I'm attached to my walking stick

At Reveal Saddle, six kilometers up from our early morning start, Rachael found she had bars on her cellphone. She texted her daughter, then called a friend in Alice.

Soon after, I lost the trail on a short descent and we were forced to traverse a difficult and steep slope, where sharp brown slates of rock stood up in thin crumbly layers, and spiky spinifex grass grew in the interstices. Rachael said, "I think I should go first."

Back on the path, we climbed onto a long ridge, and slowly gained elevation as we walked westwards towards the high point at Brinkley Bluff. We met other hikers and paused to chat, Rachael leading the conversational way. Most people on the Larapinta were ready to talk, at least briefly about the trail, campsites, food—but with Rachael a few words often turned into many, as the topics branched out and became more interesting. She would ask pointed questions, often beginning with, “Where are you from?” As a person’s biographical details emerged, Rachael didn’t hesitate to follow up, to ask how long the person had lived in Sydney, whether she liked it, what she did for a living, how she felt about her job, if she had children, and if she’d had a difficult birth with her third and handicapped child.

These questions did not come across as nosy; on the contrary, Rachael’s frank curiosity and interest seemed to disarm people. They would settle in, lean on a walking stick or shift their pack into a more comfortable position, and begin to recite their stories. I stood to the side and listened, occasionally putting a word or question in myself—but mostly Rachael asked just the questions I was wanting to ask myself.

On the ridge we first met Adam, one of the few solo hikers we’d come upon. He was a large unshaven man, in his thirties, wearing unzipped knee-length gaiters and a t-shirt soaked with perspiration. The night before he had camped at Birthday Waterhole, in the wash, and in the middle of the night a band of brumbies (wild horses) had come pounding down the wash where he was camped, and he had raised up from his sleeping bag and crouched at the mouth of his tent, waving his headlamp and shouting; the horses had split and dashed around his tent on either side. (There are over 400,000 brumbies in Australia, most of them in the Northern Territory.)

A few minutes after Adam we met two late middle-aged couples who had been on the trail from Mt. Sonder fifteen days, taking their time, and who all wielded two walking sticks. The men, like all the men we met on the trail, looked liked vagabonds, with their gray unshaven faces and dirty clothes; somehow the women—and this was generally the case—managed to look cleaner and more tidy, their faces and clothes cleaner, their hair neatly in place. One of the men was originally from Yorkshire—Rachael guessed his accent and guessed correctly—but had been living in New Zealand for some years, which he talked about at length, prompted by Rachael.

We came to several false peaks before reaching Brinkley Bluff, the top marked by a tall stone and cement cairn. The wind was blowing hard and we cast about for a protected spot to eat lunch. First, though, we talked to another couple, this one younger and fresher looking than the last two. The man was originally from the UK, from Essex, and he and Rachael fell into trading familiar place names of the south of England. Both the man and the woman were wearing down jackets in the cold wind. They worked as environmental educators in Victoria, and planned to camp up on the bluff for the night.

But we started down after lunch. The descent was almost horizontal, or so it seemed. After what seemed a long long time we reached a saddle, then began descending again in a narrow gully full of boulders and cycads, then climbed again to Stuart’s Pass, then began a last and even longer descent into a valley far below. Though we walked only eighteen kilometers on this day (about eleven miles), the section took most all of the daylight, about nine hours, to negotiate.

Actually, I ended up adding a bonus five k to my day. Later, when we were almost to Birthday Hole (home for the night), I realized I had left my walking stick behind. I set down my pack, told Rachael I’d meet her at the campsite, grabbed a bottle of water from the side pocket, then set off at a jog retracing my steps. There wasn’t much daylight left, and I had a race on my hands. But I really wanted that walking stick.

I figured I’d left it fifteen minutes back at our last stop, Mintbush Spring (more of a seep, but a relatively lush, wooded patch just the same). Typically I’d lean the stick against my pack so I wouldn’t forget it, but apparently that hadn’t been the case. I think I was distracted by the dead cow near the spring, when Rachael had asked me to walk between her and the carcass so she didn’t have to see it.

But when I got back to the spring I couldn’t find the stick.

I could’ve given up, but no, I wanted that stick. So I kept going back, now running down the sandy trail, along the side of the wide valley. I stopped when I saw a big kangaroo, a euro, and we stared at each other for a long minute ... and then both carried on. When I reached the next former rest stop I thought for sure I’d find the stick, even knew exactly where I’d put it, against a witchetty bush next to a big gum tree—but no, it wasn’t there. I looked and looked, unable to accept that it wasn’t where I knew it had to be. I cast about in the shadowy light, thinking, “fuck!”

And then I gave up and started jogging back. Along the way I convinced myself that it had to be at Mintbush Spring, as I’d originally thought; it had to be, there was no other explanation. And indeed the stick was there. I just hadn’t seen it the first time, I don’t know why.

I reached camp in the last of the day’s light. Rachael had gathered firewood and started a fire, next to a large flat boulder on the edge of a sandy wash. I put the tent up off to the side and she made freeze-dried dinner. When I first arrived back I had held the stick over my head in triumph and whooped, and Rachael smiled because she had to.