The clouds wear the last pinks of a fallen sun. I’m reclined on a gusty, deserted beach, letting prickles of numbness build up in my arms.
It’s my last evening up on the top of Australia, and I’m a frightened child. Everything can kill you here. I heard talk of a plant that can lodge its stinger in you and cause constant pain for years. Crocodiles skulk like serpentine abominations in medieval paintings. A row of dense bush behind me seems keen to muffle screams.
It’s gorgeous, though: a perfect cove, lightly pitched so the water strays up high and forms thin, silvery pools. Plus, it’s my last night in Cape Tribulation before returning to Cairns, and, from there, Sydney. The rugged individualist within who has pushed me this high on the continent picks me up from the sand for one final wander into a mangrove grove in the last light.
Mangroves are giant gnarled fists clenching the sand, and for several minutes I’m tangled in their knuckles. Then I’m through. A celestial plane of still seawater warps smoothly around my shoes. Floating driftwood reptiles laze nearby, but with a sweep of the eyes I’m consoled. This is a scene that steps me back so that I watch myself watch it. There’s something eternal about this beach; it’s embossed with the glow and fade of endless days. I am nothing but timely crud.
Suddenly, the lowness of the light has got me worried. The wind is bitter. I shiver in the tropical paradise. I gaze along the bush and realize I’ve wandered far. There is a wide parabola of beach to cover, gripped at the vertex by mangroves. And then there’s the short bush walk to the car.
I begin walking urgently, so that the thin pools splash up in protest. The water keeps me from running. It’s dark enough now that the driftwood specks wriggle with lack of definition. I wonder what a crocodile sounds like.
I reach the mangroves, now a nightmarish thicket of slippery limbs. It looks like tangled souls in a Doré print of Dante’s Inferno. I remember gazing at one as a kid, unable to focus on anything, to grasp anything but excess, convolution, nakedness: a mess of members. Now I am forced to traverse the living grove in the hellish half-light. I emerge muddy and mishandled. Dark has fallen, so I begin to run.
Running across sand is like running in a dream. I feel the urge to fall on all fours, lash at the sand and slither, anything to propel me forward but this horrible, tethered striving. Crocodiles have mastered sand-bound locomotion, lubricated missile of torso sliding along as deceptively powerful frog legs thrash in concert at the ground. I kick up clouds of dust and stutter forward.
The stars are out, and I realize I’ve come too far. I leer at the bush before me but see no outlet. There’s a parking lot somewhere within all this bush. My car’s there. These are the two tenets that stand between me and hysteria. They are backed by an unassailable truth: I arrived here somehow. But then where is the path?
I double back, now cursing aloud and periodically emitting a breathy whine that scares me. The bush in this direction is just as solid. Then an opening yawns before me. I squint into the black and step down a small ridge. There’s mud under my feet that I don’t remember. Something makes a small tinkling. I realize there’s a deathly still swamp at my feet, a few shades blacker than what surrounds it. I leap back across the ridge and run, convinced there’s something abysmal behind me.
Surrounding me now is the prospect of dying alone and nowhere. It takes days to be missed out here; information travels slowly, in discrete, limited jumps. I could spend the entire night searching the bush for the path as crocodiles slip soundlessly out of the water to feed. I pluck up the courage to make one last methodical pass of the bush before despairing.
The waves rush, and the trees hiss. Strange insects chide the night. I pant, squint, and wave a service-less cell phone like a madman. Eventually the shaft of a jellyfish warning sign glints in the bluish light. I’ve found the path.
As soon as I sit in the driver’s seat of the rental car, I begin the process of trivializing my fear. Obviously I’ve reached the car, so obviously there has been nothing to be afraid of. This is the attitude I assume every time I recount the story: it all worked out, no worries. For better or worse, fear is only legible from the inside out. From the outside, it’s only so much noise.
By Patrick Lauppe ’13
