The Joy of High Places Page 17

  Anthony, just ahead, hadn’t seen a thing. ‘I’ve just been flashed,’ I said, as I caught up. We both laughed. It seemed an extraordinary length to go to, walking hundreds of kilometres just to reveal his sexual organs to an occasional walker. We named him the Pilgrim Flasher, but didn’t see him again until a couple of mornings later. I was eating breakfast at the gite where we’d stayed the night, when I realised the man sitting next to me was wearing the same kilt. I quietly ate my yoghurt and tartine. It was October now and the last day of walking. Anthony sang as we walked though grassy meadows and oak-lined lanes. It was an old Leonard Cohen song, ‘Bird on a Wire’. It was one of the songs he used to sing to our boys when it was his turn to put them to bed. I’ve always loved it when Anthony sings, especially when he sings as he walks; it gives me a glimpse of his soul. All that can be seen is a man, now in his sixties, not tall, with thinning hair, walking easily, but anyone listening could read the dreaming young rebel who lived inside him. He has tried in his way to be free. It’s strange how much of life cannot be seen and has to be read in small fragments that sometimes surface. Perhaps everything simply exists and there is nothing to read in any of it, but I can only imagine such a pure state of being. I don’t know what decoder I am using, but I know I am doing it all day, every day.

  It was only a short day, 11 kilometres, into Figeac, which the walking notebook said had ‘charmantes rues médiévales’ – charming medieval streets – and an abbey church consecrated in 1093. We followed the railway line in until we came to a sign saying Place des Écritures.

  ‘Place of Writings,’ I translated aloud. ‘We have to follow that sign!’

  We abandoned the red and white GR signs and followed the tourist signposts along cobbled streets and alleys until we came to another sign announcing the Musée des Écritures and a tiny square, enclosed on all four sides by walls, more a large courtyard than a square. At one end there were archways and columns and behind them a cloister. Around the walls there was an out-door exhibition of paintings of bees.

  ‘It’s all about you,’ Anthony said. The book that I had talked about in the dark street in Saint-Alban-sur-Limagnole had bees on the cover. It was enough synchronicity to encourage the illusion of a speaking world. It doesn’t take much.

  I looked down at the unusual smooth black basalt paving and saw that it was engraved with some sort of writing and hieroglyphs. With a sudden delighted shock I realised I was standing on an oversized facsimile of the Rosetta Stone. As a child walking over the farm looking for fossils and bones, I’d loved the Rosetta Stone; it was the transforming key to ancient mysteries accidentally found lying in the desert by an ordinary soldier. For me, its discovery meant that treasure could be found anywhere at any time; that all you had to do was step off the track you were following, and if you kept a sharp lookout, and if you were very lucky, you might find something. In the trackless wilds, the caves and rocks and creeks might have been hiding something for eons. For all the reassurance of following signs, I’ve always known there’s a wild pleasure in random revelation, the thing that will only be found when there are no tracks to follow in the unmapped wilderness.

  The Museum of Writing, I soon discovered, was devoted to Jean-François Champollion, Figeac’s most famous son and my primary school hero; the first person to decode the Rosetta Stone. He had studied ancient languages from boyhood – Greek, Hebrew, Syrian, Aramaic and Coptic – and after years of working from drawings – the English wouldn’t allow him to see the original engraving – he finally translated the Rosetta Stone in 1822.

  The stone had waited quietly for 2000 years, a broken stele of granodiorite, an igneous rock made of quartz and plagioclase feldspar – a type of rock also found on the moon and on Mars – a pleasing if irrelevant piece of information. In 1799, a French soldier, Pierre-François Bouchard, found the stone, some say in sand, others say in a wall near the town of Rosetta, about 70 kilometres north of Alexandria. There were three scripts on it: hieroglyphics, Greek, and demotic Egyptian – which Champollion deduced was very like Coptic. From the Greek it was easy to read that this was a decree issued by Ptolemy V in 196 BC, stating that statues should be erected in his honour in all temples and that celebrations should be held. More significantly, it also said that the decree be inscribed in hieroglyphic, demotic Egyptian and Greek letters – in other words, it said: this is the same thing written three times.

  It took Champollion’s painstaking study to work out that the hieroglyphs were in fact mainly phonetic, that they were letters rather than pictures, and then, letter by letter, he deduced the value of each hieroglyph. With that, the whole written language of ancient Egypt could be read and the long-ago past revealed. Champollion showed that the Egyptians had in fact invented phonetic writing. The Egyptians themselves, however, had given the credit to Thoth, their ibis-headed bird-god.

  It’s curious the way the world seems to pattern itself, as if it truly does want to be read. I know it’s not a book written by God, but surely it could not be human to regard a flat impermeable world, a world that simply exists. Who alive can resist the desire to find meaning in the rhythmic repetition of images, in the return of the moon, the claw-prints of magpies, the shape of a heart in a rock. It’s what we do.

  I stood in the courtyard with bees on the wall and the Rosetta Stone underfoot, my pack still on my back, boots dusty. For the moment, the 16 days of walking seemed to have led me to where I needed to be. Then, today I looked again in the small black walking notebook for Le Puy-en-Velay to Figeac to see that I’d written just one day later, ‘Restlessness now. Where to go? What to do?’

  Phoenix rises

  I keep thinking about not being able to walk across the top of the cliff around Mont Blanc. I had the chance to face and overcome fear but it paralysed me, turned my legs to water, made me physically unable to walk. It was much more difficult to deal with than physical pain – in fact, for me, impossible. Each time I imagined walking over the path, thinking, I will see myself do it and then I’ll be okay, the fear rose again, making every part of me unable to act. I imagined being on the other side of the death-walk, and yes, there I was, but immediately afterwards came the image of the steps I would have to take on that icy slope above the chasm and the fear surged back like a wild drug. I had to crawl away from the edge on all fours. No longer a walking woman.

  This fear makes it difficult for me to imagine how Barney could decide to fly again. Each time my mind tries to imagine it, each time I try to put myself in his place, my body rebels. It’s too easy to die. For the story to end. To understand at all, I have to rely on the detailed answers he sends to my questions. When did you decide to fly again? Were your friends and Jenny okay with that? How did you feel in the weeks and days leading up to it? Didn’t your body rebel? I send questions every few days, feeling more and more like a species of voyeur. I wondered how close, how far inside someone else, I was allowed to be.

  ‘I’m ready to fly again now,’ Barney had announced. It was near the beginning of May the year after he fell when he told Jenny his decision. He had completed two months of practice, now he would wait for the first day when all the conditions were right: sunny with one or two small clouds, and a light breeze, around 15 kilometres per hour. He felt excited and nervous once he had made the commitment aloud. Jenny was anxious, but according to him, she said, ‘You were so much happier once you began flying. I’d rather you take the risk again and be happy.’ I asked her directly when I saw her at Byron Bay around that time – I met them there several times – and she said much the same thing, but I could see the shadow in her eyes. He wrote to me later, ‘There was really no alternative for me. Flying is an integral part of who I am, I couldn’t live and not do it.’

  Two weeks after he made the announcement, Sunday 20th May, the perfect conditions arrived. He checked with the Bureau of Meteorology website and the wind station at the launch site. These days there’s also a webcam on the cafe across from the site so it’s easy to check th
e weather in real time from home, but the weather report was enough to reassure him on that day. He emailed his flying friends to let them know he was driving up to Beechmont, the same hill he had launched from last spring, eight months before. As he drove through the farmland and native bush towards the launch site, the nervousness that had been building took hold of him. His stomach clenched and he suddenly felt dizzy. What if he couldn’t do it? What if he had to walk away in front of all his friends? There was too much to lose – everything he had gained in the last eight months. He was lucky to be able to walk. He could just turn around now and go home. He blinked hard and hauled his mind back to driving the car, concentrating on the road in front of him.

  And then he was on the hill and his friends were greeting him. It was a gentle blue day and everyone was happy to see him. He could feel their warmth and encouragement, and their fear for him. Was he a kind of superstitious offering, making them all safe? There were a few tourists too, standing near their cars further up the hill, waiting for someone, anyone, to start flying. His heart was much louder than it should be, so loud surely his friends could hear it. His stomach swirled and he felt as if he might throw up. He took small sips of water and rolled his shoulders to loosen them. Jenny stood nearby and smiled, but he could see the worry in her eyes. He looked at the sky; the small cumulus clouds that might have some uplift under them, weak but smooth. He looked at the trees. Just a faint movement of leaves. The grass was browner than it had been in September. A long hot summer and a dry autumn had passed without him noticing.

  Everyone was waiting. The day was perfect for flying. He had unpacked the wing, checked it, attached and checked his instruments. There was nothing else to do. He clipped into the harness, looped the bungy under his heel, clipped the chest strap shut and then pulled his gloves on. He gathered the wing up and walked the few steps to the launching area.

  Everyone was watching. Gavin helped spread the wing behind him. It was painful bending and squatting and easy to become unbalanced. He didn’t want to tumble sideways from a squat in front of everyone. Then the wing was ready. His hands gripped the brakes.

  He pulled down on the A risers and felt the wing tug on his shoulders as it lifted and ballooned. He let it rise over his head, a shadowy red sun lifting above him, then pulled a little on the C risers. His stomach was settling now that he had to concentrate. He turned and walked forward, his hands still firmly gripping the brakes. He released the risers and the wing surged forward a little; he picked up his pace, loosened the brakes and then he lifted lightly and easily off the ground, just like in his dreams.

  There were loud cheers and whoops and clapping behind him. The whole world was relieved and happy. A surge of joyful exhilaration coursed through him and he felt as if his whole body must be shining. A smile split open his face and his eyes pricked with tears. His legs were tucked into the flying pod, his arms were strong, his wing obeyed his every adjustment. He was free and light, floating, untrammelled by anything.

  He flew higher, gliding in a ridge lift, then found a small thermal that let him soar a few hundred metres above the small figures waiting on the hill below. The ranges were below him, the sky above, he was in a 360-degree world that extended forever. He felt the cool fresh air on his face. It was a beautiful May morning. He was a skinny, dark-haired child again, bursting with joy. He was above the farm, Mum and Dad were there near the house, standing in the backyard and they looked up and saw him flying above the chook yard and the wheat paddock. Like an angel, they would have thought, filled with golden light.

  He wasn’t thinking anything. There was just the sensation of the wing above him, lifting and dipping with the air currents, and the pull of his arm muscles responding to the shifts, and the feeling that he was breathing right to the edge of himself. He didn’t believe in souls, but he was living right up to, over the edge of, his skin. There were no eagles today, no wild soaring thousands of feet above the earth, but it didn’t matter, the fabled door to joy had swung open again.

  And then it was time to face the demon. It never had been taking off, or flying. It was landing. He couldn’t stay here forever. From the moment he stepped off into infinity, he had always had to come back to earth.

  ‘I have to attempt a landing,’ he told himself aloud. Attempt. He couldn’t alert the awful Fates by saying anything more certain than that. He was going to try to land on the ‘bomb-out’, the same place he had hurtled to earth eight months ago.

  As he flew over the landing site, he could see the wind sock was at a low angle in the direction of his approach, indicating a head-wind of around 15 kilometres per hour. Even though it looked safe, he circled over the site once, checking his ground speed, then circled back for his final approach. He noted the still leaves of the gum trees below on either side of the landing site, and the still grass beneath him.

  His heart was beating absurdly loud again, his stomach turning over. Nerves thrummed, tightened, clamped. His instinct, as always as he lost height, was to pull on the breaks, but it was crucial to maintain airspeed because below the height of the gum trees there was sure to be a wind-shadow, and without sufficient speed, the drop into the still air could cause a stall. The wing would deflate and he would be in freefall.

  He flew at trim speed with the brakes up and just enough pressure to feel any feedback from the wing, any turbulence or change in air pressure. He flew below the level of the gum trees and into the wind-shadow, maintaining his speed. The ground was rushing towards him very quickly now, his feet skimming over the grass. It was late autumn kangaroo grass, creamy and long, moving under his boots. He was as close to landing as he had been eight months ago.

  He concentrated on the ground beneath him and on the delicate shifts in tension in the wing above him. It was an extension of his nerves, his sinews and muscles. It was part of him. He pulled slowly and smoothly down on the brakes causing the wing to slowly flare, just like a bird flaring its wings before it lands.

  Then he landed softly, his feet hitting the ground without a stumble, and the wing sank gracefully behind him. There was a jolt of nerve pain, ‘the usual’ he said, and then a sensational flood of confidence. He grasped the lines in one hand and pulled on them and the wing bunched into a rosette that he could hold steady against any gusts of wind. He was standing upright, on the ground, in one piece.

  He had fallen and been broken and then, after all that, he had leapt off the earth and flown through the sky and had known himself to be at home there, and then returned to the same place where he had fallen. He waved to Jenny and to the other small cheering figures standing on the hill, then he unstrapped his harness, shrugged out of it and put it on the ground. He calmly and methodically began to gather the wing so that it could be folded and packed, ready for next time.

  Becoming wild

  Carcassonne to St-Jean-Pied-de-Port, France

  It’s hard to go on after triumph, perhaps even harder than going on after despair or loss. After cataclysm, if you don’t die you must go on; but after triumph there should be nothing more to do, the story should happily end. No more complications. But of course it doesn’t work that way. You have to keep getting up, taking action, taking risks. You have to deal with daily life. What do you do next?

  What I did next was to walk. Again.

  For some time I’d wanted to walk further, much further, than before. We had walked up to 300 kilometres at a time, but now that didn’t seem far enough. I don’t think it was just addiction, the need for a larger hit, although it easily could have been. It was more that I had begun to believe that if I kept walking, every day, day after day, for weeks and weeks, something would change. What that something was I had no idea, but I wanted to find out. Perhaps it would change my mind? Or my heart? Perhaps I’d be cured of restlessness.

  I could see it was the same for Barney, the desire to not just keep flying, but to fly higher and further and across unexplored country; although for him, it possibly wasn’t to do with restlessness. When
I tried to pin him down, he didn’t mention being restless but kept returning to the idea of being himself when he flew. As I try to pin it down now, it keeps slipping away, but I want to say it’s something to do with a sense in both of us – I want to claim in all of us – of yearning that is assuaged, and perhaps only momentarily assuaged, by becoming free, untrammelled in the landscape or skyscape, moving through earth, air, fire, water. It’s an old, old longing that won’t leave us alone. It gets us up in the morning after all joys and sorrows; it keeps us going day after day. It might even save us.

  Then one son, the one who keeps his old backpack even though it is torn and dirty, gave Anthony and me a book, A History of the World in 500 Walks. It had photographs and short descriptions of each walk that made me realise again the impossibility of knowing the world. I read the book and made lists of possible walks, and then narrowed it down to walks we could do in a month. Around 500 kilometres. Then I narrowed it again to walks that had somewhere to sleep at night along the way so we didn’t have to carry our world on our backs. I bought the Topoguide book for the Grande Randonnée 78, which runs from Carcassonne in the south-east of France to St-Jean-Pied-de-Port in the Pyrénées, most of the way from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.

  On the evening before we started to walk, four men stood up in front of the altar in St Nazaire basilica in Carcassonne and began to sing. There was no announcement, they simply opened their mouths and out came glory. The songs, from the Russian orthodox liturgy I later read, had a deep solemnity that made an unidentified receptor under my heart ache. It felt as if a membrane stretching there had waited for this sound forever, but now that it had heard it, it was not soothed because the sound awakened endless yearning. The men were barrel-chested, with deep voices, born in the ribbed caves inside them, effortlessly flooding the basilica. They sounded like the Russian and Georgian buskers I’ve heard in the Paris Métro filling the tunnels with infinite longing; echoing, echoing. Even when I rushed past with a busy, empty head in the corridors of Châtelet or Bastille, I could feel their voices stretching my ribs as the longing hit and expanded.