Random reminder

Press, 27 March 1986, Page 17

Random reminder

LIKE WIND IN DRY GRASS

The recent Random reminding trampers not to balance the unpunctured tin on top of the precious fire lest — BOOM! — the long cold beanless coffeeless fireless wait for the railcar begin, caused one Mt Pleasant man to wish that he had been so lucky. Back in his student days, he got the summer holiday contract to count gnats knees on Mount Remote high above the Maakona Range in past the Serendipities to the northwest of Innisfree. There was none of this modern helicopter nonsense. It was three day walk. If all went well, they told him, there would be supplies. If all had not gone well, there should be some of last year’s oatmeal, and he had a rifle. Good luck.

The supplies were there, but they had been incompetently stored. There was rot, curruption, and decay. Vermin scuttled. Blowflies hummed. His stomach heaved. It was like an Outback pub.

He salvaged what he could, and pushed the rest into a shallow grave. He poured kerosene on the maggots and tossed a match. Then he stripped and dived into a tarn. The cloud formations were beautiful. One cloud was too low and too brown. He turned. The hillside was alight. Deep dry snowgrass and tussock, silently blazing.

“Apart from the danger,” he recalls, “it wasn’t a good start to my career to wipe out half the rare species in the Alps with a midsummer napalm attack. I wanted to join the Parks and Reserves, not the Forest Service.”

He filled a sack at the tarn and, naked and barefoot, lurched uphill with the sack on his shoulders. Leaking from every split and fissure, the sack left a watery trail. It slowed the advance of a small sector. He rushed back for a refill. An hour and a half later, trembling, he knew that he had won.