Facing the Music (21 page)

“Never bite off more than you can chew,” he urged us. “If you aren't prepared to deal with the consequences, then you shouldn't drive through it. The trip is over if you're dead. Now, go and have the time of your lives.”

We had graduated!

twenty

T
here are few places I have visited in this world that have delivered the promised romance and beauty as that of the Australian landscape. By no means have I been everywhere, but I've often found that there have been times where I've been challenged to share in the same level of awe that the poets who came before meant to inspire. Perhaps there are times when I am too busy or distracted to lose myself to the spirit of transcendence, holding fast to reality that everything is the same. Too often, I have found myself numbed by a predictable world that holds nothing especially sacred or divine. Maybe Australia is, in the end, no different that any other place on the earth, made as it is of the usual stuff—rock, air, dirt and water—but nestled in her arms, I rediscovered spiritual contentment.

One of my favorite books as a young girl was Jean Craighead George's
My Side of the Mountain.
It is the story of a young boy who runs away from his New York City home and escapes to the solitude of the Catskill Mountains, where he learns how harsh, isolated, and nurturing life in solitude can be. The story resonated so much with my own young life, with my desire to run away from my own childhood troubles, my love of the outdoors, and my kinship with isolation, that I was drawn into his world as if it were my own lived escape.

Waking up in a serene, frost-dusted valley of the Snowy Mountains, I couldn't help but feel transported into a dream. In the High Country, the nights before winter are crisp and frigid. When the morning sun creeps over the towering ridge, the ice crystals that cover the golden grasses and red gum leaves glisten as they thaw, releasing the sweet, soft fragrance of eucalyptus into the air. Overnight, tucked into a much-relied-upon, state-of-the-art sleeping bag, my joints still would manage to stiffen from the freezing chill. The only remedy would be to force myself up and start a fire with my numb fingers, desperate for a piping hot cup of tea poured straight from the billy.

The whole world was plaintively calm, but not silent. Gone were screams of overhead airplanes and telltale sounds of human upward mobility (save us and our beastly four-wheel drive). Instead, we heard the sounds of distant cockatoos and kookaburras, yawning their songs to announce the day. Most mornings, I found myself compelled to step softly. Karen and I had become deft at rising in harmony with the nature that surrounded us, gradually making our way into the light, saying little between us, so as to lend our ears to the waking world around us. We were in no hurry to be anywhere but the present. The plan for the day might have been to make our way to the next camp, but that might be postponed because I had spent the best part of the dawn transfixed, watching a brumby mare grazing her way through the meadow. One day, I sat still enough for one to come within yards of our camp. Any sudden movement and she would snap her head up, nostrils fluming her white condensed breath into the icy air.

We were the alien visitors to her world. We learned quickly that the best reverence we could offer was leaving our campsite as
we found it, seemingly untouched by human footfalls. There were times that we found ourselves in such a remote place that the only sign of the modern world was the narrow, rocky fire trails that led us there.

Every couple of weeks or so, we'd use a satellite phone to check in with our families. I could have been tempted to stay out there forever, were it not for the approaching winter. The trails that made our journey possible were dangerous enough in the dry days of summer; adding snow to the equation would have been far from wise. We had enough experience already in trying to travel tracks after rain to know that snow could trap us in the back country for weeks. Some passes were so treacherous that missing your wheel placement by a single inch could send your vehicle tumbling down the face of a mountain. Add a little water, and terra firma becomes terra calamitas. If you survive the carnage of twisted metal and timber, you might be stranded for days until help arrived.

After three blissful months, the rains chased us down from the hills and back to the hustle and bustle of Sydney. I had to admit, it was nice to get back to the luxuries of modernity. I got into the habit of thinking there was nothing unusual about having to dig my toilet every day and burn my toilet paper, but there's nothing as remarkable as feeling the cool porcelain beneath your backside to remind you that going it rough has its drawbacks.

Makeshift dunnies aside, I had been bitten by the outback bug and I wanted more of it. There was so much more of Australia to see! Getting back to city life, I was twiddling my thumbs, with little to occupy my time. Three years had passed since I had been counted among the gainfully employed, but my new job
was all about soaking up the world. Back home, I was occasionally tempted to pull out my guitar and see what insights strumming might draw out of my travels, but doing so still came with twangs of sorrow. I never lasted more than a few minutes until I grew unsettled, reminded of the life that I missed back in the so-called real world.

My friends were astonished that I could afford to take such a long vacation. It was embarrassing to admit, but I had nothing to show for my previous life except for money. In those days, all I ever did was work. I bought a car and house and that was about it. I sold those, banked the cash, and tried to ignore the pleasure and the pain of watching my royalty checks come in. Pleasure, because I didn't have to worry about having to work for a good long while. Pain, because it reminded me of the past I was running from.

Money aside, my friends reasoned, surely I would get bored with doing nothing. It was difficult to explain, but that the kind of traveling we were doing was far from doing nothing. Though tranquil at times, every day in the Australian bush came with the prospect of a challenging and rewarding adventure. I wasn't done yet. I wanted more of it.

On our next trip, Karen and I decided to pull out all the stops and circumnavigate the whole of Australia. As I like to say, I left Sydney and kept heading left until I circled back around. We made our way up the eastern coast, past the highly populated areas that stretch from Melbourne to Cooktown, and up into the northernmost reaches of the continent. Once we made our way through the rainforests that let us know we entered into the monsoon realm of the Tropic of Capricorn, it struck us that we were about to see more of Australia than many Australians ever would.

The High Country is a cakewalk next to the demands of the Top End. I'd say the Snowies are practically cuddly. Not that I'd want to get into a tussle with an Eastern Grey Kangaroo (newsflash: They can growl like angry dogs and claw out your eyes if you test them), but at least a marsupial doesn't see you as prey. Respecting nature once you pass Cape Tribulation isn't just a quaint idea; it's serious business. Fording a river becomes a test of your courage, knowing that a giant crocodile could see you as a tasty treat. Even a brisk stroll through the bush has the potential of being a deadly affair, if you forget for a moment that this is the land of some of the planet's most poisonous snakes. It's not as daunting as it sounds, but it's not an undertaking to be handled lightly, either. As with all our remote adventures, we did well to educate ourselves about what to expect and prepared our skill set accordingly. At all times we carried with us a working emergency beacon, medical supplies, and, of course, sought specific professional instruction for first-aid care, in case the need should ever arise. The sage advice we had received from our former four-wheel-drive instructor wasn't just wisdom, it was a lasting gift that served us well.

The contrast of the slow, deliberate mountains, compared to the hot, rugged roads of the less traveled north, at times, got us wondering what on earth we had gotten ourselves into. The unpaved roads of Cape York, exposed to the hellish wind and monsoon rains, are the most unfriendly, bone-jarring paths I have ever traveled. No matter how much mankind attempts to smooth them, the dirt and rock are eroded into uniformly dispersed channels, similar to those of an old-fashioned washboard. The choice becomes either traveling at a woeful snail's pace, letting each trench swallow your tires in a nauseating bucking effect, or
race over the top at breakneck speed in an attempt to ease the worst of the pain. It didn't matter to me; each option nearly drove me mad. I opted for the latter, choosing to make the misery of it end as quickly as possible. Kilometer after dreadful kilometer, the journey to the tip of Australia's northern most point left us parched and bruised, and our dear Mitzi just as battered. We would later discover that the vibrations were so violent that they actually sheered the engine-mount bolts off. It was a miracle that, with all our bouncing, the engine block didn't bounce right out onto the ground. Cape York definitely taught me the meaning of the Aussie term
hard yakka
.

No worries. We just bolted the engine back on and kept heading across the Top. Most of the north was about the miles. Everyday, our work was navigating our way across the long flat plains that sidle up against the Gulf of Carpentaria. Into the Northern Territory, we spent time soothing our weary bones, literally, under the shade of the coolabah trees beside billabongs. In Western Australia, we trekked through the ochre-drenched Gibb River gorges and fished for barramundi in the crocodile-laden, brackish waters of the Ord River.

WE MADE OUR
camp many a night with no other living soul around but each other. The height of extravagance would come on the days one of us would manage to catch a recognizable fish from the ocean. For every barren stretch that seemed to make Australia such a desolate and hostile place, we always managed to find an oasis that made the hardships all the more nobly won.

There were times when I questioned the wisdom of two petite lesbians going it alone, so far removed from civilization. Beyond coping with our physical limitations, I was nervous that a rural country bloke might not take kindly to our being together. Back in Sydney, being gay is hardly remarkable. But if country folk in Oz were anything like what I encountered growing up in Kansas, I feared that prejudice in such a remote place had the potential to manifest into unwanted and hostile confrontation. For the few times that we were around other people, I tried to keep a low lezzy profile but, every once in a while, questions were asked.

I had initially avoided the outback pubs, thinking they were dens of respite reserved only for the most hardy of Aussie blokes, but after weeks of lukewarm Victoria Bitters from a can, my lips ached for a thirst-quenching, ice-cold draught beer. Yankee lesbian or not, I wasn't about to let my nerves get between me and a pint.

I'll never forget the first time we walked into a dark shed of a remote pub. Before I had a chance to order my drink, the old dusty cobber leaning against the ancient wood bar looked us each up and down from head to toe.

“Yooz two togetha?” he croaked from over the top of his brew. You could tell by his tone he wasn't asking if we were acquainted, he was asking if we were
together.

“Yup,” I said. His eyes narrowed, pinching back what seemed a retort of some kind. I needed a preemptive strike. I saw there was a small tube television airing the latest rugby league match between New South Wales and Queensland. We were in New South Wales at the time, so I let my patriotism fly. “Go the Blues! What's the score?” That's right, old man; I know what's going on.

With that his head tilted to the side, as if to readjust the
screws that kept his heterosexual brain safely in his skull. Just before my internal tensions reached their peak and forced me to withdraw, he busted out in a huge grin and asked, “Whaddle you two sheilas have?”

Without a beat, “I'll have a schooner of Old, thanks!” Home, sweet, Aussie home.

Life is hard enough without knowing that you belong to someone, somewhere. Just a little bit of knowing that you're invited and welcome goes a long way to lifting the fog of loneliness.

The rugged, sweltering isolated interior of Australia managed to give me a glimpse of the difference between loneliness and solitude. There were some stretches of country where the only voice for days, besides Karen's or my own, was the squawk of a cockatoo. To break the silence with our words, at times, felt irreverent.

Some days were so hot and the sun so searing that the only thing left to do was to sit quietly, eyes closed, in the shade of a paperbark tree and wait for the stars.

In the beginning of our travels, so many thousands of kilometers ago, that silence drove me to tears. My mind would race with questions, with resentments and jealousy. Though Karen sat beside me through it all, I wept from a place of gut-wrenching loneliness.

Loneliness isn't as quiet as it sounds. For me, it was angry. I shook my fists. I cried. I shouted into every void for a return call of recognition, for acknowledgment. I accused. I judged. I cursed every soul and every little thought in my brain that said I was insignificant. I would have told you I was abandoned, rather than alone. Ignored. Cast out, even.