The Church of Higher Elevation

For Marshall, whose grace and generosity, this past week, was often at the forefront my mind.

Tasmania: Australia’s Disneyland, not counting the snakes and the leeches and obscenely volatile weather, driven by the Roaring Forties: those winds that pick up as they leave Argentina, screaming across the southern oceans until they plow head-on into this little island half way around the world.

I spend my first few days of summer driving Tasmania’s northwestern wilds known as the Tarkine. I explore rainforests thick with sink holes and tree ferns and navigate one of the most spectacular roads I’ve ever seen, surrounded by rolling alpine highlands. I pass field upon field of bright fuchsia and white foxglove (apparently invasive here, but they still remind me of home). I have an incredibly near miss with a Tasmanian tiger snake– involving a blind corner on a trail, a leaning tree, and a furious pitch-black reptile reared up ready to strike. I hike for hours through thirty-meter dunes. I walk along beaches’ broad expanses, layered waves crashing to foam around my feet as I breathe some of the cleanest air in the world, as a lighthouse beam cuts through the night and shearwaters twist through the sky under the western star.

Then on a rainy morning I leave my car with a nice lady in the seaside town of Strahan and hitch my way north with a retired tin miner, arriving to Cradle Mountain National Park and the beginning of the Overland Track.

__________

OVERLAND, DAY 1: MOUNTAIN WITH A FURY WHICH BELIES ITS NAME

“The name Cradle Mountain must be one of the greatest misnomers of the century.”

- The Mercury, Hobart, November 25 1971.

It’s raining. Hard.

Even in the rain, mountains shrouded, hillsides and wetlands burst with color: Tasmania’s alpine has hit wildflower season. Orange, red, yellow, purple, white– a never-ending rainbow meets me around every turn. My path winds through buttongrass moorland, dipping briefly into the rainforest adjacent to Ronnie Creek as I begin to climb, passing waterfalls and cascades tumbling furiously amongst moss-shrouded boulders and branches. I emerge into the scrub bordering Crater Lake, frenzied water rippling as dense clouds pour over the depression’s sheer walls. Rain turns to snow in earnest as I ascent to the mountain’s high plateaus, driving in furious curtains of ice as it crests and drops into the crater, rising in serpentine fashion to flow over the ridge on which I stand. Across the lake, through the chaos, the delicate ribbon of a waterfall plunges downward from the cliff’s rim to deep blue water below.

I fight raging wind and snow through six kilometers of high plains, passing close below Cradle Mountain’s peak somewhere along the way, stopping briefly into a small hut to refuel as I notice the shovel mounted over twice my height on the building’s wall: apparently Tassie does snow like a champion.

Despite ten days’ food on my back, the walk is frigid. Even so, red wildflowers rear beneath snowy blankets, adding dashes of color to my gray world of muted groundcover and rock. For one brief, magical minute as I wind through a patch of gums, just before I descend to the heat and company of Waterfall Valley Hut, the wind calms, allowing snowflakes to twist and float to the ground around me in silence.

DAY 2: WALLABIES IN THE SNOW

I wake to a world of white.

My boots crunch through pristine snow as I set forward from Waterfall Valley, rocky peaks still wrapped in cloud. I pass wallabies feeding at the edge of a small creek: the only vegetation exposed from under the snow’s soft cover.

My path skirts the rim of a sheer canyon, dark walls dropping to my left as snow melt rushes over the rim amongst low, dense pines and wildflowers. Short, compact alpine coral ferns and button grass extend out of sight as I crest rolling hills, moving from Waterfall Valley’s shelter into wind and snow on the high plains once again. Alpine lakes spatter the landscape, cool gray water wrinkling in the wind as snow showers race past, following undulating saddles and wind tunnels. Lake Will’s turnoff gets nixed when we reach our junction and glance westward to a wall of deep gray.

Blue sky appears– finally!– as I top a final crest before descending to this evening’s hut, nestled in a valley adjacent to Lake Windemere. Rugged, snowcapped peaks spread before me, ringing boggy moorland and pristine lakes—now shining blue as they reflect clearing skies. Neon pink Tasmanian waratah greets me as I descend to the lake’s edge, snow still cradled within the blossoms’ slender, curved petals.

Snow melts as we relax in the hut, uncovering a world aglow in alpine coralfern’s silver, green, and gold. A short afternoon wander reveals Barn Bluff, now clear of cloud, rising strong and stark over the lake, while delicate white orchids and squat yellow guineaflower line the boardwalk. The air stills, orange-eyed currawongs call, and metallic bronze skinks scatter before me.

As dusk settles a pademelon, resembling some erratic cross between a rat and a kangaroo, and her joey dig voraciously into the moss just outside our hut, and the last of the light disappears from the sky.

DAY 3: LIFECYCLE OF A CLOUD

I wake to a proclamation in a South African accent: “It must mean good luck if a possum pees on my raincoat.”

My gaiters reek. Overnight, a black brushtail possum has actually gone to the valiant effort of walking along the precarious rail from which we’ve hung our wet clothes to dry and marked Every. Single. Item.

I strike out under cover of deep, dense gray clouds: the distinct type that can only hold snow. Again. I traverse rolling plateaus along the rim of the Forth River Valley, from which churning clouds coil and twist as they condense from rising air. They pour across the plains in a dark shroud, just high enough to allow sneaking glimpses of the plains as the land descends from my standpoint to valley upon valley, guarded by stark, distant mountain silhouettes, all outlined my the slimmest sliver of pure azure. In front of me waits an opaque, imposing wall of gray as I venture blindly into the clouds’ damp, misty clutches.

Moor soon gives way to rainforest, and with it a world of green: moss cloaks branches and rocks; gnarled trunks angle halfhazardly across each other. Slender trees rise in dense, dark walls around me, and twisting, twining roots hold stones tight in their embrace. Every so often, red and white lichen spread across boulders in splashes of contrasting color.

I emerge from rainforest into a vast moor rolling forward from my feet in a vast array of greens and golds and deep rusty browns, ringed by peaks in every direction. Thousands of dolerite columns rise sheer and dark to form mountain walls, jagged spines descending to the plains in front of me. Far in the distance, New Pelion Hut’s windows and veranda glint in the noontime sun.

All too soon I descend into rainforest again, entering another exercise in balance and awareness as I doggedly navigate an endless precarious downward slog through a rocky, rooty track ankle-deep in mud beneath continuous runoff. After passing a gem of a cascade glinting as it splatters over striking black rock, I pass briefly through Frog Flats’ leech-infested lowlands, mountain rearing high around me. One final, brutal slog upward from the boggy flats and Forth River Crossing (fueled by a handful of nuts, a godsend of Cadbury chocolate chips and a hunk of overprocessed Kraft cheddar shoved unceremoniously into my mouth) and I arrive at New Pelion.

We watch rain move in veils as clouds wrap Mt. Oakleigh’s spires through the afternoon, and as dusk falls, wallabies emerge to browse once again amongst the moor in front of our feet.

DAY 4: WET PLAN? DRY PLAN.

Today is supposed to be a rest day.

Today turns into leg day. Again.

I say goodbye to the last of my original group this morning: those of us prepared (or bold enough, or dumb enough, depending who you ask) to set forward on the Overland despite Saturday’s storm. We form a tight pod, the lot of us: of those 40 scheduled to begin the track on Saturday, some odd number never set out. Word has it another seven spent a long, cold, dark, damp night in Kitchen Hut, an emergency shelter atop the plains between Barn Bluff and Cradle Mountain, before turning back with sodden gear. Another eight turned around from Waterfall Valley. Four skipped on ahead– “double-hutting,” they call it– to save time. Thirteen of us remain, including:

•      A crew of Sydney boys who’ve packed an entire glass bottle of onion-infused olive oil.

•      An older woman who’s astounded I’m hiking solo. “You’re so brave!” She tells me. Actually, no… I’m just a little blasé about doing the things I want to do. That being said, I’d like to believe I’m not going to end up on the receiving end of a Darwin Award.

•      The South African hiking the entirety of the track in jeans and joggers. (Oh, the chafing!!)

And, supporting us unofficially through yesterday has been Heather, the 73-year-old hut warden who still walks the Overland regularly and puts out gentle, enthusiastic, no-nonsense vibes like a favorite hiking grandma.

Unlike the rest of the crew I’m staying at Pelion for an extra night. Weather looks clear, so Imma hike my butt up Mt. Oakleigh.

I set forth from New Pelion, squelching upward through the rainforest floor’s muddy, slimy, rooty quagmire. Rusted tin cans thrust onto tree limbs mark my track through the deep green world. Soon the trail steepens, punching straight up the mountainside through dense pandani, umbrellaed tops arching into my path as I shove my way upwards. I emerge into the heath and follow a faint, narrow track toward the mountain’s summit, just in time for my world to turn white.

Clouds sock in the land around me, wind picks up and rain begins falling. The turn in weather is stark enough that I throw up a tent in the shelter of several boulders before the clouds lift, revealing Cradle Mountain National Park spread before me in a grand panorama. Plains glow as sunbreaks race across the land. Clouds rise and fall around peaks. To the north, Cradle Mountain rises in a jagged silhouette. Below, Mt. Oakleigh’s immense dolerite spires thrust skyward in a broken spine, standing guard over New Pelion Hut and its broad nest of buttongrass moorland. Lake Ayr reflects racing clouds to the south and the Arm River extends east into the Walls of Jerusalem behind me.

I re-enter rainforest on my slippery descent just in time for my weather window to close and hail to rain down from above.

DAY 5: KALEIDESCOPE

Mt. Ossa, Tasmania’s highest peak, is shrouded in cloud. From Pelion Gap, a solid hike above last night’s sleep at New Pelion, we sit and we watch, and we wait. After 30 minutes, clouds begin to lift: Ossa is a go. With the Aussie/Kiwi couple I’ve linked up with I ascend short scrubby slopes to Mt. Doris, a squat knoll between us and our goal, and emerge into a kaleidoscope of color: scoparia blossoms in layer upon layer of crimson, orange, salmon and yellow-green, interspersed with delicate white heath flowers, all riding atop deep forest green shrubbery, punctuated by patches of spongy neon green moss.

We continue straight up into Mt. Ossa’s spires, scrambling amongst boulders and skirting monster columns as we work ever upward. Our path levels as we near the summit, passing a broad snowfield: snow angels most definitely happen in my life for the first time in three years. And when we finally step up to that blessed geological marker at the mountain’s summit, the rock is entirely socked in once more.

And then the clouds lift, revealing a 360 degree world of peaks and spines and passes and waterfalls and alpine moors and rainforest, as far as we can see, in every direction. The whole of the Overland spreads before us: to the east, the Arm River extends into the Walls of Jerusalem. Southward, Frenchman’s Cap’s distinct profile thrusts proudly into the sky amongst ranges upon ranges layered behind the Acropolis’s halfhazard columns. Westward, the sky opens up over the Tarkine.

For a few short minutes we feel as though we’re on top of the world. Then clouds close around us once more, shrouding Ossa from view as we begin our descent.

DAY 6: RAINFOREST FOR DAYS

Today, for the first time, dawns clear. The sun rises through an azure sky as I press my morning’s coffee and don my pack.

I share my muddy trail with wombat tracks and poop, entering a twisted maze of buttressed tree roots and sucking mud. That cool, crisp smell of damp woods freshens me as I putz forward through the morning, crossing creek after gurgling creek as water dances through moss-covered rocks on its way to meet the Mersey River.

I pass Du Cane Hut, nestled in a cheery clearing beneath Castle Crag, swallows nesting under the eaves, and encounter some familiar names in the shelter’s notebook:

Tucked into every hut on the Overland lies a journal: a simple spiral-bound sheaf of plain paper destined to become a vivid, collective memory of those who pass through. Scraps of thought and ramblings and sketches snare individual triumphs and challenges, frustrations and despair, anger and hilarity, preserving keenly individual experiences, allowing future bushwalkers to perceive the world through a stranger’s eyes.

•      A young boy’s mom has reneged on the foot massage she promised him after a long, muddy day. “Six god damn hours of swamp, mud, rainforest, and THE DAMN ROCKS STRAIGHT SATAN’S POST BOX!” he writes. That’s ok, though, because he has beef and pasta hotpot for dinner.

•      One guy hates the hail and mud and rain. He hates couscous. Someone has stolen his toilet paper.  Also he hates the pregnant woman on his trip.

•      One couple highly recommends a swim and shag by the swing bridge at the arm river.

•      Someone else writes: “It should have been called the Underwater Track, not the Overland Track!”

•      One person pens an epic called "Terrible Transformations,” detailing the evolution of a young cultured woman "Chloe Clogger" through track guide "Snowy Snogger" to ratty, ruined, weathered ranger "Bert Nichols."
•     And also: "I received an owl from Gandalf asking me to use Krypton as Superman was suffering food poison after eating dehydrated Chicken Soy on night three at Pelion Hut. I was asked to fill in for him whilst he was on the toilet with diarrahea..."

Further into the rainforest, a short side trip leads down to a narrow gorge through which the Mersey River cuts. D’alton Falls thunders over stacked shelves in front of me, shining under the sun behing jagged black outcrops. Just upriver, Fergusson Falls plunges through a pool into a small slot ravine, over which a haphazard pile of rocks jams into a precarious natural bridge.

Half way through the day’s journey, yesterday’s ascent of Mt. Ossa catches up to me. My pack feels heavier than yesterday. My legs are shot. Picking my way through mazes of roots has proven slow-going and totally exhausting.

Under Falling Mountain’s watch, with the trusty protection of my sea green windbreaker (shademonster), I plug one foot in front of the other through ankle-deep quagmire. Today is the first day I’ve truly felt the Tasmanian alpine sun, sweat running constantly into my eyes as I work my way upward. And finally—Finally!! I turn a corner to find a dilapidated wooden sign, tacked onto a leaning dead tree, marking the top of this godforsaken pass.

I descend quickly, miniature skinks scattering from the boardwalk in front of me, sun glinting off bronze metallic scales. I emerge at Windy Ridge Hut, nestled in the deep glacial cirque of the Du Cane Range, whose jagged ridgeline rises high around me as the sun sinks behind looming peaks.

DAY 7: ENCHANTED FOREST
Dr. Suess or Tolkein, take your pick: Pine Valley is the stuff of fairy tales. Sheltered by mountains named after gods, one of Tasmania’s last stands of ancient rainforest cradles giants. Trees rise in a twisted, erratic mass of gnarled limbs, venturing upward toward the dense canopy from which light filters softly to the forest floor.

Ancient, colossal pines rise amongst a sea of slender trees, disappearing from sight above me carrying swirling burls taller than myself, great buttressed roots exuding serene power as they clench the ground. The forest floor extends in an endless web of tangled, twining roots, prehistoric needles piled deep and springy in their clutches.

In other places trees rise in threes or fours together, giants leaning outward from the hillside. Small glades free of the towering trees allow pandani to glow in the summer sun, rising together with waratah from a spongy, mossy ground.

Clear, fresh frigid creeks cut deep through the valley floor, shaded by leaning trunks, lined by mossy glades and water-worn stones. Running water’s fresh burble cuts through the forest’s serene, all-encompassing silence…  

I woke this morning to a cherry alpine glow on the Du Cane Range as I made breakfast and coffee from the hut’s viewing platform, birds’ morning chorus rising around me. I cruised down the track to Pine Valley, mammoth swamp gums reaching into the sky around me, rough, rusty bark giving way to smooth silver wood as the trees rose, spreading shading limbs over the rainforest. (I would later learn these trees are the tallest flowering plant on Earth, second in height only to the coast redwoods we have at home.) I left my bag at Pine Valley hut and continued into the valley and upward with Jo, John, and another Aussie couple, Cathy and Quoll, who we’ve half-jokingly dubbed Team Extreme. We climbed upward through root-ridden forest, emerging to a plateau with the Acropolis’ black dolerite walls towering behind us. An hour’s scramble up over boulder fields and a dash of proper climbing movement later, and I find myself looking down on the world from the peak known as the Acropolis.

Standing atop the Acropolis is akin to standing in another realm: colossal dolerite columns rise beneath me in a sharp, serrated, broken spine. The rest of the Du Cane Range sweeps forward in front of me, headwalls dropping into the abyss of a cirque where I slept last night. Behind me, Lake St. Clair winds out of sight in a broad, shining expanse. To either side, highland plateaus dotted with lakes mark areas aptly known as the Labyrinth and Lakes of Jupiter.

At this point, I’ve seen every part of the Overland from above.

DAY 8: ALICE IN WONDERLAND

I wake to dawn breaking over the rainforest as the morning chorus explodes in bright, clear melody upon layered melody: songbirds’ pure strains wrap me in a welcome reprieve from cockatoos’ raucous rasp I’ve become so accustomed to on the mainland.

Then I head upward once again, and today I finally understand in its entirety: Mt. Oakleigh was not a fluke. Nor was Ossa, nor the Acropolis. Tasmanians simply don’t believe in switchbacks.

They tell you not to enter the labyrinth without at least two experienced navigators, and never to go without a compass. What they don’t necessarily tell you: the Labyrinth’s sea of dolerite has its own magnetic properties, which dubiously affect that God-given navigation tool’s needle– so good luck if you find yourself slightly geographically embarrassed.

The Labyrinth is an alien landscape: some sort of never-ending, otherworldly, oversized bonsai garden. Miniature ecosystems rise within a square foot, or meter: filled with grasses, and mosses, white blossoms and spiny pink flowers atop bristled stems, and pines and lichen-caked rocks and stubby pines, layered one on top of another in a natural harmony at the water’s edge.

Tadpoles swim erratically through delicate alpine pools in the shade of short, slender pines. Gray-green crayfish mind their own business (as usual), orange frills fluttering as they sift through feathery deep green weed in shallow pools beneath stepping stones.

Deep brown boulders shine across the landscape, splattered in a patchwork of lichens layered in gray, black, white, orange, neon-lime green, and a deep rusty red. The air shimmers as the Tasmanian sun beats onto the highland. Waratah blossoms explode in vibrant clusters against the clear azure sky.

As dusk falls back in Pine Valley, a ranger has managed to scrounge up a double-ended candle stub for me. I light Chanukkah’s first candles as this magic forest dims, and darkness envelops me once more.

DAY 9: FEELS LIKE HOME

I walk among giants once more as I leave Pine Valley behind. My long, mellow day swings down the remainder of the moraine beneath the Du Cane and Traveller ranges toward Lake St. Clair, then twists and twines its way through the forest lining the water’s edge.

This forest reminds me of home, in a way: shelf fungi protrude form tree trunks, songbirds flit amongst shrubbery and spider webs glitter overhead in the dappled sunlight. Grass-green butterflies edged with black float amongst leafy trees. In other ways, this forest couldn’t be more different: many of the trees still standing are long dead, tilted at odd angles, holding their own fallen limbs aloft in a stark silhouette, almost as a dark and proud offering against the sky. I cross creek after creek as water rushes toward the lake’s expanse from alpine lakes until I finally arrive at the little beach and jetty marking Echo Point.

Slender, delicate trees grow from the rocky beach, leaning over the water’s edge. Across the lake, the Traveller Range glows. Welcome swallows swoop over the lake, occasionally landing next to me on the jetty, clutching slender whips of nest material. Clear water laps gently at the jetty, wavelets driven by a constant, cool breeze, Lulling me to sleep in the afternoon sun.

In the evening I construct a ramshackle menorah from stones on the shoreline, lighting a modgepodge mix of tea candles and stubs as Mt. Ida watches from across the water.

On Day 10 I wander the rest of the way out along Lake St. Clair, rain softening the forest in my last hour on the Overland. I arrive at the Visitor Center, laugh a little bit in glee, change into my least-stinky clothes and drink an exorbitantly priced chai. Then I hitch my way back to Strahan with a nice gentleman who genuinely believes the earth is flat (supported by scientific evidence, including compasses and the tides), and whose life ambition is to own a Chevy truck. I light candles amongst dunes at the seaside, gazing across wild water toward Argentina.

And as I shelter the menorah’s flame, the last entry penned into the journal at Pine Valley Hut murmurs in the breeze around me:

“there’s a whisper on the night wind

there’s a star agleam to guide us     

and the wild is calling, calling…
let us go.”