17. To the Peaks of Reunion
Solitude is the home of the strong; silence,
their prayer.
- Ravignon
The early morning land breeze dropping off the mountains of
Mauritius carried me ten miles out to sea before shutting down completely.
Without moving forward, Atom lurched drunkenly in the swell. Following a scent
of gasoline fumes, I lifted a bilge board and discovered a fuel leak from the
engine had dumped a gallon of gas into the bilge. I stopped the leak, pumped the
bilge out as much as I could, and then escaped the nauseating fumes by staying
on deck the remainder of the day.
As the current carried me slowly away to the west, my eyes
kept drawing back to the island. Memories, desires and a flood of contrary
emotions left me numb for the first time to the excitement of beginning a sea
passage. Part of this voyage was about seeking the solitude of the sea. True
loneliness, at least as I’ve known it, is more keenly felt when you are among
people but remain detached from them. The loneliness of the sea had not much
entered my mind before. Out here I did not expect human companionship and it was
little missed. It had always been enough that on each return to land I smothered
myself in new friends and new cultures as well as a full embrace of mountain and
forest. But on this day I deeply felt that stab of despair I had not known
before. The pact I made with myself
to stay alone on this voyage now
had me looking out the bars of a self-made prison and I didn’t much care for
the windless, hopeless void around me. Action was needed to break the spell, but
what action can be taken on a boat adrift in the calm?
Finally the caress
of a freshening wind on my face gave me something more than self-pity to
contemplate. Instinctively, I trimmed the sails and set course for Reunion
Island just 130 miles away. Still trying to avoid the gas fumes below deck, I
lay on the cockpit bench, drifting in and out of semi-conscious sleep. Just
before sunset, as Atom crested a wave, I chanced to open my eyes halfway and
spotted an orange canopy life raft drifting past our beam. I sat up and stared
in stunned disbelief, then sheeted in the sails and tacked back into the wind,
expecting to end my heroic misery with a heroic rescue. As I sailed past I saw
the canopy entrance flap was closed and so shouted to alert anyone inside the
raft. No response. On the second pass I brushed up against the side of the raft,
backed the sails, reached over and lashed a line tightly to the raft. Floating
tethered alongside the raft was a radio locator beacon that seemed not to be
functioning. I felt compelled to enter the raft to see if perhaps there was
anybody dead or unconscious aboard. First I dropped the sails to ensure Atom
would not break free and sail away, leaving the rescuer adrift in need of
rescue. I cautiously reached over and pulled back the canopy entrance flap. The
raft was empty except for several canvas bags lying on the floor. Trying to
resolve the mystery, I released the safety harness line that forever bound me to
Atom and slid down into the raft. Inside I saw the bags were filled with sand, I
presumed as ballast to prevent the raft turning upside down in the seas. There
was nothing to identify where it came from or how it got here, just the words
“32 person capacity” printed on its side. Yes it was huge, about 15 feet in
diameter – over half the length and almost double the width of Atom.
I didn’t know
enough about ship-sized life rafts to know that bags of sand ballast are not
standard issue. I thought perhaps it had been lost overboard accidentally from a
ship. A smarter man would have left it there or put a knife in the side to sink
it and sailed away. Lacking that degree of common sense, and having long had the
poor mans tendency to collect all valuable things abandoned, I felt an
unreasonable pride of ownership. I even imagined maritime law permitted me a
nice reward from the raft’s owner if I could salvage it. But how does one man
on a 28-foot boat pick up a heavily ballasted 32-person life raft? I rehearsed a
plan in my mind and then set to work. The first task was to remove the ballast
and dump it over the side. It’s remarkable how awkward it is to lift bags of
wet sand while standing on a bouncing fabric floor. While the raft rose and fell
in the waves it was like bouncing on a trampoline while lifting and throwing
hundred pound barbells. Second thoughts about the whole scheme kept recurring as
I looked up at Atom with an uneasy feeling of separation as she lifted to each
sea. Each sharp snub of her line jerked the raft under my feet as if she was
reminding me I was now on the wrong end of a dog leash.
Once the bags were
out, I quickly unscrewed the four deflation plugs and re-boarded Atom as the
raft deflated. Heaving aboard the half sinking, half inflated raft onto Atom’s
foredeck took all my remaining strength. Finally, as darkness fell,
I had it lashed down in a great untidy pile that sprawled waist high
clear across the deck. I then hoisted a small jib above the pile and a reefed
main, set up the self-steering and collapsed in the cockpit. Still unable to
inhabit the cabin or light the stove because of the gasoline fumes, I spent a
miserable eternity of a night on deck, watching compass course and sail trim and
getting doused by a shower of spray from the occasional wave slapping the side
of the boat.
At dawn the
cloud-capped mountains of Reunion lay a few points off the starboard bow. With a
slight course correction I approached the southern coast, carried in the arms of
a wind strengthening as it accelerated around the windward-side mountains. For
twenty miles I flew down a rocky shore backed by summits floating above the
cloud rack. All at once the miniature man-made harbor of St. Pierre lay in front
of me. A lather of breakers foamed against the stone jetty. I made two
ninety-degree turns to enter the narrow harbor, packed wall to wall with a dozen
local sailboats and assorted fishing craft. From shore a Frenchman called out,
directing me with waving arms to lie alongside one of the sailboats on a
mooring.
St. Pierre at the
time was not well known to foreign cruising yachts, most of whom layover at the
west coast commercial harbor of Port Des Galets. A local French sailor in
Mauritius had recommended this little port to me as being more convenient, which
turned out to be true. The neat and modern little town was built right up to the
waterfront where local boat club members welcomed me ashore. One of the
yachtsmen escorted me up the steeply inclined main street to check in with
officials at the police station.
Reunion is a
French possession, or “department”, and every bit as much of France as
Hawaii is of the United States. At the gendarmerie a police officer issued my
entry papers without delay and listened intently to my story of the daring raft
rescue. Another policeman then drove me over to the office of Affaires Maritimes
where I retold my story to Francois Gangnant who in turn called the French Navy
headquarters who sent an officer over to question me all over again. Francois
escorted me back to Atom where we waited until a navy launch pulled alongside.
In a flash the three sailors off-loaded the raft and sped out to a French Navy
ship waiting offshore.
As they left, I
asked Francois whom to contact for my salvage award. Looking surprised and
embarrassed, he said, “Sorry, there is no reward, but the good thing is they
have agreed not to arrest you for interfering with a naval operation and theft
of government property.” Francois went on to explain the raft Mauritian Navy
set out the raft a day before I found it, as a joint rescue exercise with Air
Mauritius and the French Navy who were supposed to locate it.
To their great embarrassment they were unable to find the enormous bright
orange raft, at first because the radio beacon was not operating and later
because I had plucked it from the sea. To save face, French Navy officials
blamed me for the operation’s total failure. I was just glad no one was
actually in the raft expecting rescue from the French Navy.
My raft struggle
was not completely unrewarding since Francois felt moved to befriend me and
brought me to his parents home for dinner. The Gangnant family ancestors arrived
on Reunion with a wave of other immigrants from France in the late 1700’s.
Like Mauritius, the economy was then and still is primarily sugar cane, worked
by its kaleidoscope population of Indians, Africans, Europeans and Chinese.
The following day I joined Francois as he toured the southern coast fishing villages checking registrations and condition of the local outboard powered fishing boats. I watched as sea-hardened fishermen launched their wooden dory-like craft by sliding them down ramps on the harborless, surf-pounded rocky windward shore. Near the village of St. Philippe we walked on a shore of congealed rivers of lava: raw and recent rock, pocked by craters and crevasses. The twisting lava bled down the slopes of a nearby volcano where it was instantly petrified by the sea. Its latest eruption of just a few weeks previously had the cauldron still smoldering. On our drive back to St. Pierre we detoured inland, upland you could say, to where a creek cascaded over an escarpment into a pool flanked by perfectly vertical vine-laced cliffs. In the distance rose the shimmering peak of Piton des Neiges, over 10,000 feet above sea level, and higher than any other in the Indian Ocean. I promised myself then I would stand on its summit before leaving the island.
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With a map of
Reunion in hand, I once again shouldered my backpack, leaving Atom secure on a
mooring in the care of friends at the boat club. Francois drove me to my
starting point at St. Denis at the north end of the island, along the way
passing towns and villages, each named after a greater or lesser Saint. Beyond
Port des Galets, the narrow strip of pavement built from the rubble of dynamited
cliffs, crouched low between mountain and sea. The crumbling mountainside is
held in place by gigantic wire mesh and a stone barrier wall protecting
motorists from rockfalls during torrential rains of tropical cyclones.
Francois dropped
me in front of a bakery in St. Denis. I was soon walking up a steep road looking
like a bread peddler with two baguettes sticking out the top of my weighty pack.
My planned route was to go up and over the highest peaks, down the lowest
valleys, searching out footpaths instead of roads whenever possible and ending
up back home to Atom on the opposite side of the island. A couple hours of
nonstop footslogging along the ridges brought me thousands of feet up among the
cool moist white clouds and scented tropical pine forest. At Plaine des Chicots
I passed the first of the island’s many “gites” – the log cabin rest
houses constructed by the parks department for weary travelers to spend a night.
Here along the footpath I approached a man of African and Chinese features,
leaning on his rake, perhaps pondering the fallen leaves littering the park
grounds. I stopped in front of him and asked directions to the next peak, more
as a traveler’s reflexive greeting than a real need for information, since the
frequent signposts and white paint marks on stones and trees obviously pointed
the way. Perhaps he was a mute or found my accent disagreeable because in reply,
he merely pulled up the corner of his straw hat to look me over and silently
pointed down the solitary trail I traveled.
With miles yet to cover, and from memories of my ordeal at the bottom of a New Guinea mineshaft, I resisted the urge to explore the numerous caves my map indicated lay nearby. Approaching the rocky outcrop of La Roche Ecrite, I climbed above the forest onto an inclined surface of smooth stone slabs separated from one another by cracks holding trickling streams of clear water. I walked into a cloud and found myself at the rampart’s edge overhanging empty space. Straining to see through the enveloping cloud, slowly, as if awakening from a drugged sleep, the cloud thinned until I could just make out a village in the valley far below, trimmed with a ring of haze around the edges of my view. Then the dream-like haze of cloud cleared, bringing the entire valley and surrounding mountains into focus. Drifting by me was a rainbow, one of many that so often arch across the cloud white and sky blue, rain-washed skies of Reunion. I stood here at the entrance above three valleys, called “cirques”, located on three sides of the craggy heights of Piton des Neiges. Sometime after the island was thrust up from the depths of the ocean floor some three million years ago, the central volcano cooled and these three cirques collapsed into these now lush funnel-shaped canyons. From La Roche Ecrite the way into Cirque de Salazie led down a seventy-degree inclined slope. Gravity urged me downward as I cautiously placed each footstep and clung with both hands onto rocks and bushes.
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At the bottom of
the valley I made camp at an empty park. Daylight was nearly gone as I unrolled
my sleeping bag under a picnic table beside a river. Nestled deep within this
narrow valley, the sun is eclipsed early behind high horizons. The twilight was
long and the night passed slowly. The cadent utterance of church bells woke me
early. I took a single cup of tea prepared over a fire built from two handfuls
of twigs, packed my kit and set out across the valley.
I entered St.
Martin, a little village out of a Dutch storybook. But these tiny storybook
house porches and gardens were bursting with an exuberance of flowers of every
tropical shape and hue. Perfect amounts of temperature, sunshine, rainfall and
rich volcanic earth produce geranium, vetiver and ylang-ylang, which are
gathered and their essences distilled into the perfumes of France. The dried
pods of vanilla orchids are the only other visible export of the valley. Also,
begonias, asters, gladiola and other gaudy plants splashed their colors against
the green canvas of the valley.
People streamed
out of a country store and bakery, each one carrying those delicious long loaves
of French bread. Unable to resist, I had the shopkeeper cut two crusty loaves in
half and I tied the four sticks to the top of my pack. As I walked I reached
back and broke off chunks of bread to snack on. Later I calculated I walked up
and down the mountains all day with mileage of about five miles to the baguette.
The people of the
cirques are a handsome and mostly unidentifiable mixture of races; an island
melting pot where French is spoken by all and signs of racial or cultural
enmities are absent. Perhaps nowhere else on earth with a history of slavery
have so many races and religions merged to live side by side with such ease and
tolerance. Once again in my travels I saw this hybridization of cultures is the
outstanding difference between so many of the French and the British or American
territories. The impression of Gallic culture on the people of France’s
overseas possessions is made deeper by the penchant for intermarriage between
colonizers and subjects.
I followed the
road up out of the valley towards Cirque de Mafate. On this trek across the
island I was always moving up or down and there was always in view another ridge
of mountains to cross. The road bent back on itself until it dead-ended near the
pass of Col de Forche, as if knowing it had nowhere to go but back. Ahead, the
verdant amphitheater of the valley of Mafate bore few manmade scars, chiefly
because no roads penetrated its mountain barriers. To call this a valley is
misleading. It resembles a valley only from the heights of the surrounding
cordillera. As I dropped into Mafate I entered a world tipped on its edge: a
roadless, buckled terrain where hamlets of a few houses are scattered like
islets on plateaus between river gullies. A grazing cow and a farmer mending a
wooden fence took little notice as I passed along the trail. Along the moist
banks of a stream bloomed the whitest Lilly of the Valley orchids. Footpaths and
wagon tracks laced back and forth among the hilly pastures and vividly colored
farmhouses. The sun bathed the circular wall of cliffs that guard and emphasize
the valley’s air of impenetrability. Reveling in the quiet rhythm of solitary
walking among stands of tropical pine and tamarind forest, I wound down my pace
to match a slower ticking internal clock.
By mid-afternoon
when I entered the village of Marla, the sun had begun its hours long twilight
behind Piton Maido. The population of about 50 persons and a dozen cattle had
several hours walk to the next village in another valley. Marla huddled here
under the crater wall with its back to the cliffs – the embodiment of
seclusion. And yet the local inhabitants were used to passing hikers they
referred to as “moun dehors” (strangers). No one going about their business
looked twice as I prepared a dinner of rice and onions over a small fire started
for me in the center of the village by some local boys. Later, a barefoot
brown-skinned farmer came over to me. In the low rolling tones of Creole patois
he invited me to spread my bedroll on the covered church porch. He sat there
pointing out for me with outstretched arm the route out of the valley - six
hours on foot to the nearest bus stop - which he had made many times over the
years. His face seemed hewn from the same rocks I clamored over to reach this
place. Like the land that holds them, these mountain people do not change in a
few generations. When they die they are replaced by children exactly like them:
children secure in the knowledge that life is hard, but predictable, and would
always be the same. Well, not exactly the same anymore, as a weekly helicopter
has brought a few tourists and the more welcome visits from doctor and postman.
As a misty darkness settled in, the shy villagers drifted away to sit around
hearth fires. I sat there in chilled silence contemplating my aloneness.
I was up at first
sign of twilight, eager for the warmth of an uphill march. The rising sun crept
over the mountain and met me as I approached the pass into the next valley,
Cirque de Cilaos. From here the town of Cilaos stood out clearly six miles
ahead. A path through banyan trees and red cabbage palms led me to a narrow
paved road, then over a bridge spanning a gorge where the river Bras Rouge
boiled below. Frequent flooding of the river shifts the rocks that scour it
deeper each year. This very spot holds the world record for seriously rapid
rainfall- an almost unfathomable 74 inches in twenty-four hours during a 1952
cyclone. Even with the forces of erosion working overtime on Reunion, everywhere
the choking grip of vines and creepers is tenaciously holding back the crumbling
cliffs.
The town of Cilaos, which in Malagasy means “place of no return” since it was once a hideaway for runaway slaves, is now a place of easy return with a well-traveled road connecting it to the coast. Even with the vices and virtues of development and easy access, the white-washed town remains pretty, buried under its frangipani, hibiscus and all the colors of the flower garden bouquet and family-sized vineyards. Beyond the flowered streets of Cilaos, I followed a path through the acacia forest then up through the clouds and dripping wet vegetation. A signpost pointed to Hell-Bourg 18 kilometers to the right and Piton des Neiges 2 kilometers the left.
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Here I met another
solo climber I guessed to be in his forties who was resting seated on a flat
rock. I stopped to share his seat and Philippe told me he was a Catholic priest
from France now on his way down the mountain after spending the previous night
at the peak. Over his wool sweater hung a curly black beard under which
protruded a heavy silver crucifix on a chain. Philippe told me he was on his
pilgrimage, one that he made each year, always to a different far and inspiring
place around the world. He summed me up in a glance it seemed. “And you too
are looking for something here; something more than the mountain, “ he stated,
rather than asked.
“Does it show?
Well I guess I am on my own pilgrimage of sorts,” I said and then
unselfconsciously spilled my story – that I was sailing the world alone,
walking across each island that crossed my bow and climbing every penitentially
steep mountain within reach. As if we were close friends, I told him of my
defeat at Mt. Wilhelm in New Guinea and the girl I’d left in Mauritius. On
this mountain I looked for more than a hike and a view – I expected some
solace to the soul, if not redemption.
No doubt the
priest wondered what manner of sins I had committed to require this kind of
ultimate penance, though with the knowledge gained of witnessing a thousand
confessions, he wisely knew when not to press a point. It was an unlikely
meeting of two unlikely men, seeking in their own paths to purify the soul.
Knowing we should probably never meet again, Philippe touched my shoulder as he
rose to walk away and in his way gave me a blessing: “A man who sails alone
and walks alone is a seeker. It’s a good thing to be.”
A chilling rain
ran off my jacket and soaked my pants and boots as I climbed into the clouds.
The landscape became more menacing, almost moon-like with boulders of every size
perched on furrowed slopes of bare gravel, all colored in grays and blacks. I
was surprised then to step around a rock and see a single yellow flower. Such a
display of strength and tenacity of life, sprouting there as it was from a
foothold of sand and stone, was not lost on me. At ten thousand feet elevation
my pack seemed to double in weight and I paused often to catch my breath in the
thinning air. At the summit I stood on a sprawling cone of dead cinders in pale
sunlight. Ahead, the crater wall dropped with frightening suddenness into an
abyss of cloud tops. As the high clouds retreated, remote summits stippled the
horizon like separate islands floating above the cloud rack. The peak of Grand
Bernard, four miles to the west, lay as crisply outlined to my eye as my boots
in the sand – a near and far clarity pulling together the vastness of the
scene.
As I watched the
afternoon clouds recede to the lowest depths of the valleys, surreal shapes of
towering peaks, misty waterfalls and wooded green valleys emerged from all
points of the compass. The rocky ridges falling away from all sides of me looked
like the exposed ribs of the earth’s skeleton. The serrated mountains plunged
seaward in a fantastic geologic overstatement of crag and precipice. The island
of Mauritius, where I left a part of me, was just visible as a spot on the
horizon, one hundred miles away to the northeast. Despite the loneliness tugging
at my heart, I was standing on top of my world, feeling a fierce joy in the
freedom above the clouds, even a kind of salvation. There is something about the
hard physical effort to gain a summit that restores the ego of a man - and being
alone, who can dispute the notion or dilute the experience. An absurd
possessiveness overcame me considering I laid claim to everything in view on an
island of over half a million people.
The sun set in an
orgy of colors intensified in the rarified air and with its departure the
temperature plunged. Without a single twig to start a fire, I put on the least
wet clothes in my pack and slipped into my low volume tent, which is a nice way
to say I shivered all night under a thin layer of soggy gore-tex fabric. The
high-sounding name of Piton des Neiges (Snow Mountain) warned it was cold enough
here to snow when the cloud ceiling lifts this high. Restless from the cold and
the sudden change of altitude from sea level, I got up and walked in circles.
Lights from towns along the coast shimmered below. Overhead, frost-sharpened
stars pulsed in their brilliance just out of reach. The trade winds that caress
the sea can be notoriously shallow. I was above them in air so still I could
hear my heart beat. The unearthly silence settled over me: no sound of man or
machine. Only the crunch of my boots broke the dead silence, bringing me back to
the reality of my austere and lifeless mountaintop world.
From a half-sleep
I awoke to a tarnished gray dawn inside a cloud of howling wind and rain. The
temperature felt one point above freezing as I laced my boots with stiff aching
fingers. With the cold wind knifing through me I wondered that within an hour
people would be lying about on the sun-warmed beaches, perhaps chancing to look
up at my cloud-capped mountain above them. Here I was thankful for the marks of
white paint on rocks that guided me down the slopes. Without these scars on
nature’s flesh I could not have found my way down until the fog cleared. With
their help I descended quickly to be clear of the storm and into the warmer
climate.
Rain persisted
most of the way back to the village of Cilaos. But what of that; I was warmed by
my labors and felt a renewed confidence in meeting the challenges of the voyage
ahead. Aches and pains aside, I had to admit that summiting that peak was
literally the high point of my travels. On the mountain and on the sea, I
learned that loneliness in itself is neither good nor bad. It is what you do
with the feeling that counts. For me loneliness was a hunger that urged me on to
new experience and worthy of embracing.
What yesterday had
taken me most of the day to climb, today I descended in just a few hours. A well
of cool spring water refreshed me at the bottom of the trail. Strolling through
the flower-scented village of Cilaos, I was lured into a pastry shop by the
smells of warm croissants and herbal tea - such inexpressible luxury after a
long cold night on the mountain.
All that day I
followed the hairpin road exiting the cirque alongside the river Bras de Cilaos.
Because of the high vertical riverbank, it took eight years to complete this one
road. Single lane in too many places, it wraps cliff sides, spans gorges on
bridges and tunnels through mountains of rock. The river and I both headed for
the sea. On this day we both moved serenely, but the high, eroded banks
testified to the potential fury during cyclones where river water carried
boulders into bridges and dragged the stony debris out to sea. I shared the road
high above the river mostly with small passenger buses that sped around blind
bends, horns blaring a futile warning to oncoming traffic. One bridge was so
narrow the approaching bus had to stop, back up and realign itself so as not to
tear off its mirrors on the guardrails. I ran through the tunnels, hoping not to
be caught by oncoming traffic and had some close encounters. In the riverbed I
spotted the corpses of vehicles that had plunged over the side. I liked my
chances better on foot. By late evening I was back aboard Atom, having gone from
summit to sea level in one excruciatingly beautiful day.
As I prepared to depart for the passage toward Africa, Francois Gangnant insisted on taking me to the market where he bought four bagfuls of expensive provisions for my trip. His kindness embarrassed me and he dismissed my profuse thanks with a wave of his hand. Francois told me the old story that when a Frenchman is diagnosed with terminal illness he will try to come to Reunion for a peaceful place to die. Once here, he finds life so pleasantly invigorating that he recovers and lives to a ripe old age. Anyone who has been here could hardly doubt the possibility.
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