A Jungle Epiphany

by Linda Mason (United States of America)

I didn't expect to find Papua New Guinea

The rain was sluicing down. The narrow, muddy trail was striated with large tree roots, forcing a Zen-like concentration to avoid putting one's foot in a dangerous place. The humidity was around 80 percent. I was on the Kokoda Track in Papua New Guinea, between the villages of Issurava and Alola. Our trek leader had described this section of the trail as "undulating", which meant neither punishingly straight up nor steeply down. All my life I had dreamed of being in a jungle; at the age of 8 I was reading books on jungle survival. Now, years later, I was here. I would turn 65 in the jungle, on terrain so rough that it can only be traversed on foot. The Kokoda Track runs 60 miles through the Owen Stanley mountain range, climbing to a height of 8,169 feet. Locals cover the distance in three days, wearing flip flops or barefoot, the women often carrying heavily loaded string bags strapped across their foreheads. Non-locals tackle the terrain in expensive hiking boots, wielding metal poles for balance, and usually take between four and twelve days to complete the hike. We had ridden into Kokoda village in a PMV, or people moving vehicle, the standard means of transport in PNG. Hours on unpadded wooden benches in the back of a truck, over unpaved, tortuously rutted and muddy roads, had left me feeling like I'd been beaten to death inside a malfunctioning washing machine. Now, as we began our trek, my inner child was ecstatic. My older self was a bit trepidatious, uncertain there had been sufficient training, dubious of what my legs might feel like after a day on the track. A couple of hours on fairly flat terrain led us to a muddy path that went up-- straight up. For an hour. This is where you realize what you've let yourself in for, and wonder if you have what it takes. You find you do-- and the country is absolutely stunning. As green as Ireland, lush, primeval. While walking you learn the history of the intrepid Aussie soldiers and local guides who fought their way along this trail in 1942, leaving behind them a haunted landscape saturated in blood. You realize very quickly that what they did, you could not do. Villages in PNG are very well-kept and clean, unlike the large cities. We find houses built on stilts, primitive outdoor showers and long-drop toilets. The villagers, shy but very welcoming, are happy to show us the small museums they maintain of artifacts found in the jungle after the war. The need in these villages is great. Those who cannot manage the trail due to age or illness are dependent on doctors who arrive infrequently by helicopter-- when the helicopters can get in. We learn that the leader of our porters lost his 5-year-old daughter to malaria; no one in this century should ever lose a child to a disease that can be so easily prevented. You become ever more aware of your unearned privilege as you swallow you own malaria pills each day. You feel guilty. Despite the hardships, the village children are happy. They play the way Western children used to play, running free, with no electronic distractions. They may know want, but they seem not to know boredom. As the days pass you fall into the rhythm of these days. Your problems look small beside the hardscrabble lives of people who have so little material wealth, yet are far richer in social capital. You begin to wonder how it would be to leave the world you know behind, to hike into a village and never leave; to return to something older, more primal, something you recognize as possibly superior. You wonder if you have what it would take to return to Eden. The rain was sluicing down. The mud was sucking at my boots with every step. I was soaked to the skin-- and I had never been happier. I had returned to a place I'd never been, but for which I'd been yearning my entire life. My grown-up self had finally brought my child self home. A circle was complete.