My accent and red bandana makes a man think of cowboys

After seventeen kilometers, I ended the walking day on a ridgetop, sitting alone on a rocky outcropping overlooking Ormiston Pound, a vast plain of witchetty bush; a dry watercourse wove across the huge flat, marked out by river red gums rather than water. The sun was starting to drop towards the west, but the late afternoon was still hot, with just a bare hint of breeze. Flies cavorted close around my face, and their faint buzzing was the only sound, apart from a lone cricket hidden in the rocks close by. Across the Pound rose the tailend of the Chewings Range, most prominently Mt. Giles. To the north stood Mt. Sonder, looking considerably closer than on recent days. Close behind me grew a copse of bushes, among which I'd found a fire ring and several small tent spots cleared of stones. A number of people hiking eastwards on the trail had praised this high and dry campsite, and we had decided to heed their advice and stay the night, carrying extra water to get us through to the next source, another day's walk west.

The day on the trail had been one of the more beautiful and satisfying of the walk. Early on we came up a lovely gorge, Inarlanga Pass, where big boulders were crowded by spearwood and teatree and cycads. Though the cycads are a common feature of the MacDonnell Range gorges, they always struck me as strange oddities--and they are: relict species from much wetter times, somehow able to survive into the long deserty era, shaded by the high cliffs of the gaps, waiting for the occasional flood to pass briefly through.

The pass, I read, had been an important watering point and ceremonial place for the local Aboriginal people, the Arrernte; only men were allowed, though, since the pass also functioned as the route to Giles Springs, a men's ceremonial site (from what I can tell, most such sites are segregated by sex--a place is either for women or for men, rarely both).

The pass opened up into hills, and soon after the trail came out into a broad and striking brown valley with open, sloping sides that formed a pleasingly symmetrical trough. High on both sides the walls ended at crenellated bluffs, ragged against the blue, cloudless sky. All through this valley, brown shale-like outcroppings of rock stood up, like a vast collection of nameless tombstones, marching up the slopes, glowing, lit by the bright and yellow early morning sun.

The path rose gently to a saddle, and just short of the top I came upon a group of seven older people, all in their sixties I'd guess, resting in the shade of a large brown boulder, their big packs littered about. I paused to say hello, and learned that they were members of the Brisbane Bush Walkers Club; they too praised the ridgetop campsite, and I said, yes, that's the plan.

Soon after, I came upon the last member of the group, a stout elderly man, hatless and sweating. We met at a narrow spot, and I stood just off the trail to let him pass, but he stopped. He asked if I was enjoying the hike, and I said I was, and his expression told me I had answered correctly. He gestured at the valley told me that it reminded him of American westerns he had seen at the movie theater when he was a child. "This was before television, you know," he said, "I'm that old." I smiled, acknowledging his long ago experience more than his advanced age, and said yes, I could see the resemblance too. Then he welcomed me to Australia, "because I can tell you're from overseas," he said. I was charmed by this hospitable gesture, his willingness to assume the host's responsibility for a whole country. He asked, as others have, if I had come specifically to hike the Larapinta Trail, and when I said I had, he seemed pleased, as if he was responsible for the trail and the MacDonnells as well.

Later, Rachael stopped and spoke to this same man, and he also mentioned to her the western movies of his childhood. She told him it was as much me as the valley, my accent and the red bandana I had tied around my neck (to protect it from the sun). The man had said she was probably right.

The path descended into another valley, similar to the first, then rose to another saddle. Just on the other side I came upon a second and larger, but also elderly group of hikers. These were dayhikers, members of the Adelaide chapter of the Australian equivalent of the AARP. Like the group the day before, they were doing the entire Larapinta, but not camping on the trail; on this day they were hiking over thirty kilometers, covering what Rachael and I had broken into two days of walking. I stepped off the narrow trail to let them pass, saying hello to each. They were a tired and sweaty and determined and mostly happy looking bunch, a little more than halfway through their long day. One of the last and oldest, a pale, thin man with white spittle in the corners of his mouth, stopped and asked where I was from and what I was doing in Australia. He said "good for you" when I described my trip. His well-worn daypack was completely covered with sewn-on patches commemorating the various places he had hiked, and I wanted to ask him questions too, but the people behind were piling up, and he set off again slowly up the hill.

The last person in the group was the guide, a man in his forties with a nametag that read "Trevor Lee." He told me about the group's itinerary, and that they were from Adelaide. He said that the whole group was larger, and that they had been divided into an "A group" and a "B group"; those I had met were the As. The B people were doing shorter, less strenuous hikes--but still ten to twenty kilometers a day. (Later, after we were off the trail at Glen Helen--a motel and campground and bar--Chris talked to one of the group; this man had started as an A but dropped down to the Bs, saying the A group was "too competitive." The only two casualties of the trip, though, both came from the B group, including a woman who had fallen and gashed her forehead, and had to be rushed to the hospital in Alice Springs.)

One of the women in the group on the trail had said, "You've got quite a hill ahead of you." I generally don't like such heads-up comments, as I'd rather discover what lies ahead for myself; but she was right. The climb up from Waterfall Gorge (more gully than gorge) was long and nearly straight up to the ridge top, two slow and taxing kilometers in the heat of the afternoon. But I felt strong, felt like I was gaining strength with each day we spent walking. When I finally reached the top, I didn't stop, but set off westwards along the ridge, another couple kilometers to the campsite, where for a time I sat alone on the rocky outcropping gazing out over Ormiston Pound.

Later, after I'd put up the tent and Rachael had gathered firewood, we sat together on the outcropping to watch the sun set. Rachael made tea on the small stove and I read aloud a story from a small volume of Tolstoy called Twenty-three Tales. We had made a habit of these readings in the evenings, usually while Rachael cooked. Most of the stories, written in the 1880s and 1890s, were Christian parables about Russian peasants who learned or modeled loving patience and generosity. On this night I read, "A Spark Neglected Burns the House."

Before dark Chris and Krystal appeared, and later we shared a fire again. We talked of Australian films, and I named the few I had seen, and they named others I should see. Rachael said Rabbit-Proof Fence and Ten Canoes; Chris said Kangaroo Jack and Wog Boy.

Chris also talked about his desire to join NORFORCE (North-West Mobile Force), an official but from what I could tell quasi military regiment that patrols northern Australia, especially near the coast, engaging in surveillance and reconnaissance missions. The force was established in the 1980s, but harkens back to World War II, when a similar group was organized in the face of a feared Japanese invasion. I'm not quite sure what the threat is today, drug smuggling I think, potentially the Chinese too, maybe the Asian horde in general (though that last is not really fair; Australia seems pretty open to Asian immigrants). Over half of the regiment is made up of Aboriginal men, and they are valued for their bush skills (sort of like American Indian scouts in the 19th century?). From what Chris said, I'd guess he's drawn partly out of patriotism, partly by a strong anti-drug position, but mostly by the opportunity to go on backcountry scouting expeditions. It's the sort of challenge that appeals to him, not unrelated to camel racing or hiking the Larapinta.