Out into the wild

Last week I had two days off and finally made it into the beautiful wilderness of Appalachia:


(Yeah, I only really have two pictures to show for two days of hanging out. But then there really is no way to capture these things in boring old pictures anyway. You'll have to come and check it out yourself :-P)

On Wednesday, Anneke (Praagman - should be known to most of you) came on a flash visit and brought a car, allowing us to make it to the Coopers Rock state forest: a pearl of tranquillity (which I take it is a slightly odd wording in that pearls don't necessarily have much to do with tranquility, but let's leave it at that anyway) not too far from town. After a long and tiring walk through the temperate forest on a warm spring day, we drove back to town to visit ... the arboretum - and have another tiring walk. So yeah, there you have it - visiting me does generally involve a reasonable amount of footwork...


The next day was no less entertaining and also resulted in a healthy tiredness at the end of it: together with most of the astro-students and a couple senior staff, I participated in the inaugural astro white water rafting trip! (The fact that two of the party of nine were actually plasma physicists is a detail we'll be happy to omit.) Since cameras are of course nothing you would want to bring on such a trip, you'll have to believe me when I say I courageously took the hot spot and valiantly guided my raft through the thunderous, perilous rapids of South-Western Pennsylvania. (That's right, we actually went right across the border since that turned out to be the nearest good spot to go.)

And what do you know? We didn't capsize, I didn't fall out (even though the front seat didn't really have any hooks for my feet - or any support at all, for that matter), didn't bash my head against the rocks we glided past and I still do not regret choosing the cheapest health-care plan. All in all it was a nice experience, floating down the river through the forests, seeing the imaginary natives of centuries past sneak through the bushes in hunt for turkeys and black bears. Noticing the settlers arrive at the river - yet another obstacle to overcome. Finding a derailed railway carriage and deducing from the large trees that stand all around it, that it must have lain there for quite some time - perhaps ever since the robbers of the West - the American Ned Kellys - put up a scheme and grabbed whatever was there. Or ever since a tree came down as the train thundered past, though such realistic explanations of course don't rouse my fascination and imagination quite as much.

I must admit, the landscape here never fails to get me dreaming. It must be incredibly easy to write a historical novel about life in the Americas in times past, because the imagery is all right there: the trees, streams, mountains - granted, there's the occasional power line, but apart from that - there's so much room down here! There are so few people on such a massive continent... And so much has happened so recently!

If you think I'm losing it again, consider this: in the BeNeLux, there are on average 371 people per square kilometer. While Australia is a whole lot less dense, Melbourne sure isn't. In West-Virginia, that number is 29 - more than ten times less! On top of that, Flanders fought the French in 1302 - and we still talk about it. My little country back home has of course been the field for many other armies to fight, from Waterloo to WWII. But that's all messy warfare - one ruler comes, throws out the previous one, raids our churches, steals our art and takes whatever taxes he can before the next invader comes knocking. To my mind, Belgian history is the boring constancy that primary school history lessons are composed of.

Not so with North-America. This is the land where Winnetou once roamed the plains. The land where famished Irish built a new life on their up-and-at-them attitude. The place where strong men delivered ad-hoc justice, mounted on their fierce stallions and sporting the guns that defended the weak and harmless. This is the land where a Don Quixote could be brave and valued without needing to be mad. Forgive me for being entirely unrealistic, but it's true that America is the continent of which we read fascinating stories and see exciting movies.

Of course I know that country (which must have been much harsher and probably didn't have any of the romanticised titbits Karl May and Clint Eastwood would have us believe in) has long since disappeared: nobody lives randomly in the wild - except for campers, like everywhere else - and there are no settlers trekking through the wilderness: settlers these days have a 4WD and airplanes. But there's so much unspoiled, free, empty and (in sharp contrast to most of Australia:) livable land around here that I keep on being reminded of those stories of old - the great promised land out West. So as mad as I may be, please don't blame me for continuing to expect finding John Wayne besides a camping fire every time I see a creek or a rotting tree trunk.