Last day Nebraska

In the morning rain was falling, the first rain I'd seen since early in the trip, in eastern Montana. I didn't like it. Gray and rainy did not help the already unprepossessing Platte River Valley, which runs east-west across the bottom of Nebraska. The region does have attractions, but I didn't have time to follow the Oregon Trail monuments, and the sandhill cranes that pass through in spring in the tens of thousands were long gone. A rainy August drive along Interstate 80 provides little in the way of the sublime, especially after a month in central Australia and two days driving across the southwest and Rockies. In other words, the subtle beauty of the Plains escaped me.

I filled the gas tank at a Pilot station in Wood River; later in the day I did it again at another truck stop in Stuart, Iowa. I can go between 250 and 290 miles on a tank of gas, then I have to stop and spend another fifty or sixty dollars. It would be cheaper to fly.

A large semi-truck charged around me (I stick with sixty mph), with a trailer painted to advertise the "Museum of Funeral Customs." I passed a turn-off to Buffalo Bill's ranch, then another to a Pony Express station. Early on I came to the town of Cozad, where when very young I stayed the night in a motel next to some sort of chemical or fertilizer plant, and I can still summon up the strong and acrid and strange odor, overwhelming and like nothing else before or since. Along the same stretch of highway I changed my first tire when I was fifteen and on a road trip with my mother, and I was quite proud of myself, though a little less so when we got to a gas station and a man there, after praising me, gently pointed out that I had put the lug nuts back on backwards.

North America is so unlike Australia or other places for me simply because I have a history here, a set of memories decades in the making, blanketing the land.

I listened to Jonathan Franzen's The Discomfort Zone, which I had listened to in Nevada back in June, and I was at moments surprised to look out the windows and see grasslands rather than arid mountains. The author says of his eleven-year-old self, "I was small and squeaky and a lot more articulate than I was mature...." I thought, I've known kids like that.

I also drove in silence for stretches, devoting my self to last day ruminations. I didn't feel quite ready to come to any large conclusions. I felt moved, changed, but I could not say exactly how. I also felt added to, and that was easier to tally. I saw places I hadn't seen before. I ate new foods. I slept in many different beds and locations. Most significantly, though, I had spent time with people I had not seen for some time, and I had met new people; I talked and talked and listened too.

So many of the encounters were brief, a pause on the way or trail. I've written about some of the people, but not all. For some reason today I was thinking about a man I met near the end of the Larapinta Trail, in his sixties with the requisite white beard, and walking alone. His half-buttoned shirt was stained with white sweat lines, and white bits of spittle gathered in the corners of his mouth; his teeth were stained as if he chewed. He had walked the trail once before, years past, and he was unusual in that he was a local, living in Alice Springs. Rachael had asked him for how long, and he said twelve years, but he had also lived in Alice back in the seventies and eighties. He was a hydrologist. He said he owned three houses, one in Alice, one in Adelaide, and one in Tasmania. Rachael said that sounded wonderful, but he shook his head and laughed and said, "no, that means three mortgages, and that means too much work." Most of the people I met his age were retired. His wife much preferred Adelaide. "She hates Alice," he said. "I sort of tricked her to moving back; she'd said she'd never come back, but I told her it would be for just a year. Then I said just one more year. Now it's been twelve." He laughed and shook his head again, as if to acknowledge, I'm a bastard. I wanted to talk to his wife, ask what she had to say about Alice, about the one year leading to twelve. Rachael asked why his wife wasn't with him on the trail. "Oh no," he said, "she's not up for this. Maybe a day hike. Maybe. She likes her comforts too much."

I like mine too, but I didn't find the trail particularly uncomfortable. Actually it got easier as we went along, as I settled into the days of walking, nights by a campfire, and for a home a tent with just the mesh between me and the sky. No, that just got easier and easier. Sometimes it was hard to negotiate in new places, in the cities, but I got better fairly quickly. When I returned to Melbourne I got around without trouble. But I remembered in Southern Cross station, when I walked past the pay phones, how in my first hours even making a call was apparently beyond my abilities. I'm initially an anxious and inept traveler, but then I improve, and eventually I don't want to go home.

Late in the afternoon I crossed from Iowa into Minnesota without celebration. The rain had long since stopped. As home got nearer, I was excited to see Alix and Naomi, the boys, Jenifer and Lea and Kim, and everyone else; but I wasn't looking forward to the end of the trip. After two months I'd settled into movement and the novelty of new places and new people; I had come to take such change as the normal course of my days, rather than something out of the ordinary. What would be strange and require adjustment would be home, the pile of mail waiting for me, the responsibilities of my job and of fatherhood, my own familiar house and bed.

That sounds a bit gloomy. But I was happy to park in front of Naomi and Jenifer's new house and find the boys in the backyard playing. Winston looked at me without recognition, but when I spoke he said, "granddaddy?" I said, yes, it was me, and he asked if I wanted to see how fast he could run, and I did, so he showed me, and then Jackson needed to show me too.

Utah, Colorado, then Nebraska

A long string of high mesas loom dramatically over the town of Grand Junction in western Colorado, making one think, this would be a good place to live. I took the I-70 business loop to see a bit of the largish town. At a stoplight beside a park where homeless people congregated, a middle-aged man held a cardboard sign that read, "Why lie, I could use some beer."

Earlier I had passed through the town of Green River in Utah, then along the spectacular Book Cliff Mesas just north of Arches and Canyonlands. I gazed longingly to my right, southwards towards the parks, but resolutely if sadly ignored the turn-offs when they came, and continued on an eastward track.

The Rockies in Colorado were impressive too, but the I-70 corridor through the mountains is also disappointing. The highway is stuffed down in the bottom of narrow, spectacular canyons, following the Colorado River for some distance, and I couldn't help but think a mistake had been made--even if it made it easier and faster for me to cross the mountains. Farther east, I came into the ski resort region, where hordes of condominiums and multi-million dollar chalets clog the valley bottoms and march up the steep mountain sides. I felt excluded by the obvious wealth, put off by the development--which is far from finished, apparently, judging from the construction cranes looming over Vail "village." The urge to stop and explore, which had been with me since the California desert, dissipated considerably.

The van slowed on the long climbs in the mountains, till I was sometimes in second gear, trudging along at thirty miles per hour in the far right lane reserved for the big trucks. The arm of the temperature gauge also climbed, and I turned on the heat to bring it back down a bit. I tried listening to sports radio from Denver, but it turns out I don't give a shit about the Broncos. I put on a Trollope novel, Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite, but the plot was too similar to that of The Prime Minister, and I had no patience with the notion that it's important for one's daughter to marry an English genetleman and not a foreign Jew adventurer.

I had stopped in Glenwood Springs for gas and a bean and cheese burrito from Jilbertitos, a small strip mall restaurant with the menu on the wall behind the counter, a young Hispanic woman taking orders, and young Hispanic men dusty from the morning's construction work sitting eating at the tables. An hour later I could barely keep my eyes open. When on a long-distance drive, I have various techniques for fighting through fatigue, but on this occasion I soon gave in. I pulled off into a "parking only" rest area, put down the bed in back, and passed out for an hour. VW vans are awesome.

Denver is an ugly city, I'm afraid. I switched from I-70 to I-76, and passed through without stopping. Out on the plains, the afternoon was hot and humid, the land less appealing than I usually find it. Any lingering desire to stop had completely gone.

In a Julesburg rest area, just before the Nebraska border, a man followed me from the bathroom back towards the parking area. "Is that your Westy?" he asked, referring to the van. "We haven't seen any others for days," he said and gestured at his own VW camper van, a blue one, parked nearby. "Yours is a '91, right?" he said. "So's ours."

He was about thirty, bald and compact, on a two week trip with his wife. They live in D.C. They'd gone up to Vermont first, then come westwards, with their dog, "which means we travel about 450 miles a day tops, that's about all she can handle."

I asked where they were heading. and he said, "we're here," an answer that gave me pause. They had come all this way for Julesburg, a tiny town on the Plains in the northeastern corner of Coloado? But no, by "here" he meant the whole state. They had friends in Boulder and were going that way.

He asked about my van, if everything worked, the refrigerator and stove and so on. "Yes," I said, "they work." Actually, I don't really know. "But I haven't been using them," I admitted. "I'm just driving right now, going home after two months away."

He seemed disappointed in me, but tried again, shifting the topic to gas mileage. "What are you getting?" he asked, not waiting for an answer before naming their own score. "Our top mileage has been 22.9 miles per gallon." He nodded, indicating that this was impressive, and I backed him up, agreeing, yes, that was excellent.

We both fell silent, looking out at our vehicles; I sensed he wanted more from me, but I was feeling tired, bored and boring. The bonding was inadequate and incomplete, I knew, but I couldn't help him. "We're thinking of staying here tonight," he said, trying again and maybe hinting that I should stay too. I gazed out over the parking lot and said, "yes, this would be a good place I think, not too well lit." But I wasn't staying. We said good-bye and I drove on.

After dark, the am radio world expanded. I found stations from Oklahoma City and Texas, but the talk shows were all vitriol and sarcasm. John Edwards, that piece of shit hypocrite. I tuned in an am station from the Twin Cities and listened to the Twins game.

East of North Platte, I pulled into a rest area, set up my bed in back, and soon and easily fell asleep.

Flying J, you disappoint me

For the second time in two but really three days, I rose in someone else's house, while the residents slept on, and prepared myself for a long journey. I ate and gathered my bags and packed the VW van.

The day before I had put gas in the van and bought groceries for the two thousand mile drive home to Minnesota. Just as an aside: I went to a Trader Joe's, and I don't see what the big deal is. A faux co-op with misleading packaging and too much of it. Nothing much fresh and lots of sugar in everything. The employees wear fake tropical shirts but I'm not fooled, I know I'm not in a bamboo trading hut in the Tropics.

I was in the midst of writing a good-bye note, when James appeared, still sleepy, pulling a t-shirt on over his head. He followed me outside and watched as I put my gear in the van. Then Trish appeared on the front walk in her pajamas, then Brendon in his boxers, and finally a barely awake Jordan in Stars Wars pajama top and briefs. The whole family stood out front, in pajamas or underwear. I hugged them all and then drove off.

After a long slog north and east through Los Angeles and environs, I came upon Interstate 15; soon after, I summited Cajon Pass, and fell down into the open desert, driving across a creosote bush plain, past jagged mountains not too far away on both sides of the highway. Already I wanted to stop and get out.

But soon the heat kicked in, discouraging walking, even if I had time, and I don't, I have to get home so I can get on a flight to Maryland Tuesday with Alix. Plus, I'm ready for Minnesota.

I listened to NPR for the first time in over a month. One story was about how artificial playing fields are heat sinks, often too hot to play on in the summer, and little bits of black rubber from the fields stick to the kids' legs and arms and collect in their hair. Sometimes things like grass just can't be improved on.

Down the road, out towards San Bernadino, I switched to am radio and listened to "Focus on the Family," to an interview with Trish Berg, author of Rattled: Surviving the Baby's First Year without Losing Your Cool. She spoke of the difficulties women have in balancing their various responsibilities. She said women put too much pressure on themselves, and she advocated for what she called the "Ministry of Mediocrity." The other night, she said, when giving a talk to 1500 women, she had told them to reach down and rub the calf of the woman to their left. In any crowd, she explained, only half the women will have recently shaved their legs, and this fact will make all those who haven't shaved feel better about themselves, as they will discover that they aren't alone in their failures. "There's a ministry in giving that gift to other women," she said.

I reached Las Vegas in five hours and got off the highway at Charleston and drove to Rob's work. We went for lunch at La Compita Tacos #2, a small Mexican place in a small strip mall. I ordered the carne asada burrito and filled a plastic bag with radish slices from the condiments bar. We sat at a dirty corner table, where the smell of lysol was strong, and soon our burritos were ready, and they were hot and good.

Rob had recently competed in a moustache contest, and, as he said, looked something like Ron Burgundy in Anchor Man. He's now, though, growing out his goatee, to soften the 70s effect. We talked of lawyering and of Australia, and I would've been happy to spend the whole afternoon in like fashion, but soon Rob had to return to work and I had to get going eastwards.

The Vegas traffic was heavy on the way out, due to two separate car accidents and a looming thunderstorm. A report broke in on the radio warning of flash floods, and I thought, just get me out of here already. I had escaped the storms by Mesquite on the Arizona border, and the temperature had risen to one hundred degrees.

On a long distance drive by one's self it's a challenge to manage all the tasks that need to be done--to drive, of course, but also to get food from the food bags and cooler, to go through my waistpack in search of an old journal to check some fact, to write down comments in the current journal, to consult maps, to maybe roll down the passenger's side window.... More than once I wanted something from my duffle on the back seat, and I wondered if I could, on a straight stretch, make it the few steps to the rear and back to my seat witout mishap. I didn't actually give this a try, but I thought about it. I also would've liked to read.

In Cedar City in Utah I got off and drove through town, trying to decide on which of the hotels I had stayed at with Jenifer and Naomi and Alix in 1988, when we were on our way to Colorado to go skiing with my parents. I couldn't remember, nor could I pick out the restaurant where Alix, then almost one, created, on the floor all around her high chair, a large mess largely consisting of saltine cracker crumbs, and I left a large tip in apology.

In the town of Beaver I stopped for gas at a Flying J truckstop, the worst I've ever visited. When I got out to pump the gas I stared at the display as if it could not be true. $4.39? The price in Cedar City had been $3.99, in L.A., the most expensive of places, $4.15. Plus, the radio said oil prices had dropped. Hadn't these people heard? In my still jet-lagged, and now road trip weary state, I just could not accept this price. So I stood for a long moment and waited for it to change.... But no.

The truck stop was packed with travelers and locals both, the pumps all crowded with vehicles, people filing into and out of out of the store, the latter cohort all holding huge cups of soda, not really cups more like vats. Thick-set, sunburned people lingered just outside the doors, or stood outside their pinging cars, and the smell of gasline was heavy in the evening air. The lighting in the gas islands area was over-bright, yellow and aggressive, and made the people seem suspicious, even in their inert and coke-swilling jowliness.

Inside a long line of soda buyers snaked back from the counter, held up by an argument over a receipt at one register, a complex lottery transaction at the other. The bathroom was filthy, and I said out loud, "of course." Paper towels littered the wet and dirty floor, a dingy rime of gray circled each of the sinks, and all of the soap dispensers were empty. A sound as if someone were mopping came from one of the closed stalls, and continued unabated as long as I was in the bathroom, and I didn't know what that was and didn't want to know.

I waited in line myself and bought a Coca-Cola pick-me-up. I was going to pay for a bag of ice also--the cooler was out front--but pissed off by the high prices and the overall bad performance of the station, I didn't. I simply took a bag of ice when I got back outside. This made me feel a little better about the mistake of stopping at Beaver's Flying J, but only a little.

Soon I came to the turn-off for Interstate 70 and took it. In the dark, I tried two different "Ranch exit, No Services" off-ramps, in search of a place to park for the night. But the solitude was a little too complete and spooky. I imagined Mormon cowboys gone bad, maybe a dangerously caffeined Flying J patron looking to prey on weary, unsuspecting motorists. In the end I settled on a rest area, parking in a less well lit corner beside a couple others tired out with driving. I pulled the curtains in the back of the van, put down the bed, and lay down to sleep.

Two Wednesdays

Wednesday #1:

I woke at six and groped my way through the dark house to the bathroom, then to the kitchen. Harry and Sheleigh and the dogs, Geordie and Molly, slept on in their room, while I washed up and ate a bowl of muesli in the quiet.

With some reluctance I shouldered my pack and made my way down the hall to the front door. I hesitated to close the door behind me, thinking, did I forget anything? and, more, do I really want to leave? I didn't, but I had a plane to catch.

I walked down dark Railway Place to the small end-of-the-line train station, where I arrived six minutes before the next departure. I bought my ticket and joined a couple other sleepy people on the platform.... Soon we were headed towards the city, stopping periodically to take on new passengers. At Southern Cross station I walked to the Skybus stop and within a few minutes was on the way to the airport. Bit by bit Australia was falling away from me.

I checked my backpack, paused at an "Australiana" store to buy two over-priced kangaroo pens for Naomi and Alix, and then abandoned my jar of peanut butter after making a sandwich with two pieces of bread I'd spirited out of Harry and Sheleigh's house. I passed through security and right into the department store-like duty-free area, where the air was oppressively redolent with the odors of competing perfumes. Other early morning travelers spritzed the testers onto their inner wrists, or perused the shelves of a little-bit-less-expensive liquor. With plenty of time before boarding, I moved slowly. All was taken care of now; I was ready to go but then again not so ready. I wanted to go home, but I didn't want to leave Australia.

At my window seat, 48A (two rows behind the dreaded 46: see flight out), I found an ample pillow, a blanket in plastic wrap, a set of headphones, and a small zipped packet which contained a pair of gray socks, a lanyard, a sleep mask, and a toothbrush with a wee tube of toothpaste. Combine these items with my own bottle of water, Trollope and Pritchett, notebook, gum for take off and landing, and I was all set to sit still in a very small space for the next fourteen hours. After take-off, when the seatbelt light went out, the man next to me in the middle seat (who had already shown he was willing to spread out into my space) moved to another seat, so life was pretty goo, relatively speaking.

The woman in the aisle seat in my row drank one small bottle of wine after another during the flight, starting as soon as we took off at eleven in the morning. With each new bottle she would scan a small menu and then consult at length with a flight attendant--her sommelier--before making a selection.

For lunch I was inexplicably brought a diabetic meal. I think I might have asked for vegetarian when I booked the ticket months ago, but there was meat so apparently diabetic isn't veg. Towards the end of the flight my breakfast was the same, which meant I got no fried potatoes or bread and my eggs were hard-boiled. After lunch ice cream bars were distributed, and my acceptance of the bar went unquestioned. A bit later, just before the interior lights were shut off in an attempt to fool our bodies into thinking it was bedtime, the flight attendants passed out small bags, each with a bottle of water, fruit bar, cookies and mints--snacks to tide us over through the "night," and with which the flight attendants were saying, "go to sleep now and leave us alone, we're through with you for the time being."

I spent a half hour paging through the dozens of television and movie options, available for viewing on the small screen in the seat back in front of me. Eventually I settled on Iron Man, which I'd heard was good but wasn't particularly. Well, entertaining, I suppose, but lame. I did like Robert Downey, Jr. Later, after some recovery time with Trollope, I watched The Savages (chosen from the "alternative" category), which was much better though a little bleak. Philip Seymour Hoffman was excellent, but then he usually is. Last, at the end of the flight, I watched episodes of The Simpsons and Family Guy, as means of re-acclimating to the United States.

On the long flight I also slept some, pondered a bit. A flight home always renders me contemplative. It's a time for casting back over recent experience, taking stock, a pause before the return to the familiar.

Many people on the plane (though not the crew) were speaking American--which I'm afraid sounded harsh and unpleasant. We're too insistent on all the consonants. Soon, I knew, no one would call me "Cappa."
-----------------------

Wednesday #2:

I landed at LAX just before eight in the morning and quickly passed through Customs (where my passport was not stamped, which is a loss, I think). I picked up my backpack at the baggage carousel, and then at a second checkpoint an agent re-checked my passport and glanced at the customs card I'd filled out. "You have food?" he asked. I had indeed checked "yes" to that question, but only after an initial "no" that I crossed out, deciding not to lie after all. I answered his question, understating my stash--"just a couple granola bars"--and he waved me past without another word. I didn't see anyone having their belongings searched, though there had been a small beagle sniffing at bags by the carousel. Apparently it was not trained to detect Australian nut bars.

Outside the terminal I stepped into a sunny, cool but humid morning. Summer again after five weeks of winter (well, winter of a sort). Soon James arrived and he drove me back to his house in Long Beach before going on to work. His ten-year-old son, Jordan, was home, and we chatted for a few minutes and then he went back to playing his video game, "Knights of the Republic" (or something like that), part of the Star Wars empire. Through the morning he alternated between the video game, building elaborate lego structures, and watching Tom and Jerry cartoons, each activity undertaken in a different room of the house. He's a quiet and appealing boy, well-mannered, of slight build and freckled all over. He was willing to talk when I had questions for him, willing to quietly entertain himself when I was done.

I wandered about the house, went through my stuff, ate the usual bowl of muesli.... I felt dazed by the rapid transport of my body halfway around the world. I'd left Melbourne at eleven on a Wednesday morning, arrived in L.A. at eight on the same Wednesday morning. Well, supposedly the same. I was discombobulated by lack of sleep, by displacement, by the geographic and cultural change....

Later Brendon, James' older son, came home from cross-country practice, sweaty and lean. The kid--he's seventeen--must have about one percent body fat, if that. He's middle-sized and freckled like his brother, polite but distracted.

Trish his mother came home and wanted to hear everything about Australia, and I told her stuff, but soon we fell into conversation about books, as we do, being fellow former English majors. She was telling me about Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels when I realized I'd seen the movie version last spring, which led us to take up the lovely relationship between the young boy in the story and the Greek man who rescues him from the Nazis. Less appealing was a book--I can't remember the title--that Trish was reading for her book club. It was poorly written and trite, she said, and she objected to the repeated Evangelical-bashing engaged in by the characters. Trish is a devout Christian and was offended. So later when I inadvertently added a "for Chrissakes" to a sentence I spoke, I immediately afterwards felt bad, though she hadn't flinched.

Trish is careful about her own language, substituting euphemisms in the places where swear words go. Usually she's much too nice and upbeat to have need even of the replacements, but when angered she will use "flipping" to express her outrage or displeasure. She's also quite articulate, apparently as a result of all her reading, using words like "eschew" and "disparage" and "egregious," and doing so without self-consciousness or affect.

Our book talk made her fifteen minutes late for an appointment at Traffic School, and they locked the doors on her. She was angry and felt ill-used, and when she got home and told us about what had happened she had recourse to use "flipping." She said she'd been to Traffic School many times before, and if you were late they usually just made you stay an extra fifteen minutes or whatever it was.

But her tardiness was to my benefit, as she brought dinner home with her and spent the evening with myself and James and the boys. She walked in with a big bag of California Pizza Kitchen items, and out back on the patio we ate pizza and southwestern salad and Thai salad and lettuce wraps. Jordan sang a song he and his friends had made up when being ferried to some activity in a van, and we talked about his coming week at a camp on Catalina Island.

After dinner, the family politely asked to see my Australia photos, and though there were too many, they attended with apparent interest, even the boys, though Jordan did wander towards the end, and I thought, yes, you're right, enough of this. Then the boys played a game of Risk on the floor, while James and I watched the second half of an episode of Project Runway, and in another room Trish watched one of the modeling competition reality shows. It all felt very homey and comfortable and American.

I slept in Jordan's room, while Jordan shared Brendon's large bed. Legos and lego structures were scattered about the room; in the night I rose to go to the bathroom and knocked a Darth Vader helmet from the bedpost, probably waking the whole house.

Dinner and a talk in Williamstown

In the morning I walked into town, for the last time, I thought. I planned to meet Rachael for lunch, and then she would take me to the airport for my 2:55 flight. Before I left the house, Rachael had looked around for the printout with my flight info (she'd bought the ticket), but couldn't find it. At Outback Email I checked the Qantas website just to make sure. One flight out of Alice on the 5th, leaving at 11:45. I looked at my watch: 10:20.

I dashed out without paying for my five minutes online and ran to a nearby payphone. I called Rachael but she didn't answer. I left a message telling her I was heading back to the house and she should pick me up along the way.

I'd become quite fond of the walk between her house on Kilgariff Crescent and town, a distance of about a mile. I would amble along the wide dirt margin of the road, admiring the red ridge to the south, maybe watching a flock of galahs pass over, following my thoughts.... But my last return was something else.

I took off my full waist pack and carried it awkwardly in one hand as I ran along the road, stopping when I could run no longer, jogging off again when I'd recovered a bit. Every moment seemed to count, and I knew it would be close. I also knew that my airline only flew to Alice three times a week, and that my flight from Melbourne to LA left early the next morning. When I heard cars approaching behind me, I stuck at my thumb but didn't look around. No takers.

I burst into the house. Rachael was in the bathtub, and I thought, it's hopeless. But she laughed sympathetically. "I found the printout, it's on top of your backpack there by the door. It is at 2:55. I wouldn't let you miss your flight." It turned out I wasn't flying Qantas after all, but Tiger Air--which I did know but thought Tiger was part of Qantas. No, Singapore Airlines. I walked back to town, a little sheepish.

After a second visit to Outback E-mail. I tried three souvenir stores on Todd Mall and culled through the ridiculousness till I managed to find a few things that were marginally appealing but probably not.

Rachael and I met at the Tea Shrine for lunch and each ordered a bowl of yum-yum noodle soup. At the airport we sat on an outdoor patio, and Rachael had a coffee and introduced me to Lammington cake, an Australian classic: lemon cake inside, a thin veneer of chocolate frosting and coconut flakes on the outside. Excellent. Yellow-throated miners moved among the branches of several large gum trees, magpie larks picked in the grass below, and a pied butcher bird swooped in and landed among the snack refuse at a small table. I sat close to Rachael with my arm around her.

When my plane was called we went inside and said good-bye. I presented my boarding pass to an agent and walked back outside, onto and across the tarmac to the plane, and climbed the stairs to the door. Rachael says that life in Alice often seems a throwback to the 1970s, and the airport is one of the examples she cites.

I flew two and a half hours south to chilly Melbourne, the land below changing from red to sandy to the pale wintry green of sheep pastures near the city. A bus and two trains brought me to Williamstown after dark, and using the map Rachael had written on a napkin I soon found 18 Railway Place, the white wooden house where Rachael's parents, Harry and Sheleigh live. I used the knocker and two dogs came running and barking towards the other side of the door. Sheleigh answered and waved me in. The dogs, Geordie (an Australian terrier) and Molly (a white West Highland terrier) scuttered about our feet. I followed Sheleigh down the long hall--pausing to drop my pack in a bedroom she showed me--then continued to the back of the house, where the hall opens up into a large, high-ceilinged space that serves as living and dining room and kitchen.

"We went ahead and ate," Sheleigh said, "but sit down and I'll get you a plate." A contingent of the family was still at the table: Harry, Helen (Rachael's sister), Madeleine (Helen's daughter), and Bella. I took the only empty seat, and Sheleigh put down in front of me a plate hot from the oven--slices of roast beef, a few small potato halves, and cauliflower covered with a hollandaise sauce. Harry gestured for my glass and then filled it with red wine.

They asked me questions about the Larapinta and about Rachael, and I talked while I ate, happy with the food and company and the warm room. To arrive in a strange city is daunting, and I could have asked for no better destination and reception. The talk soon turned to their own affairs, and I listened and had a second glass of wine. I put in something about my hopeless souvenir search, and Madeleine said, "boomerangs," and I agreed, yes, exactly. Harry is a man always ready with an anecdote, or bit of history or an unlikely fact, and he said, "I once had a friend who was a boomerang champion." He paused, and I said, "champion?" "Oh yes," said Harry, as if boomerang competitions were not at all unusual. "He was shaped a bit like me"--he put both hands on his stomach and Bella said "pudgy?" Harry squinted at her in mock displeasure, then said, "rotund." He continued, "he could throw the boomerang quite some distance and it always came right back to him. Me, I was rubbish with the damn things."

Bella and Madeleine served plates of apple crumble for dessert, and I followed the others' example by pouring a healthy dollop of cream over the top. Soon after, Helen and the two younger women rose to leave. The latter two both had classes in the morning, Bella at Uni, Madeleine at her high school.

Harry and Sheleigh moved to the living room and put on the BBC World News. I sat down with them and we learned of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's death. The following program, Foreign Correspondent, presented a long story about Italian political comedian Beppe Grillo. Harry loves Italy--they lived in Milan for five years in the late 1960s--and he enjoyed the piece immensely, laughing at the Italians' remarks and breaking out with short bursts of Italian himself. The next program was The First Tuesday Book Club, a favorite of both Harry and Sheleigh. Harry asked if I wanted a beer, but I said no, the peppermint tea Sheleigh had made me earlier was just fine. He got up and went to the frig. "I always have a beer shortly before bed," he said.

In the book show, a perky moderator and four panelists (one of whom was the current finance minister, another a tv writer) discussed two works, first a recent James Bond book, written by Sebastian Faulks "writing as Ian Fleming." The book had been enjoyed but was considered fluffy. Saul Bellows' The Adventures of Augie March was the other work, and all agreed--a bit of a slog but worth it.

Sheleigh went off to bed, after pointing out that she had left me a brown towel in the bathroom, and a bowl and muesli on the kitchen counter for the morning. I took my tea mug into the kitchen, then examined the contents of a dining room bookshelf. One section held all of Cormac McCarthy's books, which I mentioned to Harry, who still sat on the couch.

"Yes, I like McCarthy quite a bit. I've read most of his books more than once. He's on my list of greats. Peter Carey too, and David Malouf. Some people might not agree about Malouf, but that doesn't matter. And Tolkien. I've read his trilogy a dozen times. A masterpiece." He told me he was a big reader, that he spent most of his days reading, though mostly not very good books anymore. "I've read all the great writers already," he said. "Balzac, for example, people have no idea; his . . . what is it called? . . . yes, La Comedie Humaine. It's all there; brilliant." He said the writer's name again, separating and emphasizing the two syllables. "Bal-zac! A genius."

I said something about McCarthy's Blood Meridian, and we agreed on its merit. "I always loved America," Harry said. "I worked my entire career for Americans, for Roman-Hass. Dow bought up the company a few years ago. I spent a lot of time in the States. I used to love driving there. Through upstate Pennsylvania, up to Buffalo." He laughed at the mention of the city.

"In 1955, just after I started working for the company--were you born then? no?--I came over to Philadelphia. I remember the first night, my boss took me out to a restaurant, Bradley's, and I ordered the filet mignon. They brought me out this huge steak." He held his hands apart to indicate the size and laughed apoplectically, then started coughing; speechless, he raised both hands and threw away from him this ridiculous thing. "In England," he said, recovering, "we still had rationing at the time. You would get a small four ounce piece of meat"--he made a little circle with thumbs and forefingers--"and that was for the whole week. You people had no idea....

"When I was young I had dreamed of going to Australia--Canada too, but more Australia. We all did." I asked why. "Well, it was warm, and I'm from the north of England, Newcastle, where it's not at all warm. But that wasn't the main thing. More was the work, which we had none of. It was terrible....

"My people were very poor." He held his chin against his chest and looked up at me, knitting his brows. "You've no idea. This was in the 20s and 30s, the Depression." I mentioned that I'd recently read Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier (a brutal account of the living conditions of miners and the working poor in northern England in the 30s). "Yes," Harry said,"that man had it right.

"My never had a full-time job his whole life. In winter he might shovel snow, or some such odd job, but nothing steady. Never. He had been gassed at the Somme. He was a morbid, gloomy man, and you couldn't break through to him.

"In 1928, around the time I was born, he joined other men from the north on the Jara March to London. Do you know it?" I didn't. "Very famous. They went to ask if something might be done for them, some work, but nothing came of it.

"No work, no medical care. Almost nothing in the way of doctors or medications. My mother died at 49 of a stroke, my father at 66, in a cinema, also of a stroke.

"The Queen Mother, you know, who died a few years back? She was from the north. Her family, the Bowles-Lyons, owned all of the northeast, incredibly wealthy people. I'm no socialist, though I do believe in social responsibility, and those people had none of that. They pummeled the poor, pummeled the crap out of them.

"For me and the others there seemed little enough reason to hope. Our people were poor and there seemed nothing for it. But I was"--he hesitated, then went ahead--"well, there's no other word for it--smart. I won scholarships and scholarships (like that Bella--she's a smart one). Not because I wanted to but because there was no other way out. I even won a scholarship to Cambridge, but I couldn't take it because my parents needed the twelve shillings a week I was earning at the time. Not that it mattered. Later I went to technical college, and that was good enough.... I only wish that my parents had lived to see how it all came out." It did seem an unimaginably long way from the gray poverty of northern England to middle-class comfort and leisurely old age in green Melbourne.

"And now here I am, in Australia. I've lived and traveled all over the world. Been around the world eleven times, right around it. Not that I even like Australia all that much, it turns out. But my children are all here, so...." Harry and Sheleigh had come to Australia in the 1970s, then returned to England in 1980, only to move again to Australia ten or so years ago, following (most of) their children.

"Oh, it's not that bad here, but it is 12,000 miles from civilization." He'd been speaking mostly with eyes closed, but now he opened his eyes and looked at me with a wry smile. "And I'm not talking about America." He laughed. "I mean England, Europe. I used to know every bit of London, and there's not a city like it in the world. Oh, maybe New York, San Francisco, Paris, but not many like it. There was a time you could put me down anywhere in London, and I'd know where I was at. Knew it all. And we could get in the car, drive through Britain, every spot rich with history; or we would take the ferry or tunnel over to France, find a small inn in the country. The same in Germany and Switzerland and Italy.... It's a lovely part of the world."

He paused, a wistful expression on his face, thinking about the past it seemed, and I waited for what might come next. But he was done. "Ah well," he said, "enough of that. It's time for bed. You've got me talking and all winded up, and I go on and on." He laughed and struggled up off the couch, and we shook hands, and he took himself off down the dark hall.

I went off to my room too, and pulled back the soft blue coverlet and climbed into the comfortable bed, and soon fell asleep for the last time in Australia.

The Red Centre Way

Mt. Gillen, more of a long ridge than peak, is the highest of the rocky features close to Alice, and looms over the west side of town. One ragged end of Gillen long ago suggested a triumphant dingo's profile to the Arrernte people. According to their folklore, the ridge was formed by an extended battle between a local dog, the victor, and an interloper from the west (they shared a desire for the same female). A prominent hill below the ridge was created by flying fur, which mounded up as a result of the fierceness of the fight.

In the morning Rachael and I drove out to the west side and set off afoot up the Gillen Trail, three or four kilometers up to the ridge top. The wind was strong and cool enough to keep me in long sleeves. I stopped often on the steep trail to turn and admire the expanding view of town and the West MacDonnell Range.

The top portion of the ridge is capped with a red rock outcropping, creating a high cliff all along the upper face, in the manner of a mesa. Near the top we came to the foot of the cliff and climbed up a narrow defile where the cliff face was relatively short. We came out on the windy top and walked along the ridge to a marker, where we sat down in its lee, just a few uncomfortable feet from the edge. Chris, from the Larapinta, had told a Mt. Gillen story about having his pack blown off the cliff, with his keys and phone and wallet inside, just at dusk. He'd had to get down and around to the cliff bottom and search in the near dark till he found the pack. We and all our belongings stayed on top, admiring the view and eating tangerines.

After our hike, we drove west out to Standley Chasm to retrieve a food box from our long hike. Standley had been our first food drop, but after the first three demanding days, Rachael was in no mood to carry lots of food. We had left much behind in the box. After claiming it from the snack bar/souvenir shop, we sat on a log in the sun beneath a giant gum tree and had a look inside. A huge, heavy bag of muesli, a couple Indian dinners (spinach, dal), a package of dried fruit, one of "nibbles" (trail mix), a bag of granola and muesli bars. I opened one of the bars on the spot and ate it. Rachael went for the nibbles.

Back in town we stopped in at the Cultural Centre so I could see the much talked-about (among Rachael and her friends, and Alice residents in general) Beanie Festival. Each year artists from all over Australia make beanies, many of them wonderfully elaborate, which are then displayed and sold to raise money for some aboriginal cause, I didn't catch what. The beanies hang on the walls of a large gallery, and you can go through and try them on and look in the mirrors mounted on the walls. Which I did. I particularly liked a brown, square-topped entry, with long fringe sticking up all along the top edge. I looked like an extra from a Johnny Weismuller Tarzan movie.

In another room I walked through an exhibit called "The Red Centre Way." The wildlife paintings of Nicholas Pike included a small acrylic of a spiny-cheeked honeyeater, a bird I had stalked at Olive Pink just the day before. Most of the exhibit, though, was devoted to the soft and bright watercolor landscapes of Albert Namatijira (1902-1959), a local artist who had a huge influence on other aboriginal landscape artists, and who, as far as I can see, remains the master of the local style. Important nearby sites such as Mt. Sonder and Glen Helen and Mt. Gillen were the subjects of most of the paintings.

Namatijira's representational landscapes are not, however, the leading school of Alice Springs Aboriginal art. In shops all over town, from cheap souvenir stands to posh art galleries, the more abstract dot style paintings are for sale. This brightly colored form is adapted from body painting, and the works supposedly depict animals, events, and places. The tourists are wild about these paintings, as are apparently white Australians in general.

Besides the many shops where they can be purchased, one can have such a painting directly from aboriginal artists, mostly women. They sit on walls across the street from the shopping center, or in a bit of grass on Todd Mall, with a handful of paintings spread on the ground, and usually a handful of small children running about. The women, though, like most of the Aboriginal people in town, remain mostly still and quiet, stolid witnesses to the action of the town, the white visitors moving quickly among them, always on the way somewhere. The women show little interest in hawking their work, their demeanor suggesting one can buy or not, it's all the same to them. But many do appear to need the money.

Few people were on the streets of Alice, though, on this particular Monday--a Northern Territory holiday called "Picnic Day," celebrating grilling and outdoor eating. The Territory has eleven official holidays, substantially more than any other part of the country.

I'd set aside some time for souvenir shopping, but only one store was open. Not that it would matter, probably. Near the end of a trip I always feel compelled to come back with some trinkets but can rarely find anything to satisfy. I browsed disconsolately among the cheap boomerangs, the bags of "Wombat Woops!", kangaroo and koala everything, G'Day Mate" shot glasses.... I decided to try again the next day, but I may come home empty-handed

Olive Pink

On the eastern edge of Alice Springs one can visit the Olive Pink Botanic Gardens, a stretch of tended desert floor half-surrounded by brown, rocky hills. Early in a pleasantly warm afternoon, after two games of ping pong on the back patio at the house, Rachael and I drove to the Garden and walked up Annie Meyer Hill with a plastic folder in hand, matching numbers to plant names and descriptions: whitewood down at the bottom, witchetty bush all along the way, native fig up high. From the top we could see over the town; beyond, the West MacDonnell Range marched away into the clear sunny distance. At the near end of the range we picked out Euro Ridge and Wallaby Gap, where we had walked and camped our first day on the Larapinta Trail.

At the Garden cafe we sat among bloodwood and tea trees and mint bush and ate toasted cheese and to-mah-to sandwiches. Afterwards we walked the wattle and mallee loops and through the mulga woodland, examining not only fauna but art scattered about the grounds. A large wire emu with a clothes iron for a beak, a woman's figure cut from a car hood and strung with guitar strings.

The Garden was established by Olive Pink herself in 1956, and she had served as its curator until her death, at age 91, in 1975. In the park's first two years she had lived on-site in a canvas wall tent--through the hot season without electricity or running water--and in after years in a tin army shack she called the Home Hut. Olive, local history has it, was a firecracker. She had first come to Central Australia in 1930 to make contact with and study aboriginal people. Subsequently she became a devoted and indefatigable advocate for the aborigines, waging fierce letter writing campaigns and attending, or disrupting, endless meetings on their behalf.

She settled in Alice in the late 1940s and made a bare living by selling cut-flowers from her garden, exhibiting her artwork (mostly botanic), and cleaning the courthouse. She added various civic matters to her repertoire of anger and outrage, and became infamous for her vitriolic letters to the editor and for her confrontations with local officials. Yet, her harridan persona was reserved mainly for officialdom. At her tent and later her hut she entertained many visitors, serving them Bickford lime cordials, cups of tea, or glasses of sherry with madeira cake.

Among the wattle shrubs I spotted an older couple we had met at Redbank Gorge the week before, on the afternoon we finished the Larapinta. When they had appeared at Redbank, in a packed SUV, Rachael had immediately asked if they might give the two of us a ride to Glen Helen. The woman had been taken aback and her first response was querulous. "No, no, we don't have room," she said, shaking her head, but then she'd turned to her husband as he came up. "Gerald, these two want a ride but I think we're too full." Gerald looked skeptical too, but was willing to consider the possibility, and this seemed to influence his wife, at least a bit. "We're going to eat lunch first," she said.

She looked worn down by her Outback experience, her face red and tired, her gray hair lank and untended. But once she'd unpacked their food, and had a couple bites of cheese and wonderful-looking bread (Rachael had commented on the bread, and the woman said, "yes, we need that for the next two days"), she perked up enough to complain about the toilet facilities in the area. "We were out on the Palm Valley Road," she said, "very rough that, and I told him"--she jerked her thumb at Gerald--"that I needed a decent toilet, that I wasn't just going to settle for the Bush. We came to an ancient looking loo out by itself, and Gerald had a look, told me he thought it would do. It did, but just barely." She pinched her nose between forefinger and thumb. "And of course, wouldn't you know it, just another two kilometers down the road we find a brand new facility." She shook her head as if to indicate that this certainly sounded funny, but really it wasn't. In the end, she and Gerald gave in and started moving gear about to make room for one of us. But then we found someone else who would take us both. The change of plans irked the woman, and when I saw her at Olive Pink I said hello but didn't pursue further conversation.

For dinner in the evening Rachael invited some of her friends to the house. Tiff arrived first and told about a home birth she'd attended, as a midwife, the day before. The woman had been in labor for eighteen hours when Tiff arrived at the house. She was nearly fully dilated, and was finding the contractions nearly unbearably excruciating. "If only my fucking back didn't hurt so fucking much," the pregnant woman had said. A second midwife suggested a small subdural injection of water in the lower back, and this had produced miraculous results. The woman's pain disappeared, and she said, "if this is labor, no worries." She delivered a boy an hour later, without need for stitches afterwards. The father was right there for it all, beer in hand.

Rachael made a lovely dinner: a stuffed pumpkin, beans and tomato cooked together in a nice sauce, and a mixed salad. We ate in the dark in the backyard around a fire in the fire pit. A friend's fat black dog, an elderly creature named Luca, looked at me expectantly and I tossed her a piece of vegetarian sausage from the beans. After gobbling up the morsel, the dog sat down next to my wicker chair and commenced a low growl. I thought to myself, a bit rude that, but after a moment I realized the dog was wheezing not growling, simply breathing rather than expressing menace.

Annie appeared with her sister Suzy, another midwife, who had come up from Melbourne for the weekend. They had just returned from two days at Uluru, or "The Rock" as apparently many locals call it.

The last guests to appear were Julie and Mary, both nurses, and their two-year-old son Gregory, an aboriginal child in their long-term foster care. He pointed to the sky and informed us all of stars above. When he saw the fire, though, his allegiance immediately shifted. He sat on Rachael's lap for some time, mesmerized by the flames.

For dessert, Rachael brought out Pavlova, an Australian standard, named at some time in the past for a visiting Russian ballerina. It's a light and airy confection, a meringue of sorts, and is usually served with some sort of topping, a fresh fruit salad on this night. Gorgeous, as they say here when they mean delicious.

Lunch and flies at Trephina Gorge

In the morning early I sat alone on the back patio and used The Field Guide to Central Australia to armchair botanize. Gai and Rachael stood in the kitchen in their pajamas talking about work. Porcupine and weeping spinifex are dominant grasses in the region. Termites are the "miniature grazing animals of the spinifex grassland," doing work akin to that accomplished by wildebeest on the African veldt or caribou on the Canadian tundra. On high ridges and slopes in the West MacDonnell Range I walked by endless mounds of spinifex, and by many small termite towers, raggedly pointy and deep red monoliths two and three feet tall, rising up among the jumbled rocks.

Beyond the backyard fence, a quarter mile distant, the first sun lit a long and low red ridge--its form one that thousands of years since had inspired the local aborigines to make the caterpillar their most venerated dreamtime creature. In the yard, black and white magpie larks picked in the hard grass and squawked like blue jays. A flock of noisy galahs, pink and gray cockatoos, passed overhead. The neighbor dogs whined and barked.

I walked into town to Outback E-Mail, and later met Rachael at the Woolworth's grocery store, which was packed with Saturday shoppers. At a newsstand I leafed through a copy of The New Yorker ($12!), and realized that I'd neither read nor heard anything about the U.S. presidential election for a whole month. I've had no news, really, not of the States especially, and not much of Australia. Though before going on the Larapinta walk I did watch some Pope coverage; he'd come to Sydney for World Youth Day. After recuperating from jet lag for three days at a palatial mansion, and taking contemplative strolls over the extensive grounds, he had met his public, first reviewing a endless number of military and civic groups. An overhead camera, perched in a helicopter, showed him being walked over a great parade ground, dressed all in white of course, a little hunched man weaving obediently among the reviewee contingents, led by an upright man in uniform. When he finally reached the stage Cardinals kissed his ring, as did lesser Catholic lights, while the non-Catholic clergy assembled for the occasion contented themselves with slight obeisances.

In the afternoon Rachael and I drove out to the East MacDonnell Range, east of town, eighty kilometers to Trephina Gorge. She lay out lunch on a sticky picnic table, while I waved at the squadrons of flies. We (Rachael and I, not the flies--well, yes, the flies too) shared leftover pizza, crackers and white cheddar cheese and hummus, cashews, stuffed grape leaves, sprouts, apple and pear juice, elderflower cordial--I ate and ate. On the trail over the last weeks I ate little and was contented. I seem to have lost weight, maybe as much as ten pounds. In the couple days back in town I've been much hungrier and have eaten two or three times as much at each meal, though I've not been nearly as active. Strange, though I suppose there's some explanation. Or maybe just habit kicking back in.

We walked up along the rim of the rocky gorge for a couple kilometers, and eventually descended to the sandy bottom. Upstream, just beyond a wire fence, a large red cow stood in the shade of a gum tree. We headed downstream, adding our tracks to the myriad that had already churned up the white sand. We came to a small waterhole, green and dank and smelly, with bees playing around the sandy edge. The water had been much higher on Rachael's last visit, a few month's previous. It's the same story all over the MacDonnells--rain has not come, and waterholes have evaporated and receded considerably.

Back at the picnic ground, Rachael lay down on a table for a rest, while I set off on another short loop walk, up to top of a hill overlooking the gorge. With no wind, the flies had their way with me. Walking fast up the steep track didn't help at all. They were worse than they've been on any day of the trip, large in number and persistent in their demands for human moisture. I thought I'd gotten somewhat used to the flies, which are motivated, bold, and fast. This means that they will not only land but walk briskly the length of one's lip or cheek, delve patiently into eyeballs and nostrils, ride a sunglass lens quite a distance (the last is more distracting than annoying). And yet they are well able to avoid a swat. One can acclimate to a bit of this, but today was excessive.

I walked to the top, then descended on the far side into a ravine, where numerous shrubs were flowering--silver cassia with small yellow flowers, rock fuchsia bush with violet. I collected samples of those, and of a spiky plant poetically named dead finish. Apparently this is the plant one would turn to absolutely last in a food or water emergency (some mallee, on the other hand, a family of small gum trees, are quite handy in that a bucket of water can be had from a fifteen foot section of roots; similarly, in the roots of the witchetty bush, long and fat white grubs can be found--the aborigines ate these delicacies raw or cooked).

Back down in the river bed, I spotted a dingo, walking unconcernedly up the trail on the other side. At first I thought it might be some one's dog, but no. I followed fifty yards behind for a few minutes until it heard me and looked over its shoulder. It appeared surprised and alarmed by my sudden presence, and dashed off into the brush.

At home in the evening, we watched a film, Rabbit-Proof Fence. Based on a true story, the film is set in 1931 in Western Australia, and dramatizes the experience of three young girls who were part of the "Stolen Generations." From the 1920s right up to 1970, "half-caste" children were forcibly removed from their aboriginal families and sent to boarding schools to be de- and acculturated, and to be trained to serve as domestics. The idea was to "save" the white side of these kids from an aboriginal fate, and, over the next generations of marriage with whites, to reassert a white color. The film shows how the three young girls, two sisters and a cousin, ran off from the Moore River School, and made their own way a thousand kilometers (or miles?) back north to their home and mothers. For much of the way they followed the rabbit-proof fence that had been strung across the country to protect agriculture.

One night beside a campfire on the Larapinta Trail, Rachael and the young couple we camped with several times, Chris and Krystal, had named Australian movies that I must see. Rachael has rented several of them in the afternoon, but we'll see how far we get. I head for Melbourne and my flight home in three days.

Easy

In the morning I sat on the back patio and ate croissants and muesli with Rachael and her friend Annie. Annie had greeted me with a warm embrace and a kiss on the cheek (she has a cold); she rubbed my bearded cheek--I've not shaved for two weeks--and commented favorably. We saw each other or said goodbye repeatedly over the course of the day, and I got and came to expect an affectionate kiss and hug each time. We are becoming quite close.

After eating she rolled a cigarette, first placing a filter in the fold of the paper as well as a bit of tobacco. She took a good half hour to finish the cigarette, letting it go out repeatedly and then relighting it for a few more drags before it would go out again.

Annie has an acerbic, quick wit, and I sit next to her listening admiringly and trying to remember the surprising (to me) phrases that come fast and often from her mouth. Referring to something that would upset her girlfriend, an Irish doctor named Victoria, she said, "Vic would throw the toys from the cart." Apparently this means have a tantrum.

Annie works at Alukura Women's Center with Rachael, where she manages the nurse home visiting program. She's a nurse herself too, and carries a case load of nine families. The home visiting program is modeled on one developed by an American researcher in the late 1990s, but they've found here in Central Australia that aboriginal families are something else entirely from poor American families. Modifications have ensued, and are being developed.

Annie's program is for "first time mums," who get their first visit at six months "ante-natal," and continuing weekly visits until the child is two-years-old. The nurse checks the child's health, the mother's too, and provides "social support" as well, for domestic problems, for education needs--actually whatever the mother needs. A visit can be as short as ten minutes or last all day.

Next month Annie takes a leave of absence and goes off to Europe, first to see Victoria, then to walk the Camino de Santiago in Spain.

Mid-morning I walked into town and spent time at Outback E-Mail. I met Rachael and Annie for lunch at Tea Shrine, a small vegetarian Vietnamese restaurant. We all three had the day's special, laksa, a bowl of soup with egg noodles, tofu and hard-boiled egg. We went to a bookstore after lunch and Annie bought Kipling's Just So Stories, Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie, Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee, and fourth book by an Indian woman whose name I can't remember.

Later in the afternoon Rachael and I had tea at the Royal Flying Doctors Service, a museum and tea room located in a colonial-style building from the 1930s, with tin corrugated roof, tiny rooms, and shady veranda. We sat in old wicker chairs and I poured milk from a tiny silver tureen into my cup of tea.

In the midst of an ambling walk home through the east side of town, we came upon a heavy-set old man in a dirty orange t-shirt and white shorts, sitting on a wall. Rachael stopped to say hello, and the man wheezed and said it was "a bloody long walk to the shop." He held a white plastic bag with a few groceries in it in one hand, a crutch in the other. Rachael observed, "you've been through the wars." He explained his injuries, some recent, some chronic, which were evidenced by his many dressings: both knees were bandage wrapped, as were both wrists and his forearms to the elbow; one ankle was also bandaged as was a pinky finger. His brown skin (where visible) was sagging and leathery, scored with old scars. He wore atop his head a styrofoam bike helmet wrapped in gold and red foil, but he said that was from something when he was nine-years-old, he didn't say what. His crutch was also wrapped in gold foil, and peppered with Winnie-the-Pooh stickers. He had a wandering and apparently useless right eye, and an active blue tongue in a toothless mouth. Later Rachael said she thought that the blue might be a sign of diabetes, but Annie, who we told her about him and who knows the man, said, no, he's just fond of lollies (candy).

Rachael asked where he was from, and he said Puerto Rico. "I crash landed in north Queensland when I was five," he said, and I thought, that's a colorful turn of phrase, but he was being literal. "It was a drug-runners' plane," he explained, "but I'd got on thinking I was going to San Diego." Two of his uncles were aboard, but they along with the others on the plane all scattered from the crash site, leaving him alone. He managed to make it to a nearby highway, where someone picked him up and took him to Cape York, the nearest town. Soon after he was sent to Darwin, and from there Welfare planned to send him down to Adelaide. But he got taken up on the way, at Ti Tree, a road house stop a couple hours north of Alice.

The man who took charge of him was "very cruel." "And I didn't know any English, so it was hard to get a feed." He took to running away, climbing up inside the wheel wells of the huge road trains, and traveling all over Australia.

Rachael asked him if he had any family in Alice. He gestured dismissively. "Just some of my step-family. And they're only interested me for money." He smiled. "But I'm tighter than a fish's asshole"--he laughed--"and that's water-tight."

Rachael asked him his name and he said, "Easy." She said she'd say hello to him when she saw him again, and we walked on home.

Around eight o'clock, Gai and Annie came over and the four of us went out to eat at Cosa Nostra, an Italian restaurant. It's "B.Y.O.", which is apparently common here, so we stopped at a store and Gai bought a bottle of white wine, which we took in to the restaurant with us.

The place was packed with noisy people sitting at tables covered with red and white checked cloths. On almost every table were bottles of wine or beer or both. Plastic grapes hung in a line over the counter and food case, behind which the cooks made pizza and pasta. On one wall were signed photographs of Tom Selleck and Brian Brown, who had both made films in the area.

We started with a big shared salad and pizza bread, and Rachael poured out the wine. I ordered a medium vegetarian pizza. Gai asked me what I was reading, which is a question I love, and then she told several anecdotes about Henry James (who I'm not reading, but there was some connection between him and V.S. Pritchett). Later she and Annie traded anecdotes about lost opportunities to buy cheap beachfront houses in south Australia in the 1970s. Gai and her husband, who were grad students at the time, sniffed that "property is theft," and had ever since regretted their decision.

Conversation turned to the three women's shared work, and Annie told me to kick them under the table to make them stop, but I didn't. I listened, attentive for the most part.

Return to Alice Springs

An hour before dawn, the French rose from their swags and started chattering away in full, daytime voices: apparently a group unclear on the concept of Other People. They were mostly kids, with a couple adults, a man and a woman. I couldn't understand much of what he said, but the man seemed to be performing a pre-sunrise stand-up routine, judging by the periodic bursts of youth laughter that erupted each time he paused.

Chris and Krystal were in their tent nearby, closer to the French. Chris unzipped their tent door and stuck his head out. I heard him ask, in a friendly voice, "so where are you folks from?" The answer came back, "France," and Chris replied, "Right, so I'll be sure I never go to fucking France, and in the meantime do you think you could keep it down, some people are still trying to sleep." They whispered for a few minutes, but then forgot or couldn't help themselves or didn't care and lapsed again into loud conservation and laughter.

Not that I was too bothered. After fourteen nights sleeping out I had become rather more easy going than usual.

In two weeks we walked about 250 kilometers, across rolling red plains grown up with witchetty bush and mulga, and along dry river washes dotted with big white gum trees; we passed through numerous red rock gorges, deep and rugged, boulder hopping past small green waterholes and ancient cycads; we made steep climbs up to and down from the windy mountain heights, walking always westwards on open rocky ridges with far views in all directions. We spotted the occasional hill kangaroo, watched rock wallabies at twilight at waterholes in the gorges, listened to dingoes howling in the night and ravens in the mornings croaking in resigned complaint. We met other hikers, like Chris and Krystal, and stopped to talk about the trail and weather and food and campsites and where we were from. We lived out of our backpacks, ate muesli with hot water in the mornings, various dehydrated dinners at night, which seemed to taste better and better as we went along. We slept out some nights, but most nights in the tent, always with the fly off. The nights were cold, but not too bad, though there was ice in the water bottles that one morning. The moon was full to start, a bare crescent by the end, and every night I saw shooting stars....

After the early morning French wake-up call, I rose and went inside the nearby main building. I sat on a couch to write in my notebook, and soon Chris and Krystal appeared, as did the French, who sat down at a large table for tea. Chris was annoyed to see them--if they weren't leaving early, why the early and noisy start?

We had arranged a ride into town the day before, with a couple who works for West MacDonnell National Park (which we had mostly been in since leaving Alice). We'd met David and Carey at Redbank, and Rachael had discovered they were going into town today and would be happy to give us a ride.

At nine they rolled up in their '75 sky blue Combi--a VW camper van--with small trailer behind. We thought they were coming later, so I had to break down the tent in a hurry and quickly pack my pack. Soon Rachael and I were in the backseat, Chris and Krystal too, heading east towards Alice Springs at a strangely rapid pace.

Carey turned in her seat and chatted with us, clearly happy for the company. She was an attractive woman with short gray hair and blue eyes, probably in her mid fifties; David had the barrel chest of a man of the same age, and a thick moustache and bushy head of iron gray hair. He also had the calm and confident demeanor of a man who can fix things; later I learned that he was modifying another old VW van, a pick-up style sort, to manage rough dirt roads; also, he'd owned a motorcycle shop on the east coast in the 1970s and 1980s. As we drove, Carey told us much about the Combi (the term for VW camper vans in Australia), which was immaculate and all original and obviously much beloved. They had bought it six years earlier, from the original owner (who had put just 70,000 kilometers on it), put a new engine in, replaced a few faded pieces, like the curtains and seat covers, and set out on the road. They'd been all over Australia, including across to and around Tasmania.

They had recently settled in Central Australia to work for a few months as Park Managers. They oversaw three campgrounds (and lived in housing at one), visiting each one each day to clean up and to maybe chat with the campers. On the way to town, we gave them some assistance at one, Ellery Creek (where Rachael and I had camped--and picked up one of our food drops--around day six of the walk). Chris took a shovel and trash can and cleaned ash out of the fire pits. David cleaned the gas barbeques (a regular feature at Australian campgrounds, as grilling is a national obsession). Rachael and Krystal did the woman's bathroom, while I helped Carey with the men's. She was quite fastidious, but my work passed inspection. I hadn't really considered the possibility of cleaning public toilets as part of my Australian experience, but I was happy to do it. When the toilets were done, we got down together on our hands and knees and scrubbed the dollops of bird shit off of the stone floor, chatting as we worked.

We got dropped off in town, after the 130 kilometer drive, and walked the last kilometer or so out to Rachael's house. I immediately unloaded my pack and we started a load of laundry. My few items of clothing were impressively filthy after two weeks of desert walking. I'd been able to rinse out shirts and underwear and socks a couple times along the way, but it hadn't done much other than make me feel a bit better for the attempt. We took turns taking showers, and a hard-earned shower is a large pleasure.

Later we walked into town for groceries. For dinner we were joined by one of Rachael's colleagues, Gai, who'd been staying at the house while we were gone. Rachael made a salad (fresh vegetables!) and baked potatoes, and she grilled kangaroo steaks for Gai and I. Interesting, but maybe a little bland. The package label said that kangaroo meat is very healthy--98% fat free--and as kangaroos don't produce methane, they are much easier on the environment than cattle and sheep.

Rachael works at the Alukura Women's Center, which is part of a larger organization, the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress, which is aboriginal-led but employs many white people. Her job title is Maternal and Child Health Coordinator. Gai is a research consultant who Rachael hired to conduct a study of aboriginal women's attitudes and ideas about health services. The health situation for aboriginal people here is quite dire, and Rachael's trying to find ways of improving services. The people live in "town camps" in horrific third world conditions; alcoholism and domestic abuse and violence are rampant, as are acute illnesses such as diabetes.

(Today's newspaper headline is about a death in a camp near Rachael's house: a man's body was found last week by children going to school. He had been half consumed by dogs, but authorities are not yet sure whether the dogs killed him or ate him after he was dead. There's a two-dog per household limit in the community, but it's not enforced. Plus, there's not much difference between owned dogs and feral dogs, which are attracted to the camps by the trash and food scattered about. Though they have houses, many of the aboriginal people live--and cook and eat--almost entirely outside.)

Gai is asking the women two sets of questions. The first is about their ideas concerning mothering, fathering, and the role of extended family in child rearing; the second addresses their feelings about the intensive nurse home visit program, which all interviewees have been participating in. Once she's gathered her findings, Gai will write a report for Alukura.

Until recently Gai was a professor of Health Sciences at Latrobe University in Melbourne. At the university, she worked in the Australian Institute of Primary Care, which is an important center for national health evaluation and policy development. She was being groomed to be the next director when she decided she didn't really want to continue in that direction, and would rather do field work. She's a slight woman, about fifty, and was dressed in professional attire, black pants, grey blouse. She pushed her hair back on each side repeatedly as she spoke, telling me about her work, about the health situation in the Northern Territory. I found her a remarkably intelligent and articulate person. When we spoke about my work, she asked very good questions.

Her husband is the head of the literature department at Melbourne University, one of the top two schools in Australia. He's currently on leave and writing a book about 18th and 19th century versions of virtual reality. His sister is partnered with Joan Nestle (a noted pioneer of Lesbian scholarship), whom he secured a position at his university.

She and Rachael spent much of the post-prandial conversation discussing conditions at their shared workplace, which at the moment are rather difficult and dramatic.... I listened with interest, until dead-tired where I sat, I had to excuse myself for bed.

Up Mt. Sonder in the dark

On no night on the trail did I sleep right through. I usually woke repeatedly, after a few initial hours of uninterrupted sleep. I would lie on my back and watch the stars, or note the progress of the moon, listen to the cold night, then roll onto my side and soon doze off again. Sleep, wake, back and side, not frustrated (after the first couple days) but patient with the long dark.

I was hard asleep, though, when my watch alarm went off at four the last morning of the walk. Rachael and I had talked from the start of the Larapinta about making the Mt. Sonder ascent early, for the sunrise; we had spoken to others along the trail about the climb, always asking when they'd gone up. Some had left early in the dark, like we planned, and they all raved; others laughed and said, no, they had slept to a decent hour and hiked up in the light of day.

Rachael's cellphone alarm went off too, and after thinking for five minutes about how warm I was in my bag and how cold it would be outside, I sat up and unzipped the side door of the tent and climbed out into the chill and pitch black. In just a few minutes we were stumbling up the rocky wash, looking for where the narrow trail led off to the right.

The first portion of the eight-kilometer climb was the toughest, the path a jumble of big stones, and steep enough that you had to put a hand on your knee with each upward step. I had a headlamp, but Rachael did not have a light (nor did she have her contacts in). I pointed my headlamp straight down, and she walked right behind me; we tried to match our pace, so I didn't leave her in darkness, she didn't tread on my heels. My limited vision proved disconcerting at first, impairing my sense of equilibrium. I could see ahead only two or three feet, a distance I would cover in a step, a second of time, while what lay just beyond remained in absolute darkness. It was like walking in a long land dark closet, the floor covered with stones rather than shoes, while a strong crosswind swept out of the blackness. And while I figured I could trust the trail, I couldn't see that it didn't lead over a cliff two steps ahead. An odd sensation, moving forward yet unable to see ahead, and I put one foot in front of another more tentatively than usual.

After the first initial climb, the trail moderated, but continued upwards on a long ridge, rising in big chunks to one false peak after another. Not that I could tell we were on a ridge. I could sort of feel it, but really I had no sense of my surroundings, beyond the path and rocks within the small scope of my headlamp. Overhead two swathes of the Milky Way cut across a dark sky filled with stars. After we'd been on the trail for an hour, a red crescent moon rose above the horizon to the northeast, a bare sliver, companionable but providing no discernible light. We stopped and huddled close together, and somehow in the wind Rachael managed to put in her contacts.

At the first hint of light in the east we paused and I checked the watch: 6:20, and we still had two kilometers to go. Sharing the single light, we'd had to move a bit slow, but now we increased the pace. Before long, we didn't need the lamp in the early gloaming, and I surged ahead on a steep slope where the path was paved with large flat stones. I came up to a saddle and discovered a whole other peak to climb, the last one. I set off faster still, determined to make the top in time. The eastern sky turned red, the few clouds overhead orange. I settled into a trot, fell back into a walk when my breathing became labored. The last part of the trail led up through close-packed mallee bushes, and I couldn't see the eastern horizon. I began running, falling back into a walk for short stretches to recover; but I didn't pause to rest, figuring every minute counted. And anyway I felt strong, I felt up to this last and highest climb. Finally, at just after seven, and heaving huge ragged breaths, I came out on top. I was in time.

A stone and cement cairn marked the summit, and I sat down in its lee to shelter from the strong wind. A few minutes later Rachael appeared and said, "I was running."

After the rushing, we had ten minutes to spare before the sun rose over the Chewings Range in the east. In these moments I felt intensely happy, exhilarated with the combined bliss of a lovely sunrise, a high mountaintop, and a long walk completed.

Beside the cairn, Rachael heated water for our morning tea and muesli, and the muesli was the best I've ever eaten. I pulled a register from a slot in the cairn and we wrote our names in the book. We spun all around naming the mountains and features of the surrounding land, Mt. Zeil and Mt. Razorback and Mt. Giles, Gosse Bluff, and others; we could pick out some of our campsites of recent days, off to the west. I felt overwhelmed, ecstatic. The land about infatuated me; in the last two weeks I'd seen much of it close up, but I was left wanting more and more.

On the way down, I moved slowly, stopping often to admire the view, to savor the last few kilometers of hiking. Just below the summit I came upon a pair of Euros (hill kangaroos). They went darting off down a brushy defile, moving with amazing easy, hopping smoothly from rock to rock, using only their paired and powerful back feet for locomotion, and for balance their thick tails. Under the morning sun the path was a revelation. I kept stopping to turn around and look back up, trying to match the long ridge to the earlier walk up in darkness.

Halfway down I passed a group of hikers, the same group we'd seen at Counts Point days before. I knew them by the wild gray and wavy hair of one of the women, tanned and fit and in her sixties. They were accompanied by their guide, Shane, who later in the day would do us a great favor.

Back at camp, I took down the tent, and we loaded up our packs. At the nearby watertank I came upon Tony and Jac and Mike, who we'd met at Ormiston, and who had just arrived at Redbank after camping at Rocky Gap the night before. After Ormiston they had detoured to Glen Helen for a night of beers and steaks.

As we were talking, a young woman came up from her campsite in the wash to fill a water bottle. This proved to be Clare, of Sven and Clare, an Australian couple that I had never met but whose names I had seen repeatedly in the log books found at the start/end of each of the trail's twelve sections. Clare was young, in her mid-twenties, dark-haired, squarish in shape, and wearing long shorts and a tank top. She and Sven had been ahead of Rachael and me all along, and had been camped at Redbank for a couple days. I like the name Clare, and I had been imagining someone amiable and good-humored; but the actual Clare was superior and skeptical. She assumed the role of veteran and expert, treating us as if we were less seasoned and of questionable reliability.

She asked about several of the Larapinta's side trails, its extras. "Did you walk down to the Ochre Pits?" she asked Tony (near Serpentine Chalet Dam).

"No," Tony admitted, "we reckoned we could see those on the drive back, if we wanted" (the pits are near Namatijira Drive).

"Oh," said Clare, loading the single word with both disappointment and disapproval. She let it hang in the air for a moment. "Well," she finally said, "yes, I suppose you could see the pits that way. But it's the trail down that's really beautiful. Too bad you missed it."

She asked me if I'd walked the High Route, an alternative route, way back between Jay Creek and Standley Chasm. I told her no, I hadn't. That had been one of our longer, tougher days, and we saw no need to add in more climbing.

"Oh," Clare said, pursing her lips. Again the disapproving silence. "Too bad," she said, unsmiling, "that was a really beautiful stretch. Sven and I really liked it. We thought it was one of the best parts of the whole trail. Amazing views. Amazing. A shame that you missed it."

I just nodded, annoyed. And so it went, Clare naming parts of the trail, and seeming disappointed and yet also pleased when we hadn't done something she and Sven had.

"Did you go up to the real peak this morning?" she asked me. The "real" peak? I didn't understand, but said, yes, we'd been to the top. But she persisted, and eventually I understood that there's a second peak, a few feet higher than the one we'd been on. In the past people had climbed out to the other peak, but a narrow connecting ridge had crumbled away, and it's become too dangerous. "Sven did it," Clare, said, "he's done it a few times."

Clare and Sven had claimed the best campsite in the wash, but they were leaving in a couple hours. "We're going off trail, north up over the ridge, towards Mt. Zeil. Sven's been out there before, but we don't know if we'll find enough water. But, you know, we'll figure it out."

Tony asked Clare if they could put their packs over by her campsite, since they'd like to take it after she and Sven were gone. Clare hesitated, clearly not liking the idea. "I'd have to ask Sven," she said. Tony laughed, thinking she was joking. But just then Sven, tall and lanky and bearded and monosyllabic, came up. She did ask him. He grunted his assent with poor grace, and then went to the watertank to fill his bottle, not bothering to say anything else to any of us.

Tony went off with Clare to put his pack at the site, while Mike and Jac and I went up to the covered picnic tables at the carpark. Clare commenced a monologue on her and especially Sven's accomplishments, and it was a long time before Tony could join us for lunch.

Rachael was at the carpark, and had already asked a few people about a possible ride out to Glen Helen. No takers yet, but we still had hope.

Through much of the hot afternoon we sat in the shade at the picnic tables, eating nearly the last of our food and talking with Mike and Jac and Tony. I discovered, or inferred, that Tony is a pilot with Qantas. Mike showed us his broken down boots again, and said, "I'm going to have some words with them," "them" being the people at the store who had recommended the boots. Jac said that for the next trip he would prefer to go fishing; the two older men seemed happy and satisfied with their hike, but Jac never really took to it. Chris and Krystal joined us, after returning from a later morning climb up Sonder. Occasionally, an SUV would appear, and people would get out and hike up Redbank Gorge to the pool. Most of the vehicles were too packed with gear to allow for extra passengers.

The group of hikers led by Shane appeared and loaded into his Land Rover, which had long benches in the back. He had one extra seat, but we needed two, four actually, since Chris and Krystal also were hoping for Glen Helen. But then Shane said he'd come back for us in a couple hours, after he dropped off the others.

When Shane returned, he clambered easily to the top of his truck and we handed up our packs, which he strapped down. He's a wiry, dark-skinned man with dreads, soft-spoken and not prone to smiling though friendly. He owns the small guiding company, Trek Larapinta, and spends most of his days on the trail; he leads six, nine, and twenty day trips. Rachael sat in front with Shane as we bumped down the rough road. They have several mutual friends in Alice, and she talked about her sister Helen coming up from Melbourne to do the trail with his company. He said the current group had been challenging, but didn't elaborate. He also said that he tried not to memorize the trail, and that he liked showing people the MacDonnells. He lit up, in his subdued way, when describing non-commercial backpacking trips he'd taken, in particular, out to and up Mt. Giles. I felt some envy for the life he led.

At Glen Helen, Chris gave Shane twenty dollars for gas, though Shane didn't want it and tried to give it back; my sense was that he considered the ride a favor, a gesture of friendship, and the money changed that; but Rachael disagreed, saying it was fine, it just paid for the extra gas to come back for us, so I decided not to worry.

Glen Helen stood beside the road, on a flat just beside a high wall of red rock. It's what they call in Central Australia a "resort," though the word seems too fancy for the ramshackle all-in-one operation, one that reminded me of places you find on remote portions of the Alaska Highway. It consisted of a main building with reception, bar, and dining room, a gravel lot with hook-ups for caravans, a nearby stretch of grass for tents, a separate building with expensive but crappy motel rooms, and another section with wall tents, most often occupied by large tour groups. The resort was busy, apparently attracting all the travelers in the area, which is not surprise considering there's no other such place for quite some distance around.

At Glen Helen you could also have a helicopter ride; a pilot was on-site, ready to take up one or two people for twenty or forty-minute flights over the mountains and gorges (Chris and Krystal would go up the next morning, as a birthday present for Krystal; she was thrilled. Chris was quite good at making her happy). Glen Helen gorge, with a pool, was just a couple hundred yards down from the main building.

Inside the low and long and stuccoed main building, beside the bar, was an ice cream cooler, and first off Rachael bought us each a bar. She and I sat out back, looking at the red wall. I sighed, enjoying my chocolate and vanilla ice cream, glad for the semblance of civilization, but sad too to have left the trail.

Eventually we set up our tent and had showers at the nearby shower building. Rachael and I walked down to the gorge and looked at the pool. A couple, a young man and woman, came climbing down from the rock cliff on one side. The man was the helicopter pilot, in his late twenties, tall, with a goatee, originally from Wales. The woman was a bit younger, a barmaid at the resort, blonde, just a little pudgy. They both wore jeans. He had talked her into going up the ragged cliff; he was at his ease clambering about the rocks, she wasn't, but she appeared glad of his attention. She watched the pilot with a sarcastic and worshipful expression, wary and infatuated both. He didn't look at her, but kept her at his side, aware that he was being watched.

Rachael asked the young woman how she liked working at Glen Helen. "There's not much to do," she said.

The pilot put in, "there's lots," gesturing at the land.

"But you've been gone the last week," she said, with a bit of a pout. "The rest of them, they just play video games."

After dark, Rachael and I went to the bar and drank two short glasses of beer, Toohey's, and it tasted wonderful. The Trek Larapinta group gathered around a pool table, laughing and drinking and looking quite contented on their last night.

At the campground, a large group of French people had arrived in a tour bus. They gathered around a fire, talking loudly and not seeming at all interested in their swags thrown down on the ground nearby. But I fell easily to sleep nonetheless, and for a change slept nearly through the night.