Forms of Tribulation

The best thing about PK’s Jungle Resort was this tree.

The word for the farthest point out of a particular orbit depends on the name of the central matter. For example, while objects going around Earth reach their “apogee,” the Earth itself, going around the sun, reaches its “aphelion.”  Each orbit is controlled by the same laws but is arbitrary in terms of the central object.  Human peregrination is even more arbitrary, in that the focal object shifts according to purely emotional attachment.  No laws.  I reached the equivalent of my apogee at Cape Tribulation, or more precisely and more delightfully, at Mackay Reef, off the Cape.  To get there, I traveled from California to Sydney, then Cairns to Port Douglas, then further north into the Daintree Rainforest to an overnight at a place called PK’s Jungle Resort.  PK’s was not a good apogee. Cinderblock and corrugated metal-roofed huts containing only a bed and a lightbulb on a chain form concentric rings outward around an open plan restaurant with two large-screen TVs, one playing music videos and the other endless sporting events, both at full volume.  Its inhabitants were a strange breed of dreadlocked young persons who looked right through me. And, as it happened, I arrived at a king tide of such height it prevented my crossing Myall Creek to hike out to the Cape; a surly desk clerk informed me in scornful tones how tides work.  Cowed, I spent my afternoon reading on Myall Beach.  (I admit, one could suffer in much worse ways.)

In the tour bus on the way up, our guide Jo pointed out handsome black and white magpie geese recently arrived for their Australian summer stint from Papua New Guinea, and the pied imperial doves, mostly white with black wings, that come from the Torres Straits islands.  This got me thinking about migration.   To combat my sense of isolation and to cope with where I’d ended up, I started to think about it as the turning point of my trip.  When I woke up in the morning, I told myself, I would round the turn of the long ellipsis; I would be on my way home.  This was a comforting thought, under the circumstances.

I was so discouraged I considered skipping the morning snorkeling trip that was part of the package I’d paid for.  I ended up being extremely, ecstatically glad I went.  After wading out to the boat, pretty much a large inflatable, shown how to hold on to rubber straps attached to the sides so we wouldn’t bounce out, the two guys who were our tour guides hit the iTunes and the throttle, and we were off in a crazy, zig-zagging slalom across the wind-whipped swell, all of us grinning and whooping the whole way out.  It was in fact not all that long a way, as the reason the Cape is named Tribulation is that it’s where Captain Cook learned that the collection of reefs that collectively form the Great Barrier funnel right up next to the coastline. In other words, it’s where he ran his ship aground.  Maybe I, too, had come to the tight end of a funnel; but I popped out into a glorious morning.

The first we saw of the reef was a sand bar on which flocks of black-headed sooty terns were breeding.  As we anchored, we could hear them yakking away; two flew over to reconnoiter.  When we got below the surface we were met by huge, spectacularly blue antler corals and columns of deep orange honeycomb corals as big as the Parthenon’s and as old.  In between these, embedded in wide swathes of rippled white sand, giant clams big as suitcases, their inner flesh spotted metallic green.  I hovered amid schools of iridescent darters, pairs of thin yellow and black and white striped moorish idols and chubby multi-colored parrot fish, to name only a few.  And as if this hasn’t gone too Disneyland already,  there were the chillaxin’ sea turtles, gracefully feeding despite the snorkelers gawking along behind them.  It was the best of apogees.  And I began my orbital return with another zooming ride back to—yes!—Cape Tribulation Beach, where I’d not been able to go the day before.

Physicists posit the idea of “perturbation,” which occurs when a body experiences gravitational pull from multiple other bodies.  When I’m at home, I orbit between my beloved retreat center in Healdsburg, my wacky Episcopal church in San Francisco, and the college town of Davis.  Even in Davis, I orbit between my home and campus and friends’ homes.  Within the circle of my longest-standing friendships lie Santa Barbara, Palm Desert, and Mill Valley.   All tug at me.  Now that I’ve spent this time in Australia and had the kinds of experiences here that draw me back, a new factor has been added to the already complex equation that is my personal peregrination.  Perhaps, as the distance dilates, the vast landmass of the continent will contract; the several distinct points I’ve visited, even those that I haven’t, will coalesce into one strong pull. All the forces that define my orbit sling me back now toward California, but I will not go unperturbed.