Redbank Gorge

I rose early and went off by myself to the eastern side of Hilltop. A cold morning, with an unusually strong wind blowing. I'd put on all my clothes--long underwear under my shorts, a t-shirt, long-sleeved shirt, down sweater and light jacket, gloves and neck gaiter and wool cap too. I sat on a large pink rock and watched the light change and grow, the sun rise and change everything.

Back at camp, Rachael couldn't get the fire started in the fierce wind, which seemed to be strengthening. We could barely talk or stand, and so decided to head down and have our breakfast somewhere below. Rachael left first; I set off fifteen minutes later, after getting my gear packed.

Just a short way below the ridgetop the wind began to abate. I picked my way slowly down the steep and open rocky slope, enjoying the descent, the view of Mt. Sonder, which loomed ahead. Down at the bottom, the trail led into a plain sparsely grown with mulga trees. I stopped often to look back, ahead, all around. I was feeling good, that nearly-the-end-of-the-trip good, a sort of wistful nostalgia for what's not quite finished but almost. I slowed down and paused often to savor the walk and the land, the mountains and rocks and scanty trees and red dirt.

After four or five kilometers I reached Rocky Gap, a short and wide canyon, and passed through to the south side of the ridge. In the gap I met three hikers (after seeing no one on the trail yesterday), and we said hello but didn't stop. They were just starting their hike, and I mused in a paternal fashion over their inexperience and the miles and pleasures that lay ahead of them.

On the far side of the gap, beside a small water tank, Rachael was waiting for me to show up with the stove. She boiled water for tea and to pour over the muesli (to which she also added a couple spoonfuls of dried milk). We sat in the dirt in the sun, and I ate the warm muesli from my purple bowl, drank the tea from my green tin mug. Afterwards, I did the dishes.

We reached Redbank Gorge early in the afternoon, and, after filling our bottles at the watertank (the slowest spigot on the trail, little more than a drip), climbed a short hill to the carpark to have lunch at a covered picnic table. A rough dirt road comes into Redbank, from Namatijira Drive, and soon after we arrived, two older couples from Sydney, traveling together but in separate SUVs, appeared and joined us at the picnic table. One of the men was small, compact and fit, with a huge white moustache. When he learned we had walked from Alice Springs, he shook both our hands. When his wife and the other couple came up, he gestured at us and said, "These two have walked all the way from Alice." He seemed proud of our accomplishment.

The other man, largish, a bit sloppy, Hardy to his friend's Laurel, used our walk as a prompt to name other trails in other parts of Australia. I don't think he had walked many of them, though; he seemed more of a reader about trails than a walker of them. Soon he turned his attention to another form of transportation, for some reason telling us several airline anecdotes, and giving particular attention to types of aircraft, their characteristics and advantages and safety records. The five of us sat silently listening to the man talk about a topic that only he apparently much cared about. Some people, like Rachael, are good at starting and nurturing conversation; others, such as this man, are conversation killers, wielding the monologue to often deadly effect.

After lunch we walked a half-mile up Redbank Gorge, up the bouldery, narrowing canyon and out of the sunlight to where a large dark pool blocked further travel. One could swim to the far side and squeeze through the narrow cut to continue up canyon, but a wetsuit might be in order. We sat down on a large, water-smoothed outcropping, and after a moment, a rock wallaby came down the cliff on the far side to have a drink at the pool's edge. On the other side a crow perched in a small ghost gum tree jutting from the cliff; it gave a few echoey, disconsolate croaks then fell silent. No other sound could be heard in the shaded recess, and I felt compelled to whisper, then to fall silent myself. In the gloomy canyon my morning giddiness gave way to melancholy. Soon the two couples appeared, whispering among themselves, and sat down nearby; they too fell silent.

We sat for some time, quiet, watching the wallaby, which stood by the water, moved back from the edge, moved back to the water; it seemed in no rush. Lost in my own thoughts, at first I didn't notice that the large man was whispering at me. Finally, he whispered louder, and I turned to look at him. They were going, and he said, "I'll leave you to your harmony." I nodded and smiled. Funny that he needed to interrupt that supposed harmony in order to let me know he was leaving me to it.

We camped in the wash, downstream near the water tanks. A couple other tents were up already, and Chris and Krystal had of course shown up too. They went up a bit, we went down and cast about for some time for a likely spot, which we had an unusually difficult time finding. But finally we picked a spot, in the sand, in the open. I put up a tent, using stones to hold down the pegs, while Rachael made a fire ring and a fire. For dinner, she warmed Indian food, something spinach-y first, then lentils. Two courses instead of our usual one. We used a forked stick to heat pieces of roti--which were indistinguishable from tortillas--over the fire. Chris and Krystal were camped too far away, several hundred yards, and we remained at our separate sites.

I read a Tolstoy story, tilting the book towards the fire to take advantage of the light. "Too Dear" was about how the rulers of tiny Monaco could't figure out how to execute a convicted murderer, as they had no system in place for dealing with such malefactors. No one in Monaco wanted to execute the man, and the French and Italians would've charged too much for the job; His sentence was commuted, but then it was discovered it cost too much to keep him in prison indefinitely. In the in the end, the King of Monaco grants the murderer a small annuity and sends him across the border into France, where he buys a bit of land, starts market-gardening, and lives comfortably.

We took to the tent at nine, and lay comfortably ourselves in our sand-cushioned sleeping bags. I'd set my watch alarm for four am, when we planned to somehow rise and set off on the last stretch of the Larapinta.