Why I didn't climb ...

Three significant walks in three days. The Valley of the Winds at Kata Tjuta on Wednesday, the base walk at Uluru yesterday, and today the rim walk at the majestic Kings Canyon. Ryan and Nicholas would add another – they also climbed Uluru.

There is nothing noble about my decision not to climb. I was happy for my boys to do it, and I had already climbed it last time I was here – 20 years or so ago. Initially my plan had been to take the boys to the Cultural Centre, let them make their own decision and go along with whatever they decided. But somewhere along the journey, through the many stories, myths and traditions in the Cultural Centre, I changed my mind. I decided not to climb.

Our contact with Aboriginal culture thus far has provided contrasting experiences. In Coober Pedy there were groups of aboriginal people aimlessly hanging around town. We had a number of experiences of people coming up to us asking for money. Young people who clearly were of school age seemed to spend their days doing very little.

At Uluru, the stories we heard were of a rich and deep tradition – aspects of which I found significant and moving. However we actually saw very few indigenous people. I’ve started to wonder if the portrayal of Aboriginal traditions and culture presented to the tourists is an idealised one. How much it reflects the reality of the people of the region is an open question.

The well-publicised messages urging people not to climb include the following quote: “You shouldn’t climb. It’s not the real thing about this place. The real thing is listening to everything”.  It was this quote, as I tried to make sense of it, that got me thinking.

What is “real”? This question has lived at the back of my mind for many years now. As a religious person I believe there are aspects of our (and others’) religious traditions that can lead us into a deeper and richer embrace of reality. Regrettably there are also many aspects of religious belief that can become for people an escape from reality. They are two sides of the same coin, manifested in healthy and unhealthy ways.

I agree with the famous psychiatrist M. Scott Peck when he boldly claims; “Mental health is dedication to reality at all costs”. I too am dedicated to reality, and my current response to the question “What is real?” is this: Reality is attentiveness to the present moment.

One of the aspects of Aboriginal culture that struck me was the developmental, mentoring and “rites of passage” processes of the young people. The children were urged to be attentive. It seems unusual to our Western manner of thinking that the children were encouraged not to ask questions. Just to listen. They were to help the women (as they performed their traditional roles of gathering and processing food). And they were to play.

When they were old enough, the young men and young women would be taken away to be mentored by the grandparents and elders of the same gender. It was the grandparents who held the deepest wisdom and were most highly venerated. This process would last for as long as it took the young people to demonstrate that they had learned the ways of adulthood.

The encouragement of the young to be attentive, and the veneration of the elderly, were things I found to be significant. But this level of admiration doesn’t fully explain why I didn’t climb. It was the reminder of what is “real”.

It is part of our Western Culture to achieve and, if you like, to conquer. Our ancestors were those who sought to explore, discover and colonise. We like to be able to speak of our achievements – whether personal or professional. If there is a massive red rock in the heart of our country, we like to be able to say we climbed it. Our mistake is to identify ourselves with those things, rather than to recognise that climbing the rock (or any corporate or social ladder) is “not the real thing.... the real thing is listening to everything”.

And so I walked around the base of the rock and saw and read and listened.