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A
handmade bracelet is still hanging from my left wrist.
It is faded, matted, grey, and flimsy. The six small beads,
in pairs, remain uncertainly attached. By contrast, the
tones of the beads — blue, green, or violet, with
stripes of red and yellow, orange and blue — seem
heightened against the dull string. I often touch them,
twisting the string around my arm like a primitive rosary.
I can't take it off. The world might end if I do. I fear
what might happen when it finally rots away, or breaks.
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Trekking
through a jungle is neither the time nor place for vanity
or affectation. There had been numerous warnings about
security in Port Moresby, as well as on the Kokoda Track
itself. So, when I returned home, I took out the diamond
and gold jewellery I normally wear, but had left behind
during my trip. The custom-made heavy gold bangle on my
arm just didn't work any more. It looked gaudy and pointless
against the more humble incumbent. I replaced it in the
second drawer, where an opportunistic burglar is bound
to find it sooner or later. Four weeks on, I continue
to brandish my string trekking bracelet like a talisman,
in the face of all the real and imagined perils of urban
life and work. I wear my corporate suits, my 12 denier
ultra-sheer pantihose, my other items of expensive jewellery,
and my trekking bracelet.
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Psychologists
have words for this inability to let go, to disengage
from a group or an experience. In the progressive stages
of group development, this has been called "adjourning".
It is represented as a time of apprehension, or minor
crisis. I know what they mean. The other girls have experienced
the same thing, in varying degrees.
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Within
a day of our flying back into Brisbane, there was a stream
of emails and phone calls between us — making contact,
expressing disbelief that we had actually been there and
now were back, thanking each other for companionship and
support, and almost universally acknowledging the onset
of "big time post-Kokoda blues". By mid-week, the reunion
we had planned for two months' time had been moved forward
to the coming Saturday night. By then, a number of us
had already been in almost continuous de-brief mode (admitting
to get-togethers in homes, cafés and bars all over
the city) and the five litres or so of water which we
had consumed daily on the trek the previous week, had
been replaced by an equally committed approach to good
champagne and strong coffee.
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We
were a mixed bag, this group of fourteen women: city-dwellers
from Brisbane and Cairns, who had all decided, for their
own reasons, to walk the Kokoda Track in Papua New Guinea
in September, 2003; the first all-female trekking party
to take up the significant challenge of completing what
is acknowledged to be one of the hardest walks in the
world. There were former representative level athletes.
And there I was, the one who (prior to our group training)
hadn't done any serious exercise for some four years.
There were experienced campers and bushwalkers, and others
who had never slept in a tent before, let alone used anything
but a clean, flushing toilet. In the city we were school
principal, plastic surgeon, recruitment consultant, events
manager, lawyer, fashion retailer, full-time mothers,
medical practice manager, property developer, school bursar,
sporting consultant and coach, GP, accountant. On the
Track, we weren't identifiably any of those things.
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