just bums.
I say that fondly. But here was
this tiny little girl with her curly bob hanging out from under her hat, a
trendy outdoor marshmallow coat on, and shiny aluminum pots to go with her
shiny new camp stove. She spoke in one
of those little mouse voices and everything she said was girlish and reeked of
fairy floss and butterfly poops, to use a Joseph turn-of-phrase.
I feel bad now for judging her the way I
did. I can sometimes be petty and that’s
not really fair to her that I disliked her because she still has the joie
d’vivre. I remember my negative thoughts
when I was around her: she has the body I used to have and it made me jealous
and defensive, she has things she is passionate about still and that made me
exhausted and feel like I left my youth long ago, she attracts the attention of
the other men in the group and that made me feel jealous and like a spinster,
and she appears to be the most hobby’ed of the group (yoga and rock-climbing)
and that made me feel like I had no claim to either, even though I had been
doing both activities for many years.
Like I said, totally unfair to raise my heckles at those things, but
raise they did.
Groupies irritate me. I think they irritate me because their whole
basis around their passion for something is the thought like, I have the focus
to be great, where I am the sort of person who is just mediocre at a lot of
things. I enjoy many activities and I
know that I am not really great at any of them, but I think my value lies in
being well-rounded. Of course with my
persistently self-critical nature that means that I am good at nothing. In the best of moments I can remind myself
that I am average at a lot of things and that is good. But most of the time groupies just remind me
that I am not great at anything.
Le sigh.
Compared to my college years, I am so much better off in my mind. But even with all the improvement, I always
surprise myself with how far I still have to go to be a well-adjusted human
being. Instead I judge people and allow
negative thoughts to threaten my self-confidence. Maybe some day I can become well-rounded in
controlling the presence of negative thoughts.
So I was harsh on Gwen mentally and it wasn’t
very fair. To be honest, she wasn’t the
most unselfish person, but we’re all a little selfish and it was nothing out of
the ordinary. She was nice and had a
very positive outlook on life.
Back to the story, I think my heckles were raised
almost right away. Any time anyone would
talk to her, her voice had the cutesy sound of one of the mice from Cinderella,
as if she were on the edge of laughing and blushing, all at the same time. She cooked her dinner, but it was obvious
that she was still trying to figure out her camp stove and cooking with
it. The boys in the crew joked, saying,
“Oh honey, those shiny aluminum pots aren’t going to stay shiny for long!” They were wrong though, because Gwen took
really good care of her pots. Even when
she put them right in the flames, she was very good about cleaning them each
time. I suppose this is easier to keep
on top of when you’re not sharing cooking utensils with a whole group. She seemed nice enough, despite being quite young.
We all went to bed soon after dinner, since it
started to drizzle a bit. Most of us
slept in a tent except for Johannes who slept in his car, and Louie and
Stefani, who slept in their campervan. Tomorrow we would finally hit the road!
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