Nick On Numbers!
Howdy World Trekkies!
It's me, Nick Point again. Our group has been getting a lot of questions from you Trekkies that ask for numbers and statistics and so forth. So I am going to give you the absolute final word relating to all these items, as I am a virtual walking, talking encyclopedia of numbers and insignificant factoids!
You ask how big it is- Sumatra or the rainforest or whatever? It's all the
same answer- depends. I'm not trying to be smart, but think about it. Who
really knows or cares if it is 25,673 square this or thats?! What it depends
on, is how you are travelling. Case in point (not a relative)- the Gunung
Leseur National Forest is humongous when you are slipping and sliding up and
down and up and down, thousands of steps high and a long way down again!
When
you are caught in the middle of a torrential downpour (which will get you
sooner or later if you hang out for more than a few hours) the park gets
about double in size! It's true- it actually absorbs water and expands! I
know this for a fact cause I was walking just as hard on the way back but in
the blinding rain (or was it a freak waterfall?) it took me twice as long to
get back! When we flew into Sumatra, we passed close to the park and it was
just this little weenie type patch of mountain and forest. But when you are
sweating like a medicine man in a Batak sweat lodge and grappling for the
nearest rattan bush to pull you up another two feet, distance warps and
stretches out to where the path never ends. Einstein would have understood
what I mean. By the way, don't grab that rattan bush, cuz it's looks like a
stick of shark's teeth and will rip your hand to the bone and attract all the
leeches within smelling distance (I almost gave a number but as I said, it
depends).
How much does it rain, you ask? Try standing under Niagara Falls for 43 minutes in the late afternoon and that's how much rain. Then it stops. Period. Not the falls, but the rain. From a roar to silence. How much silence? How quiet is the ringing in your ears? So quiet that it gets every living thing in the jungle talking about it, because then the toucans and next the cicadas and the macacques start in on how much it rained and how quiet it got until the rainforest positively shouts with the noise. How much noise? Please don't get me going! The only place I have ever been where it was really quiet for a long period of time, breathstopping quiet, is out in the middle of the Arabian desert away from the jets and incessant humming of computers and the voices of Toyotas and loudspeakers at four in the morning. But only then when the wind hushes up...then it's so, so empty of sound, so peaceful... that of course, it makes you want to shout, and that, for some perverse reason, is exactly what we all do- hoop and holler and make norting sounds until we chase away the silence that threatens to overwhelm us.
Back to my task- numbers. I can tell you how far it is to our camp along the Bohorok River way, way out in the forest. First you climb straight uphill (always slippin and slidin) for about three quarters of an hour until you come to the place where they feed the orangutans. Then you collapse in a heap to catch your breath, only to find you are in a mixture of mud and gorilla dung (they really aren't gorillas, just distant cousins). You have Another Great Adventure watching the orangs swing in from who-knows-where to get their breakfast (a future Nick Point tale) and then you shoulder your way-too-heavy pack, that you wished you hadn't stuffed with gobstoppers and extra pajamas, and start up again. It always seems up. Another LONG way, huffing and puffing until you have sweated out five pounds of pure mineral water and salt, to the place where we get to taste quinine bark and have our first snack. One boy is barfing in the bush, a few others collapsed in a coma, and the teacher rambling on about some type of medicine and some exotic plant that at this point is about as interesting as lying in the path of army ants, which someone else is doing. About two seconds of rest, and, you guessed it, up we go. We are trying to hear the call of the three-toed, long-necked something or other, but all I hear is my own wheezing, gasping lungs and the distant drums of a major headache pounding ever louder in my ears.
Finally, the guide says it's almost the top. So, bolstered by the good news, we march on another two hours, mostly up, but sometimes down, so we can climb up again, until the guide tells us again that it's almost the top! As a matter of fact, and we weren't very happy about his lack of precision in the English language, he told us it's the next top, then the next top, and the next about three or four more times. In our collective minds, or delirium, we all secretly hatched a plot to tie him to the nearest rattan bush next time we caught our breath. Which we never did- until about 6 hours later, when we actually did come to the last top. From there on, we just fell, tumbled, slid, grabbed, flipped, and groaned straight down about an hour until we landed on the banks of a raging river. The camp was there- over there- across the river about 50 yards. Home sweet home. A piece of black plastic tarp draped over some bamboo poles, tucked into a freshly hacked out area of jungle about three feet square. But it was a beautiful sight, if only we could reach it.
We had an idea that 40-gallon plastic garbage bags would come in handy for something. The guides stripped down to their underwear (Calvin Klein watch out!), jammed all of our gear in those sacks, popped them on their heads and waded across the river up to their eyeballs in brown water but not a drop of water touched any of our gobstoppers or gameboys! Then it was our turn to to cross. Some of us took the scientific approach of watching everyone else's mistakes before figuring out the best course of action. Which, as you might guess, is to climb into one of those black plastic garbage bags and get a free ride over on the head of a strong-necked Batak. But we never thought of that. So we hiked upstream about a hundred yards and swam like you know what as fast as we could across the river, only there are no straight lines in nature; so we angled downstrean going about ten feet a second as we flailed away trying to look like we were swimming, until we were plucked out of the river by one of the porters who was strategically placed downstream on the other side. It was great fun to watch and not really that dangerous because all the crocodiles were sleeping up on the banks at that time of day.
Anyway, that's how far it was and how long, and how high, and how wet and how much fun, though we didn't appreciate just how much fun we were having until about a week after the trip was over and we could look back with pride and point out our scars and destroyed boots and permanently brown-stained socks, and tell the world that we now understood time and space and distance and rain and sores and sweat and sharp spikes and fast rivers and the function of black plastic bags.
And I ain't lyin. This is C. Nick Point, your humble reporter.