Greetings,
I am a rational person. I dislike mystification. But then, a year ago, something strange happened. I still get goose pimples thinking of it. And I think of it every day.
I was at Ayers Rock - Uluru. You are not allowed to camp in Uluru National Park except at the designated camping ground. Preferring my privacy I drove 50km out into the wilderness. Found a tiny track which meandered to the foot of a great red dune. There was spinifex and a clearing amid desert oaks. A dream setting. From the top of the dune you looked over the vast plain. And smack in the middle that enigmatic rock. Earth’s gossip of 500 million years condensed into one mighty riddle. It exerts a gravitational pull. Turn your back and still feel its tug on your bones. The sun went down and black crept over the rock’s famous glow.
My car is converted with a bed in it. Nights start with blessed hours of reading. But I had picked Ken Follett’s ‘The Eye of the Needle’ - a racer hard to put down. And when you do your pulse keeps racing, sleep won’t come. Also, after the deafening hiss of the pressure lamp, total stillness takes over. Then, gradually, the noises of the bush begin to stir. There is shuffling on the ground, wings in the air. Some thumping. A kangaroo? A murderer? You sit up with a jolt - something is fiddling around with your billy pot outside. There is a moon in the trees and the breeze shoves figures through your car. I was frightened like a kid. To calm me down I put on a tape. One of Shostakovich’s String Quartets, a heavy work, not exactly popular, rarely heard.
Finally, sleep.
Suddenly, a bang against the door. A silhouette in a big hat was knocking. There stands my heart attack. Then a pleading voice, apologetic, polite, well-spoken. His car had tried to make the dune but got stuck. Had dug itself in now and would need a truck to free it. What the hell did he do here anyway? Well, he had wanted to see the moon rise over the rock. I liked that. A bit gentler: and why don’t you just go and sleep in your car? No, he said; his girl friend at the rock’s resort would be worried out of her mind. Would I please drive him to the rock? Right now. 12.20am.
Grumpily I did.
And then he told me how much he had liked the recording of the Shostakovich. What?? And this String Quartet No.9 was his favourite. What?? He had heard me playing it while battling his car. He studied at Adelaide’s Conservatory. Now he was washing dishes at the resort during his holidays while working on his thesis of Shostakovich’s string quartets. Well, here I come some thousand odd kilometres from the east, he from the south. We meet by chance in the middle of night in the middle of the desert with the same musical rarity in our baggage. Tell that at home, who would believe it!
Early next morning I left for Alice Springs. As usual, went to browse through a second hand book shop. My backpack brushed against a display stand and knocked down a tape cassette. I picked it up: Shostakovich String Quartet No.9 in E flat, played by the Brodsky Quartet; the same recording I had. Still with me. Still gives me goose pimples. Chance had thrown an obvious pattern. Wanted to say something? What did it mean?
I settle for a shrug. Chance is life’s joker, not hobbled to produce any sense our ordered human mind always demands. And something else came to mind: I thought of Darwin. His Theory of Evolution lets chance play with our genes and cause mutations. Beneficial ones let the organism survive and procreate, bad ones make it die. It’s a win-direction which in increments adds goodies and complexity. Chance had millions of years to make something complex like the eye.
Chance needed less than a day to scare me with its power.
Klaus and Rusty
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Nature & Wildernss, Quotations & Geology