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The Wilde Eye

More than two weeks we'd been trekking, moving slowly further and further into the wilderness canyons. Today we'd struck camp before dawn to beat the heat and set out with the pack mules into an unexplored side canyon. Mid-afternoon I left them by the stream to make base camp and, shouldering my research campack, walked alone into a nearby east-running knife ravine.

This was unchartered territory. Somewhere in these unexplored crevices I knew there would be botanical marvels, probably even never-before-seen unique cryptic primitive species. I was hyped with anticipation, a feeling I often get before big finds.

A tiny trickling rill ran out of the cleft. Peering in, I saw the way up ahead was blocked by a logjam bridge of jumbled rotting palms.

Over or under? I chose under.

With the late sun on my back I knelt, then, commando style, wriggled forward on my belly under the pile, thru cobwebs, over the leaf litter & wet rocks, tangles of old man's beard brushing against me as I groped towards the light chinks on the far side.

Finally able to stand at last, I saw the ravine had come to a closed end. I was in a deep cylindrical water-scoured bolthole, some 30 meters across and filled with the afternoon sun funneling down the cleft behind me.
Fern and vine-hung walls rose sheer, vertical cliffs hundreds of feet high, topped by a silhouetted overhanging fan palm canopy, fringing eyelashes to the distant eye of the sky, in its turn reflected in a central trickle-fed pool amongst the jumbled rocks of the canyon floor.

The only way out was back under the log jam. A dangerous place to be trapped in a sudden storm, I noted, seeing the flood debris caught on ledges meters above me. My mind began busily calculating exit speed escape possibilities.

What I saw next wiped out all such thoughts.

There, rising tall and proud from among juvenile palms against the far wall was a snaking scaley treefern some 40 feet high.

Graceful spreading fronds threw a pool of shade on the pebbled floor, while above creating a gold-threaded lacey parasol silhouette against the cobalt sky. The whole gently nodding in the delicate wind wafting off the pencil waterfalls that fell in diamond traces down the cliffs.

I had found it. The elusive botanists' grail. A new Gondwanan species. I was sure of it. Its' primitive features told me all I needed to know.

My life's work was justified, validated. Elation flooded me from my very core.

Excitedly I began to scout around, registering the coordinates on the GPS, finding spore-bearing fronds for diagnostics, taking photos.

Suddenly I felt strangely spooked. I had goose bumps.... I suddenly knew I was not alone.

With a cool head I surreptitiously glanced sideways, checking the shadows and nooks in the canyon walls.

Aha! There it was, an unexplained glint in a deep shadow. I held up my digcam, scanning the rock walls.

Perfectly still, I focussed further behind a rockfall....something....a sense of presence....I focussed in further, sorting shadows, patterns in the rocks...searching....ah....zooming into a deep, dark, narrow side-cleft and...there!... it materialised!

Yes, it was watching me - motionless, unblinking, silent, inscrutable.

It knew I had found it.

The Wilde Eye of a large furry humanoid creature.

"Click"...gotcha!!


Chronicles d'Anu - Kimberley Botanical Journals



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