Forgotten Reflections

It was quiet, save for the muttering of the river, invisible in the distant gorge and the lazy buzz of the fly as he circled slowly, clumsily around the cheese. The scrub whose diminutive green leaves were mottled with patches of yellow and brown smelled sweet. The sweat still ran down his face, stinging his eyes as he lay back on his pack and watched the light grey of the overcast sky. Hell, it was hot and humid.

He felt hot and sticky and the dirt and rotting vegetation that hung in his hair and covered his face irritated. Most of it was new, fresh from the steep bush bash out of the gorge but much was the accumulation of twenty-six days without a proper wash. His hair was lank and greasy, unwashed, and unknown to a comb. The singlet, once whitish and now a dirty yellow, with dark sweat stains, food stains and holes gained through too hard a life, hung shapeless and loose, so much a part of him. The boots were no worse, the leather soft from weeks of wear and river crossings and the laces were frayed and knotted from repaired breakages. They were heavy. He let his feet relax so the boots lay sideways on the ground showing the buckled soles coming away from the uppers and the split stitching. The tattered puttees, roughly tied and badly torn drapped loose ends over the top of the boots and obscured most of the grey woollen socks whose tops were now stretched, baggy and shapeless. He saw all this, just as he had seen it hundreds of times in the recent past and he felt happy. They were all part of him, they had shared the difficult rivers, the wind swept or snow covered passes, the silent mountains, sunny river flats, the rain, the sun, the cold, the heat, the joy, the discomfort, and how many camp fires?

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Below him was the Pyke with the expanse of Lake Wilmot stretching across the valley. It was a big valley, the biggest of the trip, very wide and flat with the sides rising steeply up into the mist. Funny how there were large areas with no bush - must be the swamps marked on the map. How brown they are. From where he was he could see the different patterns made by the rushes and the stunted scrub on the valley floor, although he was too high to make out individual bushes. They were all brown, a warm vegetable brown that blended well with the greens of the trees. And the river; it was big too, but slow. There was no white water and it looked like aerial photos of the Thames he'd seen. It was different again from any other valley he'd seen on the trip and he wondered at the infinite mutability of nature. He lay there above it and watched while he chewed his food and drank sparingly from his bottle. It was strange because he realised that the trip was nearly over. The Forgotten River, now below and behind them, had been their last obstacle, the last untracked part of the trip. It had been difficult, strenuous, working down the gorge, past tumbled log jams,over the mass of boulders, through the tangled undergrowth, always steep and the perpetual, unending, deafening roar of the river as it tumbled down through its continuous waterfalls towards the Pyke. They had followed it until it was impossible to go any further because of the bluffs and had then climbed up the steep sides until they finally emerged on the ridge where they now rested.

Before them in the valley lay the world of discs and huts. When had he last slept in a hut? Was it Liverpool Biv? Soon they 'd run into people again and then would come showers, icecream, loo seats, cool beer, fresh bread, lettuces and tomatoes. He considered the possibilites of culture shock, grinned and dismissed them as idle speculation. Society would adjust to him. He thought of those back in the city that he knew and suddenly he wanted to be there but he was reluctant to leave the mountains. They had been his home for the past month and he loved them. Such was the unresolved and insoluble dilemma of his existence. Still, it wasn't raining and he could be grateful for that. Slowly he packed up and with the others wandered down the ridge and into the forest.

K.S.