Chapter One
Valley Rains
On approach to the valley, I was disappointed to find it was raining, and rather heavily I might say. My guide's agile limbs may have helped him up the scramble of the rocky slope but my jellified legs certainly weren’t! Too much tea and crumpets and far too little time mountaineering. However, my resolve is iron nonetheless and it was the most desperate need of mine to reach the real world beyond the valley.
There’s not much valley to see here but appreciate the imagery, not only was I to adventure somewhere unknown, she was using the very sky as a veil to playfully keep her secrets from me. Provided I didn’t slip and tumble to my demise of course!
From One Valley To Another
You see the rocks man! These great pillowy boulders take an effort to skirt and climb but all around them sit the jagged buggers ready to tear up your ankles! At last we made sight of the other side of the valley, the rainy veil no longer a cloak over the future, my future. The scale of it, I tell you, is scarcely to be believed. Like the claw of a gargantuan bear (perhaps Ursa Major herself) has rent the land in two, dividing us from the real. I hope she smiles her maw down on me now as I venture forth.
Mossy Cliffs In The Rain
This drenching storm is easing, thank the heavens, and I can start to make some sense of what’s around me. We’ve descended into the valley now, following this great gouge through the world. Over our heads the cliffs waver and loom large, ominously threatening to drop onto our heads. They’re blocking the sun, what little of it there is through these persistent rain clouds, but they sparkle! Some of it has to be the silken wet coating they’ve received, but I’m convinced there’s something greater to it, a metal of some sort glinting at us.
Just as interesting are the great beards of moss dripping down under the weighty overhangs. Sodden, they were hanging dead, but hundred metre vines supporting feathery fronds, green lace netting breathing fresh air into this otherwise brutal place. We took a break under the protection of one such curtain, drops still finding their way into my tea from the stalactites above and through the green filtered light I gaped at the distance we’ve travelled.
And The Skree Begins To Fall
It’s been five hours and finally that dratted rain has stopped. We continued along the floor of the canyon, undulating with its many ribs. My companion and his ever present joviality told me that the rains signal a great change in the world and in man. Such spirituality doesn’t meet much sentiment in myself but I humoured him and asked how the rain would change himself or I. His reply was swift, ‘Are we not wet?’. Well, I can say that put me in my place. The land is too I suppose. I had made to set my pack down for a biscuit to ponder his mysteriousness, but the man exclaimed “The world is changing!” and “We must move with it.” I laughed at him but the seriousness in his eyes met me a steely gaze that this was no joke. And sure enough not ten minutes later did I begin to understand why.
Rumblings and cracking and snapping and scraping, the rustle of gravel and the whispers of sand blew down the valley after us, carried by the soft breeze which had followed the rain. My guide was being literal, the world was changing following the rain, it had loosened the earth. First the small stones would make their way to gravity’s bosom and as they did they would loose larger rocks which in turn would free those larger still. The swift exit I had been forced to precipitate from the valley was well founded and towards the end of our climb I turned to capture this image just as the great earthworks were beginning to shiver with the falling of stones, tremble with the collapse of rock and shake with the reseating of the earth. Just as well we were on the other side. When I return again, this valley and the world I once knew would be a different place from the one I had just left.
The Spiral Jetty
I’ve been a bit cheeky here. I’m told the locals call this cove the “Sea Snail”, for rather obvious reasons. But on our descent towards the water and the waiting craft I could not but laugh at the remarkable similarity to that great work of land-art “Spiral Jetty”. But we’re not in Kansas anymore, or should I say Utah. Remarkable. Night has truly crept in, I struggle to remember when, I guess that’s the folly of staring at your toes, trying not to trip over the land or even your own feet. I’m writing this on the boat, it’s slow rocking dragging me towards Morphius, but my mind is alive! Electricity like never before, I can almost see it in the air, this whole place beyond the valley is charged and poised to erupt, explode.
Perhaps that’s too violent. There’s life here! The land itself even is alive, the landscape moves, grows and swallows itself, an endless sea of possibility and opportunity and I just want to run around drinking it all in, drinking in the sun and the dark, like a child hyper on sugar, running in circles after an injection of candyfloss. Like following that jetty, seeing how deep the snail shell goes.
The Bright Island
I couldn’t tell you the time, but my wonderful captain came to our cabin and woke us up. Usually a grumpy avatar of myself would blearily lambast the scoundrel who’d do such a thing after an entire day’s hike, but this was for a sight that could bring near tears to the eyes. A shining Island! A red sand ring surrounds this rocky outcrop covered in what must be a bioluminescent algae of some description. What we see here is a short exposure as we reached the tip of a spit that pushed its way out towards us. I’m told they shine for a few weeks of the year and usually only at night, the red sand is often covering the whole place. Isn’t it wonderful?
We glided slowly past and when the light was drifting off to the horizon the three of us sat in what would I guess be called the bridge, though it’s resemblance to a tin shed with a big wheel and a window is uncanny, drinking coffee and a few hands of cards, though my mind was far away from our poker barrel. Very far, I don’t know when I’ll be home again, I don’t know if I truly care. What I’ve seen already has filled my eyes to the brim with wonder and they stared through the barrel into the future.
The dirt at the bottom of my cup woke me from my reverie and I excused myself to head to the prow, throw away those bitter grains and lift my head towards the peaking sun on the horizon.
Under The Storm
Something fierce is raging overhead, I’m anxious about the weather in our future, not another day of rain I pray! We’ve a couple hours to go before we find harbour and the sea is calm, but I’m still hearing thunderclaps. These clouds are unusual to say the least. I stare up into them and it’s as if I stare right through them, just the pure blue sky above, but you catch an oblique angle and they look solid as mountains undulating overhead. Captain tells me they’re not uncommon, and usually don’t rain... usually. He described them to me like a bubble. Some thin membrane holds the whole thing together and allows it to move like it does, floating on the warm breeze brought by the sea. He says if you get trapped inside when one forms, it really is like being on a mountainside, rock underfoot, though a rock that will roll and jostle you.
There’s an old story told to the children when they are young. About a girl who ran away from her family up in the mountains. The next day she woke up and the mountains were moving, one of these clouds had formed around her in the night and carried her off. Her family below saw her floating in the air, tumbling and rolling as the waves of rock buffeted her. They followed her over the sea and with a great harpoon sought to anchor the cloud and allow her to climb down. But the moment the harpoon touched the membrane the whole sky burst with thunder and from the point the spear had hit, rippled out a great deluge of grey water, bringing the girl down too, the calm sea seemed to boil and the ship capsized. I asked what happened to the girl and the captain’s discordant teeth grinned, “She never left her family again.”
The Lonely Caravan
Land! Land and life and dung and sand! We’re still a day from what may be termed civilisation, but at least we are done with that bobbing and menacing current. I’ve not been right since the captain told me his little story and was all too pleased to say goodbye and leave him to moor his vessel. The rest of the journey to a satisfactory bed would be, gracefully, on foot, and even better, not my feet. I would like to introduce (enter stage left) Carasco the camel, my grumpy and nosey steed with farts like a cannon. He came from a small stables by the dock where a caravan was resting while the worst of the sun has its way with the world.
Over a few small dunes was revealed the breathtakingly flat expanse of a desert, its serene beauty interrupted by the odd shrub or small rocky patch, calmly stretching out to the horizon. The wind lazily swept the yellow-red floor with a light brush every now and then, maintaining a steady listing flux in the otherwise eternal environment. The effortless sense of wonder is brought to gobsmacking awe by the most enormous cliffs what must be a hundred miles away. They seem to tumble and attack the horizon like knives or jagged shards of glass protruding from the Earth. The heat haze wrought by the desert obscures where they meet the world. Scale has lost all meaning to me now I must tell you. Sitting on Carasco I feel like a dust mite staring up from my study carpet back home.
Erosion
What can I say? Swapping a boat for a camel hasn’t done anything to alleviate the mild feelings of queasiness I’ve been hiding from my companions. We slept in tents, I wanted to sleep under the stars but I have now seen why that would have been a bad night’s sleep. Take these three photos: The time between the first and last is merely an hour. We set to rest by this oasis for lunch today. One member of the caravan suggested the cave was the mouth of a sandworm’s burrow and the subsequent dip in the land that has allowed water to rise, where it landed after breaching. I’m still not entirely sure whether he was serious or not, the little hill formed by the cave has to be at least ten metres tall, that would be one hell of a worm!
The winds started picking up from the east and the camels began to groan, they knew what was coming. The absolute mother of all sand storms swept through us. We hunkered down as best we could and hid our faces in the fibres of our head wrappings while ferocious little needles pricked and poked at my skin, somehow breaking through layer upon layer of cotton. By the time the howling gusts had abated, the cave and its oasis were gone, rubbed out by the rolling cruelty of the desert.
Night Draws In
I’m gone three days yet I’ve lived my whole life here, it seems. We’ve reached our little desert hamlet where we shall rest a while and resupply before venturing further. Sleep calls, and I’m promising myself a cold beer tomorrow or whatever equivalent can be found with food and rest. When alcohol and travellers mix, lips become loosened with tales of the world and the mysteries of the land, or so I’ve heard. We’re laid up at a tavern of sorts, a series of small mud brick apartments laid around a square, in the corner of which is the main establishment area and to its opposite the stables. The bleary eyed owner seemed happy to have us, despite the hour of our arrival, with the caravan taking up half the rooms, one man had to sleep with the camels! Lots were drawn and with a bottle of something fierce for company he didn’t complain.
This shot is my parting gift from the desert, for now. Before the night fully closed upon us I caught our vast plateau in my lens. Don’t be fooled by those snaking apparitions, this is no aurora. Dust. Waves of it, the windfront a thousand metres up, drawing in the night.