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Journalism student from Sydney, Australia.
Mar 26
Mountains Beyond Mountains
My intergenerational (in)significance
Admiration Point
In May 2015, eleven days before my nineteenth birthday, my Grandfather, Ezzy passed away. He had been in Sutherland Hospital’s palliative care unit for the previous week or two after deciding to cease all treatment for leukemia. His last moments were spent listening to Mozart in a private room that fittingly overlooked The Royal National Park.
Ezzy — a man of towering intellect and a total eccentric — had been sick for some time; and while his death came as no surprise, I still struggled with it. Compounding the obvious and unavoidable grief was an oppressive sense of regret. There was regret that I hadn’t visited more, that I’d taken him being there for granted, and that I hadn’t shelved ridiculous notions of masculinity and told him that I loved him. Trumping all, however, was a regret that I wasn’t born earlier.
At the time, I was halfway through my first year of University and bursting with new knowledge and inspiration. I longed to bundle together every new thought, theory, question and idea, stuff it in a duffel bag and travel back in time so that Ezzy and I could explore it all together. Add to that my growing passion for bushwalking and hiking — Ezzy’s favourite thing to do — and this regret only grew.
Two months after his death, I stepped out across the plateau and, as the view slowly revealed itself, realised the incredible, strangely comforting feeling of total insignificance. It had taken my then-girlfriend, Shay and I almost four hours to hike to Admiration Point on the NSW South Coast in criminally unsuitable footwear, but this sight and this feeling made every poorly supported, blister-inducing step worth it.
I could see for kilometers in every direction without a single sign of humankind. All to be heard was the sharp breeze climbing out of the valley below and weaving between each needle-thin blade of waist high grass. If I closed my eyes and inhaled, impossibly clean, crisp air flooded and filtered through my lungs.
It was as if for that short time, we were the only people on earth — and you couldn’t wipe the grin from my face.
This was a place of total natural beauty not corrupted, commodified or conquered by anything or anyone. It was somewhere completely untouched by the invasive and often unhelpful hands of man.
Before then, my only experience of this sight had been through an old-school film photo panorama blu-tacked to the wall in the toilet at my Dad’s house. It sits around half a meter above the cistern — perfect eye level for when you have to go. Each photo has been positioned carefully to line up with the previous one and glued to a rectangular, black cardboard frame. Underneath the images, ‘Admiration Point’ is written in metallic white ink.
The ageing film panorama
The appropriately named vantage point boasts views of Pigeon House Mountain and the Pacific Ocean to the east, Corang Peak to the west, The Castle to the north and far enough south to see Camel Rock on the Bermagui Coast.
It was an entirely strange feeling to enjoy a view that for years I had only admired on the bathroom wall while pissing. Like finding myself on the set of my favourite TV show, I explored the familiar in a wholly unfamiliar way. My wide eyes traced each ridge, peak and valley through a new lens.
Twelve years prior and around thirty kilometers directly East, Ezzy and I had wandered the many tracks snaking through bushland opposite my Father’s house. I was seven years old and Ezzy was helping me make my first botany book. He was the kind of person who could name and detail just about any Australian plant at a glance. That day, we giddily filled a plastic bag with the trimmings of native Honey Flower, Tea Tree, Needlebush and Wattle — to name just a few.
Once home, we placed each individual plant between two sheets of the aqua, A3 note book and taped them to the paper. Ezzy labelled each sample first, then it was my turn. When we were done, we sat a stack of heavy books on top and left our bush souvenirs to compress between the pages
We processed and documented each plant with the same interest and awe that had inspired the panorama above our toilet. Dad had taken the photographs when he, Ezzy and a friend were on the same walk some years earlier. Dad credits Ezzy with fostering a love for nature, which they both passed down to me.
Dad’s love for nature was on full display the night before Shay and I set off for Admiration Point. We sat together at the dining table and looked through photo albums of the many hikes, camping trips and bushwalks he and Ezzy had completed. I felt inspired and excited. I’m sure that for entirely different reasons, Dad did too.
Still though, my regret lingered. I was once again inhibited by a longing to travel back in time. I wanted nothing more than to thrust myself into the experiences captured in the photos I held.
The following day, after hiking the same track Dad and Ezzy had decades before me, I stood atop the same peaks, breathed the same crisp air and admired the same breathtaking sights over the Budawang Ranges. Ironically, as I basked for the first time in that utterly liberating feeling of insignificance, the significance of where I was standing became all too clear. I knew that both Dad and Ezzy had stood there with me, sharing that feeling, awe and admiration. Gone, if only for that moment, were feelings of regret.
I stared in the direction of my Father’s house and considered the A3 botany book and thousands of bladder-emptying daydreams that had led me to Admiration Point. It felt as though I had come full circle.
Much like my botany book, Admiration Point seems to exist on a timeline of its own. The many plants Ezzy and I collected fifteen years ago to this day remain intact and alive between the sheets of my aqua notebook. When I flick through its pages, examine the vista still blu-tacked to Dad’s toilet wall, or venture out into the wilderness, I feel no desire for time travel.
FamilyNatureGrief And LossMemoir
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Eamonn Snow
Journalism student from Sydney, Australia.
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