03 June 2011

Stirling Range to Porongurup
Bluff Knoll and Castle Rock Hikes

I’ve pretty much determined that should I find myself at the Grand Canyon, I will not then find myself on that Skywalk that goes out over it, even if it’s an open-free-to-the-public-day and there are complimentary tacos being served out in the middle by Oprah.  Here in Porongurup National Park on the Castle Rock trail, they have built their own mini-me version of that walkway, bolted along a gigantic stone face, the tail end of the platform hanging out over space.  I looked down through the grating into nothing but thin air and a very hard landing surface hundreds of feet below and said to myself, Hell no, I ain’t walking another step.  Who cares if the platform and all its attending pieces are virtually new?  In fact, how do I know they can withstand the stress of us both out here on them, for if today’s empty car park is any indication of the number of visitors this trail receives, then surely only 3 other people have walked on this thing since it opened 6 weeks ago.  And unless they were really big people, big jumping-up-and-down people, big let’s-really-put-this-flimsy-thing-to-test people, people of such size and stature that when I come to think of it could never squeeze through that boulder crack to get here, well, you can forget me inching my way out those last few feet.  Gina will do it.  She climbs 200 foot trees with nothing to save her but a repetitive mantra.  Send her to the end, I say.

Besides, that would be a good place for her to spend some time alone quietly reflecting upon the earlier part of our day, the part where she threw a temper tantrum when the rain came pouring down.  Sure, I packed the backpacks and had forgotten to include her rain pants, but really, there would have been no time for those.  We were too busy gabbing our way down the trail, the trail from the top of Bluff Knoll in the Stirling Range, to pay much attention to those building rain clouds.  So when it started coming down, the best we could do was throw on our rain jackets and start saying things our mothers taught us we shouldn’t.  Well, that was the best Gina could do.  I just put my head down and concentrated on my feet, the ones that were getting soaked as my boots filled with water, the ones that would carry me down this trail-turned-river, the ones that would carry me out of earshot of the unhappy camper.  I think it’s good for her to get these things out of her system.  Mother Nature could really care less.