2021-08-25 -37 145

Wed 25 Aug 2021 in -37,145: -37.7767930, 145.0343698 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Location

Just next to Darebin Creek Trail, Ivanhoe.

Expedition 1: Steve and Alex

[by Steve]

1. Geohashing

Although a geohash is, intrinsically, about the destination, it's often more about the journey. But sometimes it's about something deeper, but less tangible, about the meandering interconnections between metaphorical and physical place, and reflecting on ourselves and the choices we make, both big and small.

Such was this randomly chosen patch of grass, high above the banks of the Darebin Creek, just outside an inscrutably indescribable building of imponderable purpose.

Can it be about celebrating what we can do, rather than cursing our constraints? Yesterday, I was barely able to leave the house except for medical appointments. The day before, I hardly got out of bed all day, an aching and spasming left leg leaving me limping and wincing at any attempt at movement. And yet, with the right diagnosis and modern pain medication, a modest meander down a frequently cycled path, and a steep scramble up a never-climbed grassy bank seemed obtainable.

Is it a reflection on the arbitrariness of all our choices? If our constraints prevent carrying out the entire journey on foot from home, why not just drive all the way to the hash, and park there? It's a fair question, although in this case, I'm not sure the beaten up Falcon would make it up the grassy bank, or alternatively, win the required contest with a fence and several hefty poles if approaching from the nearest street.

Is it just an opportunity to apprecate a gorgeous Melbourne early spring day, with the light catching every second tree just perfectly, illuminating the bluestone arch of a road bridge as if by an impressionist painter. To spot a single coot among the alocasias and watch it nervously shuffle back down to the water. To admire an elegant bend of the creek beside an excessively landscaped front garden, and for a brief moment, shake one's fist in rage at the people who think it's right for small families to occupy such large pieces of land in such a pretty location, so close to inner Melbourne.

Is it about weighing our decisions, with their risks and rewards, as the dirt path that began so promisingly disappears, and now we are faced with a very steep, very slippery climb up beneath the railway bridge. Are we in fact over-taxing our body's fragile condition, liable to send us back to bed for more recovery? Or are we giving the body its moment to shine, to show what it can do, and to thrive in nature, and the sun, as we stride triumphantly up to a level patch of grass and unexpectedly find ourselves at eye level with the metal spans of the upper part of the bridge, a rather unfamiliar, and – briefly – unnerving, perspective.

It is most certainly not about the validation of an app which confirms that we have found ourselves where we meant to be, as if our plans and choices and actions in pursuit of a goal would have been worthless without the garish green glare gleefully granting geohash-success status. But we take a moment to take stock of our surrounds, admiring this unexpected perch above a well-trafficked path, seeing houses across the gorge normally invisible from creek level.

But it can sometimes open up more questions, a feeling of "is this it?" that either drifts despondently downwards to a dispiriting departure domicilewards, darkness descending – or, invites curiosity in one's surroundings, such as wondering, are those bee-hives over there? Do they have bees in them? Why can't I see or hear any bees? Just what on earth is that weird building? And should you wait for your friend to get here, and how long will that be, and should you tell him you're waiting, or just surprise him, and gosh, really isn't this such a beautiful day, and how much better is this than being stuck in bed with an aching leg, but actually why didn't I bring a beer, because this feels like a bit of a saison moment. And where does the track go in the other direction, and is it ok to walk alongside the train tracks if there isn't a sign saying you can't?

And maybe it's just about community and friendship, as you realise you're looking forward to seeing Alex who you haven't seen much in the flesh lately, and he seemed so disappointed to think you'd be gone by the time you got there that he even used a sad face emoticon instead of an emoji. Of course you'll wait for him, but if only you'd brought two beers, the moment might be even sweeter. But it's sweet anyway as I show him an easy way to the hash along the tracks and we talk about babies and cycle tours and shingles and just what on earth might be going on in those weird buildings, and why on earth there is a surfboard wedged in a giant piece of foam.

And it's how we chart our progress as humans, our ups and downs, as for once it is Alex proposing carrying his bike through an utterly unneccesary clump of bush wedged between cyclone fence and steep cliff merely for the sake of not repeating a hundred metres worth of his own tracks. A spirit I entirely embrace and salute, even as I gingerly pick my way through the scrub, over a stump or two, around a prickly bush of voracious thorns and beneath a broken branch, hanging mute above us ready to fall. As we part, for Alex to return to a minuscule future geohasher and I to an evening of few constraints, but hopefully also few pains, and oops did I find myself at the ice cream shop on the way home, well ok two scoops of lemon and chocolate, no I mean cookies and cream, if you insist, while I'm here thank you.

And we think back of these past adventures, and note that this was our fiftieth (50th!) success, a self-given milestone that is both significant and meaningless and important and of no consequence all at once, as we are taken back to our first monumental adventures through bike-caking layers of mud in Bunyip State Park and our heroic failure climbing the back side of Donna Buang through a forbidden water catchment to the insane midnight hijinks of surprising friends at an outer suburban cemetery or trekking across New Delhi during Diwali to be thwarted metres from our destination by entirely sensible house-dwellers to being stampeded by more than three million cows with flaming horns and one time being so fit that during a 220 kilometre training ride on road wheels it seemed utterly appropriate to add a detour down 4-wheel-drive tracks to successfully chase down another hash and damn the punctures, to the little ones like discovering a derelict high school near my house or that crazy time when the hash was the shortest of walks from a conference I was at but someone had built a school around it and you just don't go into random schools when you're an adult male with no reason to be there.

Perhaps it is all these things, and I am grateful for it.

Photos

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