The infinity of our spirit

Dry Camp – 30.09.2002

I spent another terrible night. I lie in my sleeping bag with stiff limbs and wonder how I’m going to get through today’s run. “Now get up. Come on, get up. You have to keep going today. Walking is the order of the day. You can’t smuggle yourself across Australia from one rest stop to the next,” it says to me. “I can do that. I can do what I want. I can lie there for as long as I want. You don’t have to order me to do anything.” “Well then, the sun will burn you up. You know how that feels. Loading becomes torture. So get up already. Come on.” “Well, then it’ll just burn me up. I just can’t. Now leave me alone. Switch off at last.” “It’s not only going to be hot, but also very windy. Dust will blow over your sleeping bag. Flies will eat you up. You’ll sweat and in the end you’ll have to get up.” “Ahhh, leave me alone now. You’ve done it again. My God, not even here in the wilderness can you lie undisturbed,” I curse quietly now and swing my lame bones over the bedstead. “What did you say?” Tanja asks, half asleep. Oh, nothing,’ I reply, grumbling a little. “But you said something, didn’t you?” “I was talking to myself,” I croak, my throat hotter.

After we have had breakfast 3 ½ hours later, packed and loaded the camels, I lie down on the ground on my side. I bend my right knee over my outstretched left leg and breathe in and out deeply. “Now,” says Tanja and presses my right shoulder to the ground while she presses my bent leg down with her other hand. It is liberating and my lower back vertebrae are in a pain-free state again. Before I stand up, we repeat the same technique, only this time Tanja presses her left shoulder and left knee down. Again it cracks like an old timber frame. We have been using this successful method for many years to bring displaced vertebrae back into alignment. It almost always works, unless the tension has developed into inflammation.

At 08:15 we leave the dry waterhole and head east. Despite today’s cloudless skies, the wind rises to gale-force gusts and blows in our faces. Willy Willys whirl across the desert of stone and dust. With hurried steps we cross the parched skin of Mother Earth. If I wasn’t sure I wasn’t asleep at that moment, I would think I was walking on the moon. The desolation of the lunar landscape shows us its pitilessness with every meter, shows us its potential for hopelessness. With aching limbs, a sore throat and a headache, I creep over the hot rock. Back, knee and heel pain force my thoughts into a cheerless, gloomy hopelessness. Not for the first time, the question of meaning begins to arise in me. A blackness spreads that makes me feel sad and despondent. I struggle with myself and keep looking at Tanja. She also follows her thoughts. She also suffers from head, knee and back pain. We are too tired to talk. Too weak to break through the howling of the wind with our voices.

Meter by meter, on and on we go, without believing that we are getting any closer to our destination. Questions about the destination arise. Where is it? What is it? Will we achieve it? When will we get there? Is the destination the east coast? Or is it the inner maturing process? Is it perhaps a combination of the two? Are we satisfied when we achieve it? What comes next? Will it continue then? What happens next? Are these questions important? Do I even have to ask myself these questions? Will our bodies be strong enough to carry us into a new world that is unknown to us? Is our spirit strong enough? Will we have enough energy after Australia to fulfill our next dream? Do we really want to cycle through Russia and China? Question after question flits through my brain. Labor from right to left. They repeat themselves, going round in circles, only to return unanswered. Everything is shaken up. Nutrition, philosophy, spirituality, saving Mother Earth, religion, politics, media, war and peace, growth and humanity’s chance of survival. All topics that we will soon be presented with every day here in the solitude of Australia. Questions, answers and more questions. Emotional depths in stark contrast to bliss. Awareness and discovery of your own body. Discovery of pain. Overcoming the pain. What is behind pain? Is he trying to tell us something?

Discovering the infinity of our spirit. Conversations with the desert, Mother Earth, the Higher Self, the superconscious and self-talk soon alternate on a daily basis. It’s like a washing machine, a centrifuge that squeezes everything unimportant out of our brains until only the essence remains. But what is the essence? The thoughts come together, flow through a funnel, are visible and understandable until the answers are within reach. Until everything is self-explanatory, only to come up with new unresolved questions a little later. It is a repetitive loop that ultimately never resembles itself. It is an adventure of superlatives to hunt for answers and solutions to the many questions. It is the true adventure. The adventure to find ourselves, to explore our deepest inner self. An adventure to build a bridge to the rest of the world from the eternal grounds of one’s own psyche, because everything is connected. Nothing is separate from each other. It is a path that leads into the infinity of the universe. A path to the center of all that is, a path to the all-encompassing, a path to God…”

Denis! Denis are you dreaming? There’s a car coming!” “What?” I reply, snapped out of my mental spiral and look to the side. At a distance of about 100 meters, a road train overtakes us on the barren plain, which is as wide as a thousand highways “That’s Robert!” I shout as the cattle truck stops in front of us in an explosion of dust.

“Well, that’s a surprise,” we greet our former host. “Yes, I didn’t expect to see you again. I have to get some cattle from one of the fences to the east,” he explains. “So I’ll see you again when you drive back tonight?” I ask. “No, I have to deliver the cattle in Boulia and drive back via the north-south route. You’re making good progress. How are you?” “Oh, to be honest, I’m not feeling well at all. I feel quite weak,” I reply. “Do you have a sore throat and headache?” “Yes.” “Ah, then you’ve caught a virus. Angus and Clara have been suffering from the same symptoms since yesterday.” “That’s good to know. I thought I was getting too old for a trip like this,” I reply, laughing. We talk for a few more minutes until Robert leaves again.

A few kilometers later, an untraceable track forces us to cross country again. We are now leaving Marion Downs and, according to the map, are on the land of Lorna Downs Station. At King Creek we come across a fence. Exhausted, we stand in the sun at almost 50 degrees and look at the wire mesh. I spot a gate in the distance. “Should we go through there?” I ask. “I don’t know. You’re the navigator,” Tanja replies, visibly shaken. Too exhausted to make a decision, I give Tanja the lead line from Sebastian and kneel on the hot floor for a few minutes. After a few minutes, the attack of weakness is over. “We’d better walk along the fence. If the map is right, it ends in three kilometers, then we can march east again,” I decide and pull the sweating animals onwards.

We come across another track that is not on the map. It leads us in the desired direction. Cattle run across the dead ground in front of us. Where do they get their food from? It is a mystery to me how these animals survive here. To the south of us, we spot a sparse row of trees. Hoping to find shade and something to eat for our hungry camels, we walk towards them. As we get closer we see that perhaps a hundred or more cattle have claimed the space for themselves. We now head west, following the poor crack in the ground marked on the map as Canary Creek and settle down in the half-shade of a eucalyptus tree. Although there is hardly anything for our bumpy comrades to eat here, we decide to stay…