Journal 1: Welcome To The Wish Tour!
Welcome to the Wish Tour!
Below you will find the photos and journal from a two-year, 20,000-mile bicycle journey around the world.
Starting in July 2005, this journal will take readers across the United States, Europe, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan, China, Tibet, Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Borneo, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand.
The journey began more than 20 years ago, as the seeds of a dream to circumnavigate the globe were cultivated from a deeply personal and painful experience.
I spent a good portion of my youth in hospitals with my mother, who suffered from a degenerative kidney disease. As the disease progressed, she had made one last attempt to see the world by traveling to Europe.
Unfortunately, when she arrived, her health declined and was forced to return to the states where she died shortly thereafter. I learned two powerful lessons.
The first is to appreciate every moment of this incredible gift we call life, no matter what it brings.
The second, to live your dreams despite your fears.
Twenty years later, on July 1, 2005, after much hard work and deep personal sacrifice, my dream of seeing the world is coming true.
This journey is dedicated to the memory of my mother, Carol Ann Gunn, who was taken from this world far too early.
Now, please pull up a chair and enjoy the ride!
Journal 55: The End
March 20-May 3, 2008
Mileage log: 24,285-25,760
Elevation: Sea level-2500 ft.
Canada: Vancouver B.C., (USA): Birch Bay, Anacortes, Port Townsend, Silverdale, Seattle, Crescent Lake, Forks, Kalaloch Beach, Cosmopolis, Astoria, Oswald West State Park, Cape Lookout State Park, Devil's Lake State Park (Lincoln City), Florence, Brookings, Crescent City, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, Eureka, Humboldt Redwoods State Park, Mckerriker State Park, Russian Gulch State Park, Van Damme State Park, Gualala, Jenner, Bodega Bay, Freestone, Petaluma, Pt.
Reyes Station, Olema, Mill Valley, San Francisco (Golden Gate Bridge)
"The final way to attain personal freedom is...to take death itself as our teacher. What the angel of death can teach us is how to be truly alive. We can begin each day by saying, I'm awake, I see the sun, I am going to give my gratitude to the sun and everything and everyone, because I am still alive--one more day to be myself. Because this may be the last day that I can tell you how much I love you. It is not important if you love me back. I may die tomorrow, or you may die tomorrow, what makes me happy now, is to let you know how much I love you."
--Don Miguel Ruiz
--From the book, "The Four Agreements"
Journal 55: The End
When my plane finally touched-down in North America, the memories came to me like a flood. Staring out the window at a wet-Vancouver runway, those memories confluenced into a single thought. That of a conversation. One that had ebbed and flowed within my head since it's origin some six years previous.
"I feel unlovable," I'd recalled telling the woman that sat across from me.
"I have trouble in relationships too." The woman encouraged me to continue.
"I also have problems setting boundaries, I added, "problems expressing anger, troubles dealing with setbacks--difficulties saying no." I had often shared these things with others, but this woman was different. She seemed to be listening with the entirety of her being, without expectations, agendas, or judgements. And as she took-in my words, and validated my perceived wounds, it felt as though I were bathing them within cool clear water. And so it was that I continued that conversation, meeting with this woman for an hour a week, month after month, year after year, digging deeply into the depths of my own personal history book.
Unflinchingly, I recounted the pinnacles of my joy, the depth of my failures; bravely shining the light upon the most painful internal landscapes; upturning the darkest earth unto light.
Then, one day, I came clean with it.
"Viola," I said, "I'm think I'm crazy."
A smile broadened upon her face, her eyes aglow with warmth and confidence.
"Rick," she replied, "the one's that are crazy in this world, are the one's that insist they're not."
Three years had past before the bulk of my fears transformed into an incredible lightness of being. As they did, I utilized the extra energy I'd gained into the actualization of a dream.
My dream to ride a bicycle around the planet.
Three days before I left, I met with Viola one last time. With tears of love and respect streaming from my eyes, I thanked her from the depths of my heart, then wrapped my arms around her in a heartfelt hug. "Well," I said in a quivering voice, "I guess we'll pick-up where we left off when I get back." She looked at me for a moment, staring intently with those deep mirrors of insight and wisdom.
"Who knows Rick," she smiled, "you may not feel the need."
"Sir.." a stewardess' voice interrupted, snapping me from my daydream -- "Sir, we've arrived in Vancouver; it's time to disembark." I grabbed my carry-on, and filed off the plane.
An hour later, after I'd built my bike from a box among the empty chairs of the arrival terminal, I reluctantly rolled to the mouth of two immense glass doors. Staring out for a moment at the steel gray skies, a shuffle of passengers intermittently ushered in bone-chilling blasts of frigid-arctic air.
Then, with only twenty dollars to my name, wearing holy-clothes, and a second hand pair of gloves, I climbed atop my rig, and set out one last time.
Pulling to the curb, I looked down to discover that my third bicycle frame had snapped clean-through at the rear-triangle. Stranded amid the whir of Canadian traffic, I gazed at my bike's gaping wound. I could have very well cried.
Instead, I let loose with an uncontrollable belly-laugh. How ironic was it, that I'd battered this bike over 15,000 miles, over the most brutal rock-strewn stretches on the planet--across Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tibet and Indonesia--only to have it snap on one of the smoothest roads in the western hemisphere. I bent down near the break and leaned in tight. "You did alright." I whispered to it like some dying horse.
I pushed for a mile until I came to a muffler shop.
Wheeling it through a large roll-up door, I negotiated a price, then watched as a certified exhaust technician welded the repair.
"Do you think it'll hold for a thousand miles?" I asked after he returned it to me.
"It either will or it won't." he offered apathetically, then turned and walked away.
Though I didn't realize it at the time, the muffler-man's words we're Zen. They reminded me of one of the most important lessons I'd learned during my journey; the lesson of impermanence.
After three years cycling 25,000 miles, through 33 countries, I'd worn-out approximately three bicycle frames, five rear rims, 15 sets of tires, three drive trains, four seats, five pairs of cycling shoes, six pairs of cycling shorts, five Ipods, six cyclo-computers, 20 sets of headphones, two laptops, two cameras, and five lenses. I stopped counting the flat tires.
But more important than the equipment, it came to me, was the impermanence itself. It encompassed everyone and everything: the weather, my moods, the people and the landscapes, the moon, the sky, the religions, the politics, the food, the dress--the pleasure and the pain. If there was one thing I could count on during the course of this journey it was change. Once I made peace with that, nothing could stop me.
This latest setback was no exception.
Rolling my re-incarnated rig from that muffler shop on the outskirts of Vancouver, I hopped back on it and began charging south, from the dormant patchwork of farmlands in southernmost British Columbia, through the endless stands of pines in Northern Washington State. On little more than peanut-butter and jelly, and a budget of five dollars a day, I continued pedaling south, through a 300 mile curtain of water along the majestic beaches of the Olympic Peninsula, and the rocky coastal capes of the Oregon Coast.
This until I finally crossed the Northern California border.
"I'm home." I whispered as I entered the church-like silence of Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. The organic high-rise seemed to respond in kind, showering my arrival with gossamer-rays of silverish light.
I finished the bulk of my ride down highway 1, through Fort Bragg, Mendocino, Gualala, and Bodega Bay.
In just a few days time, I would complete my journey within the loving arms of friends and family, at my final destination on San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. But before I did, I had one last thing I had to do.
Picking up a parcel my father had sent by mail, I back-tracked to the north, to the tiny hamlet of Jenner. Turning off where the Russian River met the sea, I pedaled up-stream. Along the way I began picking at the mad blooms of springtime flowers along the road, stuffing them copiously into a plastic bag. I collected wild rose, honeysuckle, iris, moon-flowers, mustard-flower, wisteria, daffodils, daisies, and poppies.
I attached the bag to my bike then rolled to a small quiet alcove along the river.
Tearing open the package, I came upon its contents: a jar full of dirt. Because I'd never had the chance to scatter my mother's ashes, I'd requested that my father send me some of the earth over which he'd spread them some 26 years ago.
I sat for some time with that jar and those flowers. Then, slowly, I opened the bag of and floated the flowers equally upon the slow-moving waters. Watching them float in a swirl of color, another flood of memories came to me.
In one of those memories, I envisioned the same river before me: a man and a woman smiling within a kayak, their two children, splashing, squealing jubilantly upon their laps. It was the last memory I'd had of my family intact.
Then my mind stretched back further. Back to a memory that may well have been my first. In that memory I was little more than an infant:
naked, wriggling in my mother's arms.
Holding my tiny body ever so cautiously, I recalled how she'd slowly, gently, lovingly, introduced me to the water. Now that task had come full circle.
Taking one last moment to peer out over those moving waters, I opened the jar. As tears began to flow, my lips moved in a whisper.
"Well, mom, I finally did it.
“I cycled around the world."
"I know your eyes were not able to see that same world, but I hoped to make you proud knowing that my eyes did."
"The truth was, that I was a boy when you left, and not quite ready for your departure."
"Now that I am a man, it is time for me to say goodbye."
With that, I cast the earth from the jar, with a sweeping arch, its powdery remnants drifting toward the sky.
When I was done, I stripped my clothes, then slipped beneath a glimmer of emerald water. I knew at that moment, that this journey had reached its end. I had long-since looked to this moment. As if all the experiences of my journey would align, and all the answers to my questions would coalesce into some neat order; revealing their deeper meanings.
What came instead was the acceptance of the mystery--how beautifully unexplainable it all was. This and a deep appreciation for what simply was. And in that I had seen God.
Not the culturally myopic God of one region, culture, or religion, but the vast god that resides within the vast man. The one that danced between the synapses, illuminating the atomic spaces; the god that sung in the shimmering leaves on the edge of the forest that spoke unquestionably in the eyes of a young child. The god whose real name is love.
As I crawled from the water, and stared back over the river, I pondered what the legacy of my life would be.
Soon, in perhaps 50 years or less, the river that was my life also would return to the sea.
I thought of the words of the late Dr. Martin Luther King jr.
His description of how he'd wanted to be remembered after he was gone.
"I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity....that I was a drum major for justice...a drum major for peace...a drum major for righteousness. I just want to leave behind a committed life."
Eclipsed by the magnitude of his vision, I smiled upon the realization that I too would leave behind something permanent, however small in comparison.
Not fame, fortune, glory or accomplishments, just small acts of kindness, and the precious acts of love.
---
I would like to end this journey and my journals by deeply thanking all those who believed in me, those who contributed in one way or another, as well as recognizing three of my greatest heroes: my father Richard Gunn, Viola Nungary MFCC, and the late Dr. Leo Buscaglia, tireless proponent of the power of love.
Journal 53: The Beginning of the End on New Zealand's South Islan
February 1-29, 2008
Mileage log: 23,200-24,000
Elevation: Sea level-3000 ft.
New Zealand (south island): Picton, Pelorus Bridge, Nelson, Abel Tasman National Park, Murchison, Westport, Greymouth, Hokatika, Abut Head, Franz Joseph Glacier, Bruce Bay, Pleasant Valley, Haast Pass, Wanaka, Queenstown, Chatto, Ranfurly, Dunedin, Invercargill, Curio Bay, Manapori, Te Anau, Milford Sound, Mt. Cook, Christchurch
"Do just once what others say you can't do, and you will never pay attention to their limitations again.”
--James Cook
"Tell me of your friends, and I'll tell you who you are."
--Author unknown
"The perfect journey is circular--the joy of departure and the joy of return.
--Dino Basili
Journal 53: The Beginning of the End on New Zealand's South Island
It seemed a shame I wasn't arrested that afternoon. Flying through the air and all--stark naked--off a public dock; bottle of Champagne in hand.
Moments earlier, near the shores of Lake Manapori, I'd watched with feverish anticipation as my bicycle-computer's odometer rolled from 23,999 to 24,000: the mileage equivalent to the circumference of the earth.
Feeling the need to celebrate, I unclipped my bike-bags, un-holstered two bottles of bubbly, set my camera on timer, stripped to my birthday suit--then launched. As I did, I imagined the headline:
"American cycle-tourist arrested wearing nothing but helmet and cleats."
But any thoughts of incarceration that afternoon were pure delusion. This, after all, was New Zealand: two wind-scoured rocks at the ends of the earth, inhabited by a paltry 4.1 million people, and a staggering 40 million sheep. The fact was, that, during my 1,200-mile-ride across the dual island nation, I'd come across exactly 7 cops. From a purely numerical standpoint, my chances of being incarcerated hovered around .0058%.
More disturbing, I thought, as I crawled from the water and grabbed my shorts, was the statistical likelihood that I'd been seen nude by more than 3,000 sheep.
The entire folly seemed to evaporate the next day, after I received an email informing me that the exact circumference of the earth was actually 24,902. I still had 902 miles to go.
The email had been sent by good friend, and fellow photographer Eric Jarvis. Two days later, he followed it with another. It read:
"...Anyhow, I'm en route to Nelson, wherever the hell that is. Looking forward to seeing you and the adventure of a lifetime."
A fortnight flashed before I arrived at Nelson's tiny Airport. Trying to keep it real, I showed sporting an ear-wide grin, and a cheesy stick-on moustache I'd purchased at a local Chinese variety store. "Dude." he greeted me, after stepping from the plane. "Dude." I returned excitedly, then wrapped him in a heartfelt hug. Several seconds later, his attention finally turned to my upper lip.
"What is that?" he queried, after a bit of conversational catch up.
"It's the Scoundrel," I said, pulling the label from my pocket. "I bought you the Bandito," I added, handing him his small strip of fur.
He looked at me as if I were insane, then shoved it into his pocket, never to be seen again.
It'd been a year since 'Jarv' and I had ripped the lid off Laos; blasting off rope-swings, trekking through remote mountain villages; two camera nerds with an itch to travel, wreaking photographic havoc across a foreign land. New Zealand would prove no different.
Our adventure began curbside, about an hour outside of Nelson. Standing with our thumbs out, lumping two oversized backpacks, a scatter of bags lay near our feet. In them: bread, fruit, peanut-butter, pasta, a three-liter box of wine, and a 280-gram Frisbee emblazoned with a flaming-orange kiwi. Jarv was the brains of the outfit.
And as we waited, I could almost see his mind working, diligently evaluating the logistics of the trip. I made myself useful by doing handstands in the middle of the road.
"Where you two headed?" a driver finally asked after pulling to the side.
"Marahau." Jarv replied.
"Trekking?" the man furthered.
"Kayaking," we chimed.
"Hop in." he said, popping his trunk.
Winding our way over a small mountain road, the man went out of his way to drop us off at our campground.
The next morning, after we'd stowed the last of our gear into the sleek hull of a two-man sea-kayak, the two of us stood beneath an impossibly blue sky, with a 2-mile crescent of golden sand spanning beneath our feet. Staring ever-outward at the sparkly-calm seas, we took a moment to eye our destination: Abel Tasman National Park.
A forested plot of wild coastlands located on the northern tip of the South Island, at 139 square-miles, Abel Tasman is New Zealand's smallest National Park. But as we'd soon discover, good things come in small packages.
'Dude, you ready?' I asked Eric, as I grabbed the starboard of the kayak .
"Ready." he sounded, then slid the boat into the giggling waters.
Minutes later, self-propelled across a vast shimmering seascape, our paddles swirled rhythmically through the blue-green waters. Carving a liquescent trail out of Sandy Bay, we paddled along a string of remote beaches, where sculpted granite cliffs tumbled into cerulean blue bays. Seal colonies splashed beneath towering sea-spires, while a dotting of islands flanked us offshore. That afternoon, we spent our time exploring, nosing in and out of sea caves, then rotated our paddles toward our designated camp-spot.
After lifting rudder, we built camp within the tiny cove of Te Pukatea. That night, as we exchanged stories above the blue-flamed hiss of our camp-stoves, storm-clouds stretched across the sky. Then, late, long after we'd tucked inside our tents, the sky billowed into fists, and began hammering-down with rain.
That rain would last for nearly two days.
The next morning, I crawled from my tent into a torrential downpour. Jarv was up and making tea. After watching for a minute as the raindrops bounced-off his Gore-tex, he turned around and smiled, as if to say, 'Rain? What rain?' That attitude was not only brilliant, but contagious, and soon to pay off.
An hour later, after we'd muscled across a hair-ball stretch of wind-blown cross-chop, Eric pointed-out the mouth of Bark Bay's tidal lagoon. "We're in." he said, after negotiating the wicked threat of currents ripping between tidewater and slack. It was there, upon that simple body of water, that Abel Tasman National Park unveiled it's magic.
Calm, protected, dancing with raindrops, we followed that interior waterway, as it doglegged into forests bursting with waterfalls. Floating, photographing, astounded by it's raw beauty, we plied those placid waters until we took our fill.
Building our tents that night, on the edge of that lagoon, we sipped boxed wine and spoke until late. There was little talk of stress, tension or rain. Just two good friends, a boat, and one hell of a good time.
---
After three days of kayaking in Abel Tasman National Park, we traded our paddles for set of wheels. Rambling across the landscape like Kerouac and Ginsberg in a late model rental-car, we pointed those wheels south down New Zealand's wild west coast. Blazing that ribbon of pavement from St. Arnaud, to Westport, Greymouth, and Hokatika, we continued into the heart of New Zealand's Southern Alps.
This until the two of us stood crampon-clad, craning out necks at the immense mouth of the Franz Josef Glacier.
After a short briefing about safety and etiquette, our guide Johnny Rutkowski informed us about the monolithic river of ice that stood before us. Most alarming was how far it had receded in the last century.
Once stretching all the way to the Tasman Sea, The Franz Josef is one of thousands of shrinking glaciers on the planet.
A recent research project conducted by Arizona State University geologist Rick Wessels tracked changes in nearly all of the 160,000 glaciers around the world.
Wessels's newest data came from the NASA-operated ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer), Wessels and his colleagues concluded that global warming is the most likely explanation for the loss of glacial ice.
Several seconds later, we started single-file up an eight hour climb, on what seemed an ice-carved stairway to heaven. Ascending at first upon ice rock and sand, Johnny explained the physics behind the glacier; how it moved an untold mass of rock, from mountain to mouth, like some monstrous-geologic conveyor-belt.
Several hours later, after a series of climbs and dips, our efforts delivered us beneath a blinding-white ice-fall, where office-sized ice-blocks appeared frozen mid-avalanche. It was here I became increasingly convinced that we'd entered what looked to be some sort of ice-sculpting studio of the Gods.
Suddenly, we were skirting deep-chasmed crevasses, or scrambling between the spires of immense towering seracs. It was like some frozen version of Alice In Wonderland, where all our surroundings heli-coiled and morphed, into a mind-bending array of icy-shapes. We quickly descended from the towers through a magical succession of caves: cavernous yawns of ice that glimmered in symphonic refraction's of varying blue light.
Four hours past in a flash, as we scrambled, snaked, and ducked. Then we u-turned and descended down to a warm awaiting bus. Five minutes into our bus-ride back, Eric closed his eyes, then quickly fell asleep.
Our last adventure took place on the outskirts of Queenstown, as we edged into a river like wet-suited lemmings. Wriggling into the frigid waters, atop a well-worn boogie-board, I ignored a direct order by my guide not to pee in my wet-suit.
Sporting fins, helmets, and extremely dorky-looks, Jarv and I commenced flutter-kicking into an explosion of class-3 rapids. For an hour we practiced drowning, one set of rapids at a time, using only our faces to brake waves.
When we’re done, I was readying to empty the fish from my head, when we were shown to our reward: a 70-foot cliff where we were gently encouraged to huck ourselves off like a pair of crash-test dummies. So we did. (again and again.)
One of our last nights of the trip was spent atop a rocky bluff, making photos of Curio Bay; a dramatic coastal landscape near the southernmost tip of new Zealand.
After the last light bled from the sky, we turned to pack all of our gear. As we sat that night, and ate a simple meal, it occurred to me that our journey was nearing an end. It came to me that I'd connected with Eric on many levels--and how lucky I was to call him my friend. A silence soon filled a natural pause in the conversation, and as it did, my vision was captured by a strange glow in the distance.
A transcendent, show-stopping full moon.
Rising, widening, shimmering, glowing, it crept above the horizon like some mad-ethereal headlight. "Dude!" I shouted to Jarv, before we grabbed our camera gear and ran back to the bluff. Smiling with satisfaction after a series of photos, Jarv turned and said, "A perfect night with one of my best friends."
With that, I left Eric to his craft, then meandered to a cliffside perch, where I silently took a seat. Listening to the contemplative throb of crashing waves, I strained my vision toward the southernmost horizon. There, well beyond my vision--a mere thousand miles away--stood the distant-icy shores of Antartica.
I had reached the ends of the earth.
With that, a smile grew within, radiating outward through every cell of my body. After two-and-a-half years, over 24,000 miles, through
32 countries...
I was finally heading home.
Journal 52: The View from the Summit on New Zealand's North Islan
Dec. 1, 2007-Jan. 30, 2008
Mileage log: 22,200-23,200
Elevation: Sea level-4000 ft.
New Zealand (North Island): Hamilton, Waihi Beach, Whangamata, Tairua, Hahei Beach, Whangapoua, Coramandel, Mackaytown, Tauranga, Rotorua, Taupo Lake, Rangipo, Taihape, Bulls, Paekakariki, Wellington
"Siddartha listened...Softly came the many-voiced song of the river. He had often heard all these things before, these many voices in the river, but today he heard it in a new way. Now he no longer distinguished the many voices...Longing laments, the laughter of the wise, cries of anger, and the moans of the dying. All were one. All were interwoven and linked, intertwined in a thousand ways. And everything together, all the voices, all the goals, all the striving, all the suffering, all the pleasure, everything together--was the river of what is--the music of life.
--Herman Hesse
--From the book, "Siddartha"
"The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering."
--Ben Okri
"It is not the mountains that we conquer, but ourselves."
--Sir Edmund Hillary
Journal 52: The View From the Summit on New Zealand's North Island
Alone and naked, I stood in the rain. Engulfed by the solitude of the surrounding forest, the river before me flowed like translucent tea.
Entranced by the rain that danced upon its surface, the patterns it formed mimicked life itself; concentric circles arising, myriad form--radiating outward--dissolving downstream.
A teardrop fell--water into water--unifying with source. This before I bent, drew my breath and plunged. Alive and awakened beneath these cool silent waters, I arced through the depths in suspended animation. Here I recalled the events surrounding my arrival to New Zealand.
My mind harkened back to a tiny makeshift office, the roar of the ocean, a cottage beside the sea.
In the other room, my hosts; Bob and Karen Ostrow, two seventy-something year-olds, heroes of mine that I knew from back home.
The two had long-since traded their winter for endless summers, traveling between their two small homes in Lake Tahoe, California, and Whaihi Beach on New Zealand's North Island. Transforming their retirement into something of an art-form, they are artists, athletes, intellectuals--gently-aged gypsies.
With sweaty palms, I picked up their phone, and nervously dialed a number. As I waited for an answer, I studied the whirl of color of the surrounding decor--red, yellow, blue, green--Picasso vs. Dali in a paint-fight to the death.
"Hello?" a woman's voice finally answered. "Oh, hello," I said sitting upright in the chair, "is this Mrs. Hillary?" "Yes," the woman replied, "may I ask whom I'm speaking with?"
"My name is Rick Gunn, I believe the local paper just phoned to inform you that I'd be calling."
"Are you the one riding the bicycle around the world?" she asked.
"Yes," I replied somewhat relieved. "Yes I am. New Zealand is the last of 32 countries for me," I said, "and I was hoping to end the journey with a brief visit with your husband."
Suddenly there was silence. This followed by a tone of increased seriousness. "I'm sorry, that will not be possible," she said, "Sir Edmund is simply out of circulation now."
Another, more awkward silence passed. Instinctively I knew I had only one chance at this. "I understand Mrs. Hillary," I continued, "but I could come to the house there in Auckland--it would only be for the briefest moment."
The tone in her voice assumed that of a tigress, ferociously protective of the one she loved most. "I'm sorry," she returned adamantly, "that is just not possible."
"I see..." I said defeated. "Please give your husband my regards, he has always been one of my heroes," I said in a sinking tone adding, "I wish the two of you all the best."
"Thank you, I will." she replied, then abruptly hung up the phone. Still holding the receiver in my hand, I gazed out the window at the falling rain. A voice welled from within. It whispered, "You were not worthy..."
A week later, as rain fell in sheets, I'd left Whaihi, and cycled halfway around a loop of the North Island's Coromandel Peninsula. Hydroplaning across the landscape with hydraulic-halos orbiting my tires, I slashed like a madman through a dazzle of forested coastal hamlets.
Just after Whangapoua, the road climbed just short of a nosebleed. Tipping over the top, I ripped down the other side, blasting down the pavement into the happenin' town of Coromandel.
Eclectic, green, cool and funky, Coromandel had just about everything a cycle-tourist could want: a pleasant campground, freshly smoked seafood, an organic vegetable market, a bakery, pottery and art galleries, good coffee, extra crunchy peanut butter, and one sweet outdoor lap-pool.
It was here I met Glen Whittington, a cycle-tourist from Sussex England. Glen's bicycle tour of New Zealand had ended abruptly after he'd been run off the road by a careless driver; his bike broken in half after landing in a ditch. This is when I came to recognize one of New Zealand's weak spots: drivers.
Make no mistake, when it comes to hospitality, the Kiwis are tops. Almost everywhere I went they were welcoming, polite--spectacularly friendly. But when they stepped behind the wheel, they drove like James Brown on a bender.
In fact, in the short time I was there, motorists had kill two cyclist, broke another's spine--even plowed an 80-year-old woman in an electric wheelchair. Personally I was swerved at, swore at, then
pelted--twice--with bottles.
After Glen and I discussed the subject for a bit, we decided to venture into town for a brew at the nearby Star and Garter Hotel.
We'd scarcely taken a seat in the pub, when a young woman walked up, eyed us up and down, then asked, "Where you two from?"
"California," I said.
"England," Glen followed.
The woman smiled. After we'd conversed for few moments, our attention turned to a woman with one leg, in a long dress, flowing from table to table on a pair of black spray-painted crutches.
"That's my mom," the young woman informed us with a smile, "She's flirting for free drinks
"So what are you two doing here?" she asked, turning her attention back toward the two of us.
"Were both cyclists." Glen replied. The young woman's eyes widened. Just then, her mother stubbled up to the table. "Mom...guess what these guys are?" she queried.
The one-legged woman shrugged. "I'll give you a hint, it's something we hate," she added.
"Germans?" the mother replied.
"No."
"Italians?"
"No."
"Gays?"
"Worse. They're cyclists!" Mum's face wretched.
"We hate cyclists," the mother hissed with disgust, before the two of them walked away. Glen and I looked at each other for a moment, then burst into laughter. No sooner had our laughter stopped when a large shadow loomed across the table.
It was cast by a plus-sized Maori woman who wobbled up, then plopped down in the seat in front of us. As she looked at us, her eyes seemed to rattle in her head like one of those kitty-cat wall clocks.
"Heeni," she blurted, extending her sizable hand.
"Glen."
"Rick," we replied.
Speaking in a series of vowel movements, Heeni blurted out sentence fragments like McDonald's-produced hamburgers; swaying back and forth all the while, as if on a boat in high seas. Every once in a while, her eyes would roll from the back of her head, into focus--then uncomfortably transfix on me. I felt like a giant doughnut.
"Heeni" she'd say, introducing herself again, only this time fluttering her eyelashes. Hours went by as Glen and I watched Heeni throw back drinks, drop her cigarettes, her wallet...her train of thought. All the while she spoke in a strange tongue.
"I don't understand Maori." I repeated to her time and again.
"That's not Maori," a man walking by interjected. "She's just drunk."
Sometime around the end of the evening, after Glen had slipped away to use the toilet, Heeni leaned in close, her head wobbling like a poorly spinning planet.
"Am I ever going to see you again?" she asked.
I paused for a moment, then asked her the more obvious question. "Can you see me right now...?"
By the next afternoon, I'd completed my loop around the Coromandel. From there I cycled southwest; over the central foothills, to the geothermal hotspots, and traditional Maori enclaves of Rotorua and Lake Taupo.
Through it all came the wind and the rain, until everything I owned--my tent, my clothes, my socks, my shoes--became wet.
Though intuitively I sensed the beauty that surrounded me, most of it remained hidden to my eyes behind rain-clouds and mist. I tried my best to remain positive, but after nearly 29 days of continual rain, my disposition began to sag like wet cardboard. Then, one morning, there was something new and amazing: the sun.
Crawling from my tent after a long night of rain, I slipped on my shoes and jumped to my feet. There, beneath a bright blue sky, beyond the Tussock Grass and pine forests of the Great Desert Road, soared two crystalline peaks: Mt. Tongariro, and Mt. Ruapehu. It was here, in 1935, on a school trip to Mt. Ruapehu, that young Edmund Hillary was first introduced to the mountains.
His childhood had been difficult. His father, I'd learned, had been badly wounded after returning from the battle of Gallipoli.
In a series of interviews, Hillary would reveal a pattern of abuse, stating that as a boy, he was constantly hauled out to the woodshed for a good "thrashing", often for the smallest offenses.
His words conjured my own childhood suffering: my own small offenses; my own painful memories of my mother standing over me; the sting of a wire coat hanger being whipped across my face. Though I once looked-upon these memories as something of a curse, I now looked upon them for what they truly are: another chance at release; another chance to forgive--another chance to truly live. A lonely boy with few friends, young Edmund suffered in school. During another interview, he recalled that a bullying grammar school gym teacher, "was very, very critical of me, saying just about everything was wrong with me that was possible." During that same interview, some 50 years after the fact, Sir Edmund admitted, "I still have that same feeling."
But mountaineering had liberated him, freed him momentarily from his loneliness, torment, and self-doubt.
Two weeks later, after I'd finished my tour of the North Island, I was well into my ride of the South Island, when I stopped at a small roadside pub to fill my water-bottles. There an image on a television caught my attention. It was an image of a large, elderly man, his face vaguely familiar. I watched as he moved slowly, his skin looking frail as tissue paper. Then the image flashed to that of a younger man, lanky and smiling, standing tall and confident in the heart of the Himalaya.
Just below the image, a simple text scrolled across the bottom of the screen. It read, "Sir Edmund Hillary has passed away at the age of 88."
Almost instantly, came a familiar sense; the recognition of something deeply lost, something deeply gained. The tears that followed came quickly, sincerely.
By the time I awoke, news of Sir Edmund Hillary's death echoed in headlines around the world. Their words described a life fully lived. Words like:
"courage, strength, humility, compassion, inspiration."
From Nepal, came the news that the Sherpa people had gathered en masse to prepare a ceremony. Not as much to celebrate the first man to have climbed their highest mountain, but to show their love for the man whose Himalayan Trust had built them countless schools, hospitals, and clinics.
Back in New Zealand, thousands turned out around the country, gathering in public places to celebrate the life of their most cherished citizen. In Auckland's Hillary Square, Sir Edmund's bronze statue was said to be draped with flowers and garlands. At it's base were placed hundreds of condolence cards.
The Sunday Times Star described one of those cards written by two small children.
It read,
"To Sir Ed, you were a good man who did good things for New Zealand and other people. Now is your time to rest, goodbye."
Those words brought the end of a memory, and my emergence from the surface of a tea-colored river.
Climbing from that river, I stood at it's banks, again the drops of rain drawing me in.
In my mind's eye, I imagined Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay--the two of them smiling atop the summit of Mt. Everest--their lives arising myriad form--radiating outward--dissolving downstream.
Journal 51: Wild in Tasmania
Nov. 10-29, 2007
Mileage log: 21,600-22,200
Elevation: Sea level-4000 ft.
Devonport, Deloraine, Mienna, Ouze, Mt. Field National Park, New Norfolk, Hobart, Dunalley, Eagle-Hawk Neck, Orford, Dolphin Sands (Coles Bay), Bicheno, St.
Helens, Scottsdale, Launceston
"Oh look at me, in my fancy car, and my bank account, oh how I wish I could take it all, down to my grave, God knows I'd save and save. Man, take a look again, take a look again, things you have collected. In the end it all piles up so tall, but one day nothing, one day nothing at all..."
--Dave Matthews
--"Seek Up"
"So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more dangerous to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure.
The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun."
--Chris McCandless
--From John Krakauer's book, "Into the Wild."
"And tell me people of Orphalese, what have you in these houses?...Have you beauty that leads the heart from things fashioned of wood and stone, to the holy mountain...or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort. That stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master...aye, and with hook and scourge makes puppets of your larger desires. Though it's hands are silken, it's heart is of iron. It lulls you to sleep only to stand by your bed and jeer at the dignity of the flesh, it makes mock of your sound senses. Varily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul..."
--Kahlil Gibran
--From the book, "The Prophet"
Journal 51: Wild in Tasmania
I was half way across Tasmania's Western Highlands when I came across the beast. A dark lifeless-shape slumped to the side of the road. As I approached, recognition: The Tasmanian Devil. I set down my bike to get a closer look. Half biologist, half morbid voyeur, I crouched over the dead animal and studied it's form. After my eyes were done journeying over it's rippled musculature, it occurred to me just how wrong the cartoonist had gotten it: the brown fur, the bushy grey eye-brows, the thin arms and legs--wrong. The devil was black, jet-black, with a v-like stripe dashed across it's chest like fresh-white spray paint.
It's brawny body not much larger than that of an oversized house-cat. Just above it's shoulders--where it's head met it's body--all similarities to Feline Domestica ended. The Devils head was large, disproportionately large, like that of a pit-bull. It's anvil-shaped jaw looking entirely capable of snapping through cold steel. Leaning in close, I noticed no wounds, no blood--no signs of trauma. Perhaps, I thought, it was merely asleep. Then, in my mind's eye, an image: the beast's jaws sheering-through the sinew of my lower leg. Reflexively I jumped back.
I shook my head, and rode away. Two days later, I'd happened upon a pair of Devils as they were meant to be: crashing through the brush at high-speeds, alive, wild--free. I'd arrived in Tasmania the week previous.
Following the shimmering waters of the Mersey River from the Devonport Harbor, I'd pedaled through a tangle of farm roads, over a small bridge, through the tiny town of DeLoraine, then up a curvy ribbon of blacktop, where the road twisted and step-laddered 3000 vertical-feet over Tasmania's Great Western Tier.
Intermittently engulfed by a thick blanket of Eucalypt forest--I slipped into a peaceful cadence--taking-in the blue-green puffs of foliage, their repeating pastel trunks like single zen-like brush-strokes.
The road lifted and dipped, over the saddle of a rocky-crest, until the pavement slimmed, then disappeared altogether. Rolling over a lonely rattle of washboard, I crossed a dozen single-lane bridges, stopping amid each, peering for a moment into the trout-filled streams; tracing their paths as they braided and branched in silvery strands across Tasmania's remote Central Plateau.
For six hours I pedaled within those isolated environs, existing as a singular stirring of dust upon the horizon. It was exactly these kinds of empty landscapes that spurred endless sandstorms of thought.
And although, in the midst of this thought, I was entirely capable of launching fleets of tall ships, building castles--creating and destroying entire civilizations--that afternoon I'd returned to the thoughts of the day before, and the day before. A re-occurring thought that reflected infinitum, like the image of a mirror within a mirror.
And once again a feeling surged. The one that up-welled from my heart to my head. The one that reminded me just how long I'd been alone; how long I'd stuffed away, avoided, or otherwise denied that most basic human need to be close to another.
Inevitably, came the memory of a girl. The one back home with the kryptonite eyes--her handful of careless
words: "I care about you...I want to see you." She'd written some time ago. Secretly, almost compulsively, I'd carried those words. Carrying them, through the hours, the days, the months. This until they were replaced by an another set of words. The ones that stated, "I've thought of you too, but I have a boyfriend now...I'm in relationship."
Collecting those thoughts like shards of broken glass, I stuffed them all back inside, only to be brought back-out again tomorrow. Then I did what I do best; dropped my head, turned my cranks, and pedaled through it all.
Near dusk, the Great Lakes road delivered me to a desolate expanse of scrub, the Tasmanian equivalent to the middle of nowhere. I turned at a fork, then coasted into the town of Miena. Slowly I rolled through the abandoned fishing village--my fading shadow casting a dim outline against a half-dozen tumble-down shacks, an empty gas-station, then a back-woods bar.
Desperately in need of supplies, I parked my bike, and made for the tavern door.
As I entered, all heads turned.
Scattered around the room, sat a handful of flannel-clad, hard-smoking, hard-drinking hunter-types. Surrounding them, the predictable icons of red-neck decor: pine-paneled walls, taxidermied trout, six-point dear-heads--beer posters adorned with scantily-clad women. Ignoring their hostile eyes, I pulled my bike-shorts from my crack, then made my way to an area that held a small variety of staples, where I began checking prices. A can of beans: five dollars, a small carton of milk; four dollars--a bottle of beer, seven.
I decided to do without. Still, I needed water. I approached the bar, smiled at the bartender and said hello. The man scowled. "Uh...any chance you could fill these up?" I asked setting my water bottles down on the bar. The question seemed to dumbfound the man. He stood silent for a moment, then shot me an evil glare. During that silence I studied a photo hanging behind the bar. It was a photo of the same man that stood before me, standing in the exact same spot, with the exact same scowl--only he was shirtless and wearing a bra and spiked dog-collar. He filled the bottles, set them back on the bar, then said, "That'll be 3 dollars each."
"Really?" I replied sheepishly.
The man guffed, then tilted his head back and let loose with a toothless, opened-mouthed belly-laugh. This seemed to set-off the entire room of Tasmanian Hillbillies. For soon they all joined in the open-mouthed laughter--not an entire set of teeth between the group of them. Grabbing my bottles, and making quickly for the door, I felt as though I'd somehow landed myself in a remake of the film, "The Hills Have Eyes," casted entirely by rejects from a Michigan hunting club.
Bouncing along a decline of steep-loose dirt, I pedaled-on, braking hard down a succession of back country farm-roads. Picking up speed, I railed past the verdant-green blur of cattle pastures, paddocks, and sheep fields--back onto the pavement of the southern lowlands--then through the gates of Mt. Field National Park.
Parking my bike, I quickly set afoot on the Russell Falls Trail.
Moments later, I was enshrouded in the cathedral-like silence of a temperate forest, as I wandered contemplatively through a temple of greenery. Traipsing along carpets of extravagant mosses, I peered ever-upward at the sky-scraping Swamp Gums, the Myrtle trees--the giant ferns soaring 18-feet into the air.
Thriving within that wooded silence, was a unique variety of Tasmanian wildlife that included: the Tasmanian Devil, the Long-Tailed mouse, the Ring-tailed possum, and Spotted-tailed Quall. Bird-life here included: the Black Currawong, Green Rosella, Olive Whistler and Grey Goshawk. Joining those creatures were: the Tasmanian Tree frog, Tiger Snakes, and the Macleay's swallowtail butterfly--all of these species protected within the boundaries of the park.
But just down the road, in the heart of the Styx Forest, many of these same creatures were not as lucky.
I soon learned that one of Tasmania's Largest logging companies, (ironically by name of Gunn's Ltd.), was readying to down one of the last remaining stands of unprotected Eucalyptus Regnan. E. Regnan is the world's tallest hardwood tree, second only in size to the world famous Californian redwoods. If the company has it's way, this 450 year-old stand of Eucalyptus Regnans will be clear-cut, then ground into low-value wood-chips.
A report by Ecologist magazine describes the process as follows:
"When the loggers have done their bit, the helicopters will come. From above the forest they will drop incendiary chemicals, similar to napalm, on the myrtles, the eucalypts, the cockatoos, the whipbirds, the banners, the tree ferns...The remains of the forest will burn for days. When the fire stops, [the forest] will be a charred mass of blackened stumps and white, ashen ground. Finally, the loggers will return.
They will lace the area with carrots, implanted with a nerve-attacking poison known as 1080. Everything that eats it - wombats, possums, wallabies, bandicoots - will die. Cleared of potentially destructive wildlife, the area will then be planted with lines of fast-growing, non-native trees, which will provide the loggers with a means of producing woodchips in a way which is much more economically efficient than the old-growth forests of the Styx valley ever were."
Greenpeace adds that of the wood logged in Tasmania - 90% - is converted into woodchips for the Asian paper industry and sold at around A$15 (less than £6) per ton. In 2000 the Australian Bureau of Statistics calculated that 5,498,654 tons were converted to woodchip.
“Importers should source woodchips from plantations, not ancient forests." Australia Campaigns Manager Danny Kennedy recently informed the press.
His words echoed in my head until I reached the city of Hobart. Rarely comfortable of late the heart of a major city, I sought-out a quiet cafe, where I nervously drank coffee. Picking up a copy of the local paper, I learned that one of my favorite books had been made into a film.
"Into the Wild," based on the best-selling book by author Jon Krakauer, tells the true story of Chris McCandless, an idealistic young man who cut all ties with his dysfunctional family after graduating from college. After giving away his $20,000 savings to charity, McCandless sets off for the Alaskan wilderness.
Eventually, however, McCandless is found dead--starved to death--inside an abandoned bus, after a failed attempt to live his dream of living off the land. Near the bottom of the paper was a review of the film by Roger Ebert.
It read:
"For those who have read Thoreau's Walden, there comes a time, maybe only lasting a few hours or a day, when the notion of living alone in a tiny cabin beside a pond and planting some beans seems strangely seductive. [To] certain young men, of which I was one...such a life of purity and denial makes perfect sense. Christopher McCandless did not outgrow this phase."
I sat in that cafe that morning and contemplated Ebert's word's for some time, then studied the host of long faces that surrounded me. This until my mind spilled-over in thought. I began to think of all those I'd come across in this lifetime who'd attained all they'd needed, but somehow wanted more.
I thought of those who went to work each day, not out of love for what they do, nor to improve the world, but to compete--to beat someone out--for power or resources, upper management positions, traffic lanes, parking spaces. I thought of all those I'd met who'd attempted to buy themselves into a life of eternal comfort. Those who'd long-since traded their lives, their souls, their Gods, for things: immense boxes of sheet-rock, expensive metal machines, extravagant meals, rare-stones--endless rows of glittering fabric. As if through the attainment of these things, they would liberate themselves; free themselves somehow from their inevitable return to the earth, the trees--the wind.
As if through these things they would somehow sever themselves--once and for all--from that inseparable something "wild' that resides within us all.
Like McCandless, I'd decided long ago, that I would rather live a thousand deaths of starvation within abandon Alaskan busses, then a single soul-starved, material-bound life of dreamless inaction. Moreover, that the most important thing in this life was not what I could get, but what I could give.
I spent the last of my days in Tasmania amongst the forests and surf, the clouds and the rain--and as I did, I felt as if I too was growing wild. Even the food I caught or collected was wild: fresh Oysters, Flathead fish, Mussels, Scallops, all sautéed over my camp-stove in white wine and Tasmania's infamous King Island Cream. Synchronized with the rhythms of my surroundings, a quietness washed-over my mind and body, and I began to simply listen. I listened to the birdsong in the morning, the gentle patter of leaves in the rain in the afternoon.
On any given night I took my rest listening to the soft murmurs of bubbling streams, or the rhythmic roar of the crashing waves. And as I became all listener, I felt as though something ancient and sacred had returned to my life. That something that has been robbed from each of us in this so-called "civilized society."
It was like a part of me had returned to the wild--as if something inside had been set free.
Journal 50: Livin' the Dream in Southern Australia
Oct 15-Nov 25, 2007
Mileage log: 20,737-21,600
Elevation: Sea level-2000 ft.
Australia: Port Augusta, Melrose, Clare, Kapunda, Angaston, Hahndorf, Adelaide, Wellington, Salt Creek, Kingston SE, Mt. Gambier, Warnambool (Great Ocean Road), Pt. Campbell, Apollo Bay, Lorne, Melbourne
"Each Friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive...it is only by this meeting that a new world is born."
--Anais Nin
Journal 50: Livin' the Dream in Southern Australia
"Your livin' the dream" a bike mechanic told me earlier that day.
I'd recalled his words within my partially collapsed tent. Camped behind a bush, in the hills above Adelaide, a bone-chilling rain-storm had forced me from the road. Rummaging through my bags for the only food I had, I gulped-down dinner--two pieces of stale bread. After mopping at the water that now pooled on the floor, I shook my wet sleeping bag, cursed, then crawled inside.
There I prepared for a long and sleepless night.
Seconds turned to minutes, then minutes into hours, as I laid on my back and listened to the storm; turning, thinking, listening, to the bursts of liquid-shrapnel as it blasted against the tent. Sometime before morning, my mind began to slip--drifting into a memory of another time and place--a memory of what now seemed some far away life. In that memory I saw a boy, his arm around a dog. The two of them laying lazily beside a warm mountain fire. And for that moment within my mind, I'd returned back home.
Just then, the tent up and collapsed.
My voice then rose from beneath layers of wet-nylon. Sarcastically it stated, "Dude...your livin' the dream." Four days earlier, I had been living the dream.
Intent on rewarding myself after a long-brutal ride across the outback, I hurriedly made a b-line for three of South Australia's premier destination's: the legendary food and wine region of the Barossa Valley, the heart-lifting scenery of the Great Ocean Road, and the coastal wilds on the Island of Tasmania.
Awaiting me were a host of fellow humans--kind, giving, mystically-idiosyncratic characters--that would change my course of destiny; their kindly gestures to be forever recorded within the pages of my heart.
It began in Port Augusta. Cycling out of the desert, to the crest of Horrock's Pass, I plunged into a valley of shimmering-golden wheat. Rolling through cropland, fringed by forest and farm, I continued through a dotting of pleasant country towns. The first of these was Melrose.
"Is there any decent mountain biking 'round here?" I'd asked a local shortly after I'd arrived. "There." he said pointing, as he looked upon the hills. I followed his finger to a set of lateral ridges and geologic folds jutting near the base of nearby Mt. Remarkable. I talked with the man for a moment more, of cycling, touring, and life.
"Andy Swain." the man introduced himself, as the two of us shook hands. Swain, as it turned out, happened to be something of a local cycling guru--and as luck would have it--he'd become my unofficial guide
Huffing for a spell up a track of Rock-strewn dirt, we rolled over a crest, then stopped atop a ridge.Setting down our bikes to take-in an eye-popping view, my vision rolled for miles across a horizon of golden-wheat. Turning my attention from the viewpoint, to the folds on Mt. Remarkable, I traced a hair-ball strip of single-track descending into the valley below.
Milliseconds later, our tires were a-smoke, as we ripped down a twist of tightly-cornered single-track. Blazing through trees, over rocks and off jumps, we blasted across a hillside, scattering a herd of sheep. Swooping, lifting, curving at adrenaline-pumping speeds, we barreled through a creek-bed where the trail leveled to an end.
"Magic!" I spouted. "What?" Swain replied.
"And these Eucalyptus trees!" I said, I've never seen anything like them--there massive!" We stood for a moment and scanned their monolithic trunks, many as big as Redwoods. "Some of these trees are over 500-years-old." Swain grinned, again brimming with pride. "I'll be back to Melrose," I said to Andy, the next morning as I said goodbye.
A lonely stretch of asphalt bisected the rolling farm-land south. And with the exception of the occasional pair of kangaroo-ears I'd spy twitching above the wheat, I pedaled through a landscape nearly devoid of life.
Finding a high-end tasting room in the town of Angaston, I parked my bike out front, and stepped inside.
Striking-up a conversation over a well-earned glass of wine, Kerry was not unlike many of the Aussies I'd come across: friendly, outgoing, intelligent, witty--slightly inebriated. After completing his tour of duty in Vietnam, Kerry had returned to the Barossa to make his living tending vines. With the Barossa producing over 400-million liters of wine annually, (25-percent of Australia's total), Kerry could count on work pretty-much until the day he died. I'd take a sip, raise my glass and add, "this is one kick-ass wine."
"I'm going to marry that woman," I whispered to Kerry when he walked back in the room. "I'm not sure her husband would like that."he returned before stepping-back outside. "You welcome to stay at my place tonight..." Kerry offered later, "that is if you don't mind eating curry."
Not long after that, we were shown to a table, then took a seat with a handful of guests.
The dishes looked unbelievable, like something out of a dream. Attacking the table like a lawn-mower at full-throttle, I ate enough for three. But as I did, I noticed something effecting my appetite. Something, it seems, I'd carried-over from the developing world. It wasn't a bug or a virus--but a handful of memories. Memories of those I'd come across along the way who'd struggled to simply feed themselves.
Kerry and I stayed up late that night, talking about the world, while we drank copious amounts wine. I awoke the next morning with a dried purple ring around my lips, feeling every bit as though I'd fallen from a plane. Kerry arose smiling, looking no worse for wear. I thanked him graciously, then wobbled out of town.
Several days later, as rain fell in buckets, I pedaled into outskirts of Warnambool. Stepping into a phonebook I dialed a number, then watched the beads of water as they trickled down the glass. "Hello?" a voice answered on the other end. "Nice weather you have here in Warnambool," I replied. "Rick?...is that you?...Where are you?" I was speaking with Jason Lugton. I'd met Jason, his wife Sioban, and their family: Sebastian, Alex, James, and Edwin, at a campground in Alice Springs. They'd invited me to stay if I was passing by.
I tried to earn my keep by telling them stories of humanity. When that failed, I switched to stories of all the disgusting food I'd eaten along the way: sheep intestines in Kyrgyzstan, worms in Turkey, or fish-gut soup along the banks of the Mekong. I can't speak for the grown-ups, but the kids just ate it up.
The cliffs and vistas of the Great Ocean Road came quickly like the oncoming storm. Feeling as light and free as the wind, I swooped through it's long-coastal curves. Riding aside carpets of coastal Heath, with heart-thumping vistas to either side, sometimes I'd stop and listen for hours, or simply just look-out and stare. Curiously, I looked upon the limestone formations--these towering sky-scrapers of sand. What tales they could tell of men and ships, of bird and fish,the waves that bowed like prayers. What love-affairs they'd had beneath these crystal waters--all the time knowing that one day, their lover would call them back.
Then they'd disappear, into the place from which they came--beneath the thundering Tasman sea. Following the road as it snaked and climbed, through a riot of Eucalyptus, fern and pine, I fruitlessly scoured the trees for wildlife, then stopped in a roadhouse near Otway National Park to see what I was doing wrong.
I lamented to the woman behind a coffee counter.
"What about the one in that tree over there?" she said pointing through the front window. I studied the trees for a moment, and saw nothing. "What tree...?" I returned.
"Third tree to the left," she said entirely bored, "in the middle about half way down." Bolting through the door, I grabbed my camera gear, then dashed toward the fat-furry-lump I now saw sitting in the crotch of a tree. Tip-toeing as I approached, I peered at the creature who seemed to be asleep. "Hi." I said quietly to the furball, lifting my camera to focus. It slowly raised it's head from it's elbow, like a drunk passed-out on a bar-stool. Before I could get a photo it's eyelids drooped, then shut again. "C'mon now." I said trying to coax the Marsupial, "Just one shot and I'll leave you alone."
The animal lifted it's eyelids momentarily, then nestled back to bed.
If I didn't know better, the beast appeared to be--for lack of a better word--stoned.
"There's something in the leaves..." the woman said, when I returned to the roadhouse. A common belief I'd soon learn was wrong.
"The popular conception that Koalas being permanently under the influence is completely incorrect." Biologist Stephen Jackson writes in his recent book, "Koalas--Origin of An Icon." In the book, Jackson explains that the Koala's singular source of food--the Eucalyptus leaf--"has so little nutrition that the creatures have little energy to do anything but sleep...up to 20 hours a day." Perhaps even more disturbing than the food-source itself, was Jackson's description of the young Koala's introduction to this semi-toxic diet. After weening from it's mother's milk, Jackson notes, "The joeys first semi-solid food is caectrophs, a semi-liquid feces known as pap...a green jelly-like substance the infant eats directly from the mother's rectum." "Mmmmmm." I thought to myself after discovering that little behavioral nugget. "All this talk of food is making me hungry." I mumbled, before I set out to find myself some lunch.
Two days later, after I'd finished the Great Ocean Road, I'd found myself standing in the Melbourne police station, talking loudly to an officer behind bullet-proof glass. "....And where did you say found this?" The officer asked, looking me up and down."Near Kingston SE." I told him, adding, "I think it belongs to someone named Ashish Sharma...If you look inside you'll find his name on his Melbourne I.D.card."
"Is there any money in this wallet?" the cop finally queried. I held my breath for moment, then blew it out slowly. "Yes." I replied. "How much?" the officer asked, now peaked with interest.
"Five-hundred-dollars." I said sadly. The cop raised his eyebrows. He opened the wallet, counted the money, then looked me in the eye.
"You did the right thing." he said--then turned and walked away.
In my heart, I knew I'd done the right thing, but I still couldn't help but feel sad. For months I'd been skimming the financial treetops. That until a recent bicycle repair had me crash landing. The truth was, that as I'd handed that cop that wallet that afternoon, it was essentially, the last bit of money I had. Besides, it was not my money anyway. There inside that cop-shop, I realized my dream of visiting Tasmania had-been dashed. Then, suddenly, something occurred to me.
Hurriedly, I ran to my bike, and began digging through my bike bags. It took me a moment but I found what I was looking for: the "gift" that Jason had given me. Quickly I unwrapped the envelope, until I was counting a fistful of crisp Australian bills: Two-hundred and fifty dollars. There, on a crowded Melbourne street-corner, as hundreds of people passed by, I wept.
"How did you get here?" A young Tasmanian boy asked me, on the day that I arrived. I stood for moment, thinking of the kindness bestowed upon me. "A friend sent me..." I replied, as the boy just stood there puzzled. Turning my head from the boy for minute, I stared at the road before me, following it into the distance. Ahead of me awaited another chapter, another adventure--another chance to live fully.
And--if I was lucky--perhaps, another friend. Staring for another moment at the magnificence of Tasmania's Great Western Tier, I suddenly recalled the words of the bike mechanic--the one I'd first met along the way:
"Your living the dream my friend." I repeated softly, "Your truly livin' the dream..."
Journal 49: Australia - Across the Red Center
Sept 3-Oct 15, 2007
Mileage log: 18,840-20,737
Elevation: Sea level-300 ft.
Darwin, Batchelor, Pine Creek, Katherine, Larimah, Daly Waters, Newcastle Wells, Renner Springs, Tennant Creek, Wauchope, Barrow Creek, Aileron, Alice Springs, Uluru National Park (Ayres Rock), Erldunda, Kulgera, Marla, Coober Pedy, Glendambo, Woomera, Port Augusta
"We waited up until sunrise to see the breathtaking spectacle of the full moon and the rising sun as two fiery balls on each side of the horizon. When you have seen that on the Barkly Tablelands, with no trees to impede your view, when all around you is a 360 degree golden Mitchell grass emptiness, then you have been in the great Australian outback."
--Ted Egan
"It's a very Aboriginal thing to do, to give younger people greater responsibilities within the community as they become able to take those responsibilities on.
It is a culturally appropriate transfer of roles that involves respect in both directions...from the younger to the older and the older to the younger."
--Jackie Huggins
Journal 49: Australia - Across the Red Center
The sun rose before me with the glow of an oven coil. A slithering red disc that crept from the horizon. The heat that followed, nearly set the landscape on fire. A kangaroo sprung from the bush, kicking-up puffs of ochre-colored dust. Stopping for a moment to watch it's tracks, I traced it over the rocks, through the Spinifex and Gum trees, until it disappeared into the distance--flat, sparse, bare.
"You don't wanna ride a bicycle out there," an elderly bushman warned in an outfitter's shop just outside Darwin. "There's nothing out there but Spinifex and Gum Trees." he said, as he set my supplies upon the counter. "There's no food, no water, no people at all." I'd tried to explain to him that that was exactly what I was after--a quiet place to decompress--after year's cycling through the madness of Asia. The man did not listen. Instead, he turned his attention back out-over the bush, staring into the void as if it'd claimed something dear to him. "There's nothing out there." he repeated somberly, before he turned and walked away. "Exactly," I replied, then left to pack my things.
Two days later, loaded with 10 days worth of food, 8 liters of water, and 2 large containers of re-hydration powder, I stood over my bike and watched as heat-waves formed over the strip of tarmac before me. At just under 2000 miles, it was one of the longest continuous roads on the planet: the great Stuart Highway.
Named after founding explorer John Stuart McDouall in 1862, The Scotsman had been the first to blaze a route across Australia's harsh desert outback. Using every last-ounce of life-force to cross 6,400 kilometers of hostile terrain, Stuart accomplished his task only to collapse on the far shore. On the return trip to Adelaide, Stuart's sorry sack-o-meat had to be hauled via stretcher. Irrevocably plagued by the punishments of his journey, McDouall then faced a four-year decline into death due to scurvy. "Now that's the route for me." I said, slipping a copy of his journal into my bike bags. I mounted my bike, then set about my way.
That first morning of pedaling, super-heated winds blew at temperatures of 102. Hot and tired, I achieved only 50 measly-miles before coming upon a smallish river, beautifully deep, emerald and wild.
But just as I descended to go for a dip, I intuitively looked-upon the banks, as if I'd seen them before--perhaps in slow motion--on a segment of Animal Planet. Just then, a road worker passed, and slammed-on his brakes. Running his gaze over my bike, he rolled his eyes, then shot me an evil glare. "Afternoon," I said as he rolled down the window, "I was just thinking of a..." "FOR GOD'S SAKE MATE!..."
he interupted..."DID YOU NOT SEE THE SIGN?" "What sign?" I returned innocently. "THE SIGN MATE, THAT HAS THE PICTURE OF THE MAN DOING THIS..." he shouted, before he began moving his limbs arm over arm."OR THIS?" he said joining his palms and snapping his arched fingers together like some sadistic display of hand puppetry. "SALTIES MATE!...CROCS! WHATEVER YOU DO... DO NOT SWIM HERE!" he said with disgust.
Growing upto 27-feet in length, the Saltwater Crocodile is the largest living reptile on the planet. Easily capable of building habitats 50 miles inland, these prehistoric carnivores have a nasty reputation of snapping-up humans like cocktail weenies. "Just down the road..." the man said after he'd calmed a bit, "a Swiss man was taken by a mother croc after he tried to 'pet' it's baby. "Genius." I thought to myself. "And make sure you have plenty of water," he finished, as he rolled up his window, "They found a another dead Swiss laying near his bike after he'd been missing for TWO YEARS!" As I watched the truck fade into the distance, several questions arose within my mind. The first about crocodile etiquette and the second about water availability. These were soon replaced by the more obvious question. "What's up with all these dead Swiss dudes?" I thought to myself, as I climbed on my bike and continued along my way.
As it turned out, Crocodylus Porosus was the least of my worries. In fact, the species that would become my arch nemisis across the outback was smaller. Much smaller. It was Australophlebotomus Mackerrasi, more commonly known as the phlebotomine sand fly. These small, plentiful, incredibly persistent sand flies seemed irresistibly drawn to the human head--tripling in number the moment you began to sweat. Using your face as an insectile landing strip, they kamakazied into your eyes, buzzed your ears, or rocketed up your nose. Easily sucked to the back of your mouth during inhalation, it wasn't uncommon for me to swallow two or three flies a day.
McDouall's expedition party were no strangers to these insects. In fact in an interview after the expedition, one of the men later recalled, "...the sandflies, the common flies, and the mosquitoes…were terrible. Our hands, wrists, necks and feet were all blistered with their bites, and many earnest inquiries were made as to who could explain their use in this world. One of the party thought they were sent to teach a man how to swear fluently."
And swearing I did at these creatures, right up until the moment I reached an outdoor shop on the main streets of Katherine. As I walked in, the man behind the counter must have read the look on my face. "Let me guess," he said with some precision, "your here looking for a head net..." Proudly sporting my new fashion accessory, I set off the next morning to Katherine Gorge National Park. There I traded my pedals for paddles. Floating like a popsicle-stick between two perpendicular rock-walls, I glided lazily over sheets of liquid glass.
Reassured by rangers that the freshwater crocs didn't bite, I plunged into waters that were bursting with wildlife. There were Darters and Kookaburra birds, swallow-like Fairy-Martins, Snake-necked turtles and the infamous Barramundi fish. There were lizards and snakes, frogs and bats too.
At lunchtime I was preparing a fest of peanut butter and jelly, when a Kangaroo walked up and snatched my only loaf of bread. Grinding and jawing my mid-day sustenance, he mawed my loaf just inches from my leg. "Look at you," I said, "you, you thieving marsupial...have you no shame? Your legs are overgrown, and your arms are all shrunken...like your mama left them in the dryer too long." Either he was ignoring my insults, or he didn't speak a lick of English. He just casually finished my bread, then turned and hopped away.
When I returned to my camp-spot late that night, I once again stumbled on yet another form of wildlife. Only this time, as it turned out, it was the great Australian camper. Vivacious, hospitable, and heavily armed with steak and beer, the Australian took his "Caravanning" extremely seriously. And at any given campground on any given night--usually after a couple of beers--I would find myself deep within an abyss of American and Australian slang.
These were mutually incomprehensible conversations that sounded a little something like this:
Aussie: "G'day mate." (Hello.)
Me:"Yo dude." (Hello.)
Aussie: "You look like you could use a stubby." (Can I offer you a bottle of beer?)
Me: "Nice." (Why yes thank you, I believe I will have a beer.)
Aussie: "What's a Yank doin' here in the back of Bourke anyway? (Middle of nowhere.)
Me: "Chillin', ridin', hangin'." (Relaxing, bicycle-touring, having fun.)
Aussie: "Your ridin' a pushie across the outback?...Crikey! Gotta few kangaroos loose in the top paddock don't ya?" (Your not right in the head are you?).
Me: "It's all good." (Everything's fine.)
Aussie: "...in this heat? I'd throw a wobbly!" (Fly into a fit of rage.)
Aussie: How long ya been out mate?"
Me: "Two years?"
Aussie: "Two years? Holy dooly! Last time I spent more than an hour on a pushie I nearly busted one of me knackers. (Use imagination here.)
Me: "Bogus." (That doesn't sound very pleasant).
Aussie: "It's a dog's breakfast." (Anything goes.)
Me: "Word." (I hear that.)
Aussie: "Tinny?" (I'm out of bottles would you like a can of beer?)
Me: "Sweet." (Yes please.)
One night, after just such a conversation, I was brushing my teeth in a campground in Renner Springs, when a bug flew out of nowhere--straight into my ear. Instantaneously jamming my pinky nearly to the knuckle, the insect made a dash for the depths of my ear-hole. As the insect burrowed deeper, rustling my inner-ear hair, that's when you might say that I officially snapped. Swinging my head violently, while wiggling my ear from side to side, I danced around the campsite slapping my skull. Suddenly, I looked up to see two rather clean looking retirees in pair of matching canvas chairs. They looked at me as if to say, "Just say no to drugs."
Waking up early with my new cochlear friend, I rode 85-miles the next day against furnace-like headwinds.
Stumbling and mumbling into the tiny town of Three Ways, I wobbled into the campground looking as though I'd spent the last month trapped inside a cement mixer. Using every last bit of energy to set up camp, I laid within my tent browsing excerpts from Stuart's journals.
The entry for Friday January 11th, 1861 read:
"Day extremely hot....our poor little dog Toby is carried on one of the pack-horses, he is unable to bear this great heat. I fear he will not survive the day. Arrived at Milne Springs about 5 p.m. At sundown poor little Toby died, regretted by us all, for he had already become a great favourite.”
Deeper into the journal, I came upon one of Stuart's encounters with an unsuspecting group of Aboriginals.
The entry for March 1861 read:
"We saw natives at the upper end at a brush fence in the water; they appeared to be fishing, and did not see us until I called to them. The female was the first who left the water; she ran to the bank, took up her child, and made for a tree, up which she climbed, pushing her young one up before her. She was a tall, well-made woman. The man (an old fellow), tall, stout, and robust, although startled at our appearance, took it leisurely in getting out of the water, ascended the bank, and had a look at us; he then addressed us in his own language, and seemed to work himself up into a great passion, stopping every now and then and spitting fiercely at us like an old tiger. He also ascended the tree, and then gave us a second edition of it...then remained staring at us until we departed, when he commenced again."
Two days later--some 140 years after Stuart's first indigenous encounters--I cycled into the Aboriginal Community of Tennant Creek. There I came upon large groups of Indigenous men and women. They were drunk and squabbling, staggering in front of a Liquor store, waiting for it to open. As I looked-upon the group, my mind began to churn, surging with the terms of recent Aboriginal history.
Terms like: "Extermination, detribalization, denigration, loss of land, loss of cultural structure, exploitation--alcoholism, domestic violence, under-representation in the political system, and over-representation in prison populations. "G'day." one of the elderly Aboriginal men said as he approached. He smiled and glanced with gentle-opaque eyes. Though he glanced at me for only a moment, I recognized something powerful--something deep within those eyes.
What I saw were stories. Stories of a different land, a different people, in a different time, with a different way of being. For these people, these stories lead the way. Without them they were lost. They were the cairns and way-markers for a culture that spanned-back 43,000 years. Instinctively, I knew I needed to find these stories. Or, moreover, I needed to find those who maintained these stories. For they were the ones holding the torch--leading their people back to their heritage--blazing the path of courage, light and hope. I found these story-keepers and more in Alice Springs.
Bustling, hot, modern and sprawl, I entered Alice's streets beneath the looming McDonnell Range. Parking my bike near the center of town, I walked through the glass doors of the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA). For 24 years, CAAMA has produced a wide range of indigenous music, radio, film and television programs. Programs that reach over a million people in a dizzying variety of Aboriginal languages. It was here I found emerging Aboriginal film-maker Dena Curtis.
The 26 year-old indigenous film-maker had earned a scholarship to attend the Sydney Film School, as well as sponsorships to make films from the indigeonous Branch of the Australian film commission. Among her four short films, her 10-minute documentary "Cheeky Dog", about a young Aboriginal boy in Tennant Creek who suffers from M.S., went to the Sydney film festival in June 2007. After that it aired on ABC Australia. When I asked her why she'd picked film as a medium to tell these aboriginal stories, her answer was clear.
"I think the most rewarding thing about making these films, is that indigenous people get to see black faces and black stories in their own language...like there a part of something positive. Otherwise the only other times when they'd see a black face on TV is when it's negative."
A couple of days after meeting Dena, I was lucky enough to be introduced to Mitjili Gibson, an internationally acclaimed Aboriginal artist and expert naturalist.
Born in the wilds of Western Australia, Mitjili is not only a painter, but a vital source of esoteric knowledge for biologist, ethno-biologists, ethno-botanists, scientists, naturalists as well as those working with endangered species. Over the last twenty years, Mitjili has been on National Geographic, NHK Television in Japan, the BBC, as well as in countless magazines, books and on radio programs.
"She's pre-European contact." Her son-in-law Peter Bartlett explained as we watched her paint within a downtown studio. "She's what?" I asked. "She was born in the West Australian Bush before the arrival of the white-man there." He clarified. Mitjili smiled, then spoke in her native Pintupi dialect. It rolled from her tongue like thick liquid velvet. Peter translated.
"Her mother and father were speared to death." Peter informed me. "A tribe had killed the two of them after her father had cleared a water hole." "She was an infant at the time, and the only reason she survived was because her brother carried her across the desert. He'd kept her alive feeding her from the breast of a lactating feral cat." Peter watched me studying the colorful concentric circles that formed the basis of her paintings.
"Her paintings are like diaries," he said, "they are memories of her life." "Some of the circles represent the small islands that surrounded the edge of a salt lake where she'd grown up." Peter said. "Others represent the holes they dug to sleep in at night-- holes that sheltered them from the wind and cold."
"I've always wondered how these people survived in this desert," I asked him, "what did they eat?"
"To us it looks like a desert," he replied, "to them it was a paradise. They had all the things they needed. They ate a variety of bush foods, Bush banana, bush tomatoes, bush raisins, and grass seed that they combined to make a simple unleavened bread." "They were also nicknamed the 'Lizard Eaters,' Peter continued, "because the area where they lived has the highest density of snakes and lizards in the world."
"They also ate these." Bartlett announced, opening a small paint can that sat near Mitjili's feet. When I looked inside I spied piles of wriggling insects, their abdomens bulging with a clear-golden liquid. "What are they?" I asked.
"They're Honey Ants," he said, "try one."
Following Peter's instructions, I picked one up by the head, then chomped-off it's body." As I did, it released the tastes of toffee and honey. The insect was, in a word, delicious.
The last group of Indigenous people I met in Alice Springs were from New South Wales. They were, Peter Williams Sr., Charlene Williams, Peter Williams Jr. and Nathan Eldridge. The four of them formed the Traditional Aboriginal dance group "Thinkga." There, among the hills, just outside Alice Springs, I watched as they twirled, and leapt, and danced before my eyes. "I didnt grow up with the culture," Williams Sr. told me afterward, "but it's nice for me to get back to my roots."
Satisfied with my time meeting these story-keepers, I cycled out of Alice Springs the following day. Thirteen days later, I finished my journey across the Stuart Highway near the city limits sign outside Pt. Augusta.
A spectacular show of stars filled the sky during my last night in the outback, sparkling across the heavens from horizon to horizon. As I laid on my back to watch them shimmer, I thought of my journey, then that of John Stuart McDouall. Stuart died in 1866 with only seven people attending his funeral. Neither the governments of South Australia or England contributed anything to his burial or paid any tributes to the man. The only hint of his accomplishment at the time was the carving on his headstone. It read:
TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN McDOUALL STUART, SOUTH AUSTRALIAN EXPLORER, WHO FIRST CROSSED THE CONTINENT FROM THE SOUTH TO THE INDIAN OCEAN
Though McDouall died as I will, in relative obscurity, I couldn't help but think of his elation as he'd accomplished his task, and reached the far shore. For a moment I imagined him smiling over the ocean, repeating the same words I'd uttered earlier that day:
"I did it...I actually did it."
Later that night, after crawling into my tent, I opened a book and came upon this Aboriginal proverb:
“We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love...and then we return home.”
To learn more about CAAMA Productions you can go to www.caama.com.au or see more works of art by Mitijili Gibson you can go to http://www.gallerygondwana.com.au/Mitjili/mitjili.htm
Journal 48: Leaving East Timor
August 24-September 3, 2007
Mileage log: 18,840
Elevation: Sea level
Dili, East Timor
"There are those who give little of the much which they have, and they give it for recognition, and their hidden desire makes their gift's unwholesome. And there are those who have little and give it all. These are the believers in life, and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty. There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward. And there are those who give with pain, and that pain is their baptism. And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue. They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes it's fragrance into space. Through the hands of such as these, God speaks."
--Kahlil Gibran
--From "The Prophet"
Journal 48: Leaving East Timor
Historians called it the youngest nation on the planet. Economists referred it the poorest country in Asia. Critics called it a failed state. But as I stepped from a bus onto the war-torn streets of East Timor, I called it my last stop in the developing world. At first glance, the capital city of Dili seemed a free-for-all.
Droves of roving gangs roamed the streets, their live-limbed silhouettes haloed in dust. Heavily-armed U.N. Vehicles prowled past these youths like a stream of angry army ants.
Collecting my things, I shouldered my disassembled bike past a handful of military outposts, crumbling buildings, and the ever-present hull of burnt-out cars. Helicopters swooped the skies, soldiers swept the streets, and patrolled the city in standard V formation.
All of this was the legacy of the country's short-bloody history.
Colonized by the Portuguese for 400 years, then brutalized by Indonesia during its 24-year occupation, East Timor established its Independence through a U.N. Referendum in 1999. Upon announcement of that referendum, Indonesian troops and anti-independence militias took to the streets. Almost overnight they way-laid 70% of East Timor's infrastructure and slaughtered more than 1,400 East Timorese.
During that time, 260,000 people fled westward.
When the violence came to an end, many claimed genocide--arguing that during Indonesia's reign, nearly half of East Timor's then 600,000 population was exterminated.
A detailed statistical report prepared for the Commission for Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor cited a lower range of 102,800 conflict-related deaths in the period 1974-1999, approximately 18,600 killings and 84,200 'excess' deaths from hunger and illness. Since each data source under-reported actual deaths, this is considered a minimum. Amnesty International puts deaths at 200,000.
As the remnants of all this destruction faded within Dili's downtown darkness, I sought out a guesthouse, then slipped inside.
Here the modern-world returned to me in a tumble. After a year of squat toilets, generator power and bucket-baths, I was stunned to come across microwaves, sit-down toilets, shower-heads, washers, dryers, chocolate, cheese, and Tabasco. There was Budweiser, Newsweek, Time--celebrity trash-mags splashed with the latest photos of Brittany Spears.
In the corner, a large-screen T.V. ran a 24-hour news channel. I watched for a moment as it flashed a continuous stream of fearful images over-representing the thinnest strands of radical Islam: Muslim extremist dawning arms, Clerics burning books, Jihadis threatening violence. Scenes I hadn't happened upon once through the hundreds of Muslim enclaves I'd cycled through along the way.
All these trappings of the western world had come to East Timor with the flood of more than 5000 U.N. personnel, and countless Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that currently occupied the city. Caught off-guard, I took a seat in the guesthouse restaurant near two NGO workers.
For nearly an hour, I listened as one of these men waxed poetic about the various layers of taste a 30-dollar bottle of wine had left on his palette. Color me odd, but this seemed uniquely ironic in a country where only 50 percent of the population had access to safe drinking water, 20,000 were in need of food aid, and one in ten children died before reaching the age of ten.
It was all too much for me that first night. Too much, too fast. And all of it rendered a kind of reverse culture shock. One that felt oddly-spectacular, and spectacularly-absurd at the same time. I finished my dinner and tucked into bed.
Is it safe to shoot photographs out there?" I asked the next morning before heading into town. "No worries mate." An Australian replied, having lived there for 10 years. Re-assured by his confidence, I grabbed my camera gear, and a handful of lenses, then walked into town.
Suddenly I came upon scenes of jaw-dropping contrasts.
Every other building was blackened, or burnt-out. On either side of these torched-buildings, there were fine wine shops, supermarkets, and upscale cafes. All of them catering to diplomats, NGOs, and U.N. personnel. Most of them doing a bang-up business from behind re-enforced concrete or coiled razor-wire.
Meanwhile, just across the street, locals eeked-out a living selling the meager vegetables they'd coaxed from the drought-prone soil. There hard work netting them less-than two-dollars a day.
These contrasts may not have been so apparent had the U.N. pulled out of East Timor as they were slated to in 2004.
But in 2006, after a long struggle to build fledgling institutions, East Timor slipped backwards towards anarchy and insurrection. Only this time it was Timorese fighting Timorese. During that wave of violence, 100,000 people were forced from their homes, 30,000 into UNHCR Refugee Camps around Dili. Five minutes later, just past the center of town, I stumbled upon just one of these camps. It was massive.
Occupying the space of a large public park, it was a city within a city--entirely constructed of rope, tents and tarps. Gazing for a moment at its inhabitants living in filth, there was garbage, feces and pigs running loose. Children bathed from broken water-pipes, while women washed their clothes in free-standing puddles.
Directly across the street stood a five-star hotel.
And at any given moment--through large picture windows--you could see a handful of guests sipping cocktails as they stared-back over the mayhem. Shaking my head, I entered the camp, and began making images.
As I did, I'd decidedly ignored a recent U.S. State department travel warning for I'd come across online. The most recent for East Timor that read:
- Indiscriminate communal violence continues throughout the country. Gang-related violence occurs often in Dili, and Americans risk intentional or inadvertent injury. Stone-throwing attacks on vehicles are frequent, and have affected American citizens on several occasions.
- Several areas of Dili have become sites of chronic security incidents, particularly the areas around the camps for internally displaced people (IDPs). Americans are advised to avoid these areas and check with the U.S. Embassy regarding other areas of concern.
- More public demonstrations are possible because of Timor-Leste’s 2007 presidential and parliamentary elections.
Just after this warning was issued, in June 2007, violence erupted again in Dili. This after the installation of a new coalition government. During this re-newed violence, gangs and rioters took to the streets, smashing cars and torching houses, including that of a woman and her three sons--the relatives of a government minister. She was burned-alive cradling her youngest son in her arms.
Moving to the center of the camp, I raised my lens and made an image of a statue-figure holding a flag. Suddenly, a resident of the camp--a young man of perhaps twenty--walked up and shot me a red-hot glare. Behind him were three other men, all throwing equally aggressive stares.
"My friends say you took picture of him," he barked with a heavy accent, "now he want to fight you." I didn't reply. "Are you with the military?" he asked intently. "No." I replied. "Are you a journalist?" he continued. "Sort of." I said, "Mostly I ride a bicycle."
"Where are you from?" the man continued with an intensified demeanor. "California." I replied. His eyes widened. "America?!" he replied, "We don't like America, OR Australia here." As he spoke a plume of anger arose from within.
I was sick of it.
I'd heard it from a thousand different people, in a thousand different ways, in over 30 countries around the globe. All of them using me as a sounding board to express their deep disappointments with president Bush, his choice to create war, and the violent example he was setting for the world. I stepped up to the man's face. "And so what am I suppose to do about that?" I said matching his intensity. "We don't like George Bush here," he said clenching his fists, "do you?" I moved even closer, then looked him in the eye. "I did not VOTE for the man." I replied slowly through gritted teeth.
Suddenly he stepped back and a smile rose to his face. He extended his hand and said, "My name is Miguel..."
It was a scary moment. But not nearly as scary as what came next. For just seconds before I'd met Miguel--after I'd first thrown my leg over my bike--I'd unknowingly split a sizable hole in the crotch of my shorts.
What became increasingly apparent at that moment was the fact that our entire conversation had taken place with my junk more or less exposed to the light of day--a disturbing discovery to say the least. Making a b-line to find needle and thread, I was stopped in my tracks by a spectacle of destruction.
It was the burnt-out hull of a huge government customs building. I turned from the sidewalk, then stepped inside. Creeping my way over the charcoal, glass, and feces--in the midst of the wreckage--I came upon a sobering sight. It was two small boys from the refugee camp. They were kneeling in bare feet, digging through the rubble--searching for any small scraps of metal that might bring them a bit of money.
It was a scene that brought a breaking-point within my mind. A scene that had me questioning the randomness of it all. Why was it I was born into a world of privilege and affluence, while these equally precious human beings were born into that of chaos and poverty?
Just as I readied to blame the world for not finding an answer, an answer came from the world inside. Taking the form of a wiser voice, it whispered simply, "Be the change you want to see in the world."
Returning to my guesthouse with a new sense of purpose, I picked up my pace, to just short of a run. "Do you know of some way I can help here," I asked the Australian when I returned, "some place I could volunteer?" He shook his head. "I just feel like I need to do something." I sagged.
"Klibur-Domin." a man offered after overhearing our conversation.
"Who?" I said.
"Klibur-Domin," he repeated, "It's a charitable organization down in Tibar, about 10 miles from here. They do some good things down there...you should go check it out." he said. So the next morning, I cycled into Tibar, found the Klibur-Domin Center, then parked my bike outside. Moments later I was sitting with the director--Joaquim Soares--as he rattled-off the seemingly endless list of services the center provided.
There was the center itself, a fifty-bed facility that cared for children and adults suffering from a wide range of conditions. Conditions that included:
malnutrition, mental and physical disabilities, Tuberculosis, strokes, as well as pre and post-surgery care. In addition, the center provides a host of services outside the facility. These include distribution of provisions and medicines, medical equipment, as well as rehabilitation therapy and TB education throughout the province.
"There are certainly alot of ways you can help," Joaquim said after I'd offered to volunteer, "but to be honest, as a charitable organization we are dependent on donations, so any chance you might have to get our story out might be the best help you could provide." I agreed.
A day later, with camera in hand, I set out with two of Klibur-Domin's field staff. Our first stop: to distribute TB medicines. The center estimates that there are 443 people suffering from TB in the region, 139 cases in the Tibar province alone. Ten minutes later, after I'd crawled in the back of a beat-up Toyota pick-up, we turned down a dirt road, then stopped near a small bamboo hut.
An extremely thin woman appeared at the door, and I watched as the two carers hopped-out, then handed her the TB medication. She popped them in her mouth, then threw them back with water. Because TB is usually spread with the poor sanitation conditions associated with poverty, Klibur-Domin not only delivers these life-saving meds, but also educates these patients and their families about how to prevent the disease. This in hopes of eradicating the disease from the province altogether.
Our next stop was the home of Acacio Ribeiro, a 7-year-old quadriplegic with Cerebral Palsy. Through Klibur-Domin's Community Based Rehabilitation Program (CBR) for children with disabilities, Acacio receives clothes, provisions, his wheelchair, and physiotherapy--none of which are provided by the East Timorese Government. I watched as one of the men lifted Acacio's withered legs, stretching the joints gently in their full range of motion. When he was done, he put a hand on the boy's shoulder. Though the boy did not speak, the smile on his face spoke louder than words.
Moving along quickly we drove up a steep mountainous road, then climbed up an even steeper footpath to a hilltop hut. As we did, a woman recognized the carers and excitedly began shouting, "Agostinho...Agostinho!"
Suddenly a young toddler bolted from the hut. He was stark naked and blazed around the yard like a child on fire. This energetic 3-year-old--Agostinho Pereira Araujo--was born with Downs Syndrome. He was brought to the Klibur-Domin center when he was two. While there, they improved his nutritional status and helped him with his gait. As I watched the boy jump, laugh, and giggle, it occurred to me that this child's smile was not only a testament to Klibur Domin's success--but a smile that could melt the hardest of hearts.
When we returned to the center, I traded my camera for a pick and a shovel, then spent the afternoon preparing a small plot of dirt in the center's vegetable garden. It wasn't much, but I took some comfort knowing that this small effort might eventually help nourish a few of those in need.
Two days later, after I'd again boxed my bike, I said my goodbyes to East Timor, then climbed-aboard a plane bound for Darwin, Australia.
In the moments just after the plane left the runway, I took a minute to look out over the tiny town of Tibar.
Suddenly within my mind, I remembered 7-year-old Acacio Rebeira; the hands of his carer gently stretching his legs.
For as I remembered that small gesture, I recognized that something larger than myself: the sacred act of one human being caring for another.
The truth of life being, that this is really all there is...
I think Joaquim tried to convey this to me that first morning we met.
He asked "Do you know what the words Klibur-Domin means?" I shook my head. "It's an East Timorese term... it means sharing with love."
*** To learn more about Klibur-Domin, you can go to www.klibur-domin.east-timor.net or email them at: kd@east-timor.net ***
Journal 47: Bali and Beyond
August 1-26, 2007
Mileage log: 18,043-18,840
Elevation: Sea level-4000 ft.
Bali: Negara, Kuta Beach, Ubud, Lombok: Segigi, Gili Meno, Transat, Sumbawa: Utan, Sumbawa Besar, Empang, Dompu, Sape, Flores: Labuanbajo, Lembar, Ruteng, Nangaroro, Ende, West Timor: Kupang
"You would know the secret of death, but how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life? The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day, cannot unveil the mystery of light. If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life. For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one."
--Kahlil Gibran
--From "The Prophet"
"When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him..."
--Albert Camus
"It is not for him to pride himself who loveth his own country, but rather for him who loveth the whole world. The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens."
--Baha'u'llah
Journal 47--Bali and Beyond
The corpse was handled impeccably. Passed along a wave of gently caring hands, I watched as a father's life-journey ended in the arms of his three eldest sons. Handling their father's remains in strict Hindu tradition, the men circled his body thrice around a pyre.
After the third pass, a crowd joined, then gently lifted the body into it's ornate sarcophagus--a great winged lion. Words were spoken and songs were sung. Family members gathered and whispered their last goodbyes.
A moment then passed and offerings were made. The deceased was, kissed, blessed, then quickly set aflame. The fire leapt quickly up the velvet beast, filling the air with the scent of burning flesh. The wind shifted, and the odor began to drift, mixing with that of orchids, incense, and the ever-distant hint of the oncoming rain. Having fulfilled his duties stoically, the emotional weight of the moment seemed to descend upon the eldest son. He broke down in tears, folding into the arms of a friend. From the heart of the fire, an ash began to ascend--rising and falling like a simple prayer.
When the ceremony ended, the crowd dispersed, and I stood for a moment and watched. Standing, watching, thinking, while the existential dust of one man's lifetime settled upon everything that surrounded: the trees, the butterflies, the children as they played. Life unto death, death into life, mixing and stirring within the river of what is.
PICTURE OF CHILDREN IN RICE FIELD or buddha with eyes closed
I'd attended this traditional Balinese cremation ceremony during my last day on Bali. This ending marked a new beginning. The start of a 600-mile ride across three remote islands in Indonesia's eastern-most region of Nusa Tenggara. Retracting the bow of my desire, I shot like an arrow across the Lombok straits, through the Island's sleepy backwaters, then boarded a ferry bound for the remote Island of Sumbawa.
Having left the tropics behind, I felt as if I'd reached the ends of the earth.
Rolling from the dock, I passed the port town of PotoTano, a rickety-stilted fishing village where a bustle of gruff-looking fishermen claimed their bounties by hurling dynamite into the sea.
Two hours later, the sun struck my head like a hockey stick. Bumping over a crumbling strip of asphalt, I passed through what seemed a re-occurring scene of poverty: bony-dogs nosing through piles of trash, women washing clothes and dishes in rivers saturated with sewage and gray-water, small groups of toddlers in filthy clothes playing amongst the wind-blown excrement, near large groups of un-employed youths, lounging in the shade: sitting, staring. Listless.
Current statistics put 17 percent of Indonesia's 220 million below the poverty line. To me this was shocking. To them, it was just another day. Though most wouldn't tell y
