Walk On!

WALK ON?

Page 48 of Into the Heart of the Himalayas, by Jono Lineen

The universe seems to be throwing two words at me constantly lately, as if to drum a message deep into my conscious thoughts to truly take note of - WALK ON.

Johnny Walker Red? Walk on?

PLEASE NOTE: I am not endorsing the drinking of alcohol in this post, as I am well aware of the problems people have with alcohol in this society.
The mention of alcohol in this post is to tell my own personal story only.
Regular drinking of spirits especially, is a sure way to a very sorry life.
Like anything, moderation is the key to a happy life.   
It all started around Father's Day (which is in early September in Australia where I live) when I received the above leaflet in my junk mail advertising liquour specials as gifts to give for Father's Day.

Thirsty Camel? Tracks? Brisbane Lions?

I had just finished reading the book and watching the movie Tracks (for the second time) and recalled in the book Robyn drinking a bottle of scotch on her trek through the Outback of Australia.

The Tracks of Synchronicity?

I also found it amusing to stumble across this Camel Balls bubblegum while putting my lotto on one day while I was in the middle of reading the book Tracks, and Robyn had written about castrating her camels, so they wouldn't be aggressive on the trek.
Ouch! 

Walk on?! Ouch!

Crossing Paths With the "Camel Lady" at the BBWF
With all these camel synchs and talk of scotch I thought I should treat myself to a bottle of Johnny Walker Red for Father's Day, since this was the first time that I would not be living under the same roof as my boys, even though I normally just drink beer, or wine, I felt there was some message here in my intended purchase.

So, since I don't normally buy alcohol from the Thirsty Camel, I had to find out where the closest store to me was.

Once more 

into the fray ...

Turns out it's the bottle shop that is at the entrance to the Brisbane Lions club right down the road from where I live, in the old IKEA building that I worked in most of my life.

I knew that there was a bottle shop in there, but I didn't know it was part of the Thirsty Camel franchise.

The Family brick that was outside the Gabba
 for 13 years from 2002, til now

Little did I know at the time that the Brisbane Lions would write to me later in the year to ask me to pick up my brick that had been outside their playing field for 13 years.
A Meditation on Life and Death

Apparently after all of these years the Brisbane City Council deemed the bricks too dangerous to WALK ON?!

Robyn Davidson and Jono Lineen
at the BBWF, 2014

OK, so here is the post about Jono Lineen's book that I promised to write about in this recent post I wrote about Bindis -
A Walk Through the Bindis
And congratulations to Bindi Irwin for taking out Dancing with the Stars in the US, since I wrote that post. 
I'm sure Dad is a proud father right now ... and yes people, I know he is dead, but I happen to believe, and with good reason, that there is life after death.

Now, back to my reading Jono's book Into the Heart of the Himalayas and the strange synchs that I had while reading it.

I never ended up meeting Jono at the BBWF in 2014, but I did attend the talk he was involved in on Saturday the 2nd of August 2014, titled Traveler's Tales.
I didn't go to see Jono speak though, I went to see and hear Robyn Davidson, but I was impressed by what Jono had to say during this talk and I decided to by his book the next day.

Jono's book sat in my "To Read" pile until about September this year when I saw that the film Everest was going to start at the local cinema soon and with all of the upheaval in that region in 2015 with earthquakes I wanted to get through Jono's book before the movie came out.

I have to tell you that I loved this movie when I saw it, but I also had a "Six Degree of Separation" reason to see this movie also, as a co-worker of mine named Steven had a brother in Toowoomba who lived next door to a young lady who was attempting to climb to the summit of Everest when the earthquake struck there this year.
Mt Everest avalanche: Queensland teenager Alyssa Azar determined to reach summit despite disaster

I see that Alyssa is going to try to get to the top a third time now.
I think I would have countered my lucky stars and given up on it, but I admire her spirit and will surely be interested in following her progress after watching the movie Everest and thinking how brave, stupid, or both these people are who attempt the climb.
Queensland adventurer Alyssa Azar survives second Nepal tragedy
I certainly wish her luck and acknowledge that she has bigger balls than I do, metaphorically speaking, that is.
Two of us: Glenn and Alyssa Azar

In the movie Everest they talk about the "Death Zone" which is pretty much the area I have circled in Jono's book cover above (I hope that is a picture of Everest on Jono's book cover, or I'm going to look pretty stupid ... again;-) where your body literally starts to die because of lack of oxygen (unless you have an oxygen tank, you dirty cheat;-).
Remember that the movie Everest is based on a real life story, it is not something that was made up by a Hollywood script writer ... for once.
After seeing the movie Everest I now know that there are a lot of dead climber's bodies still frozen up there in that circled "Dead Zone" that I have marked with the red ring on the cover of Jono's book.

I notice that Alyssa has the above motivation poster on her webpage and while I half concede that she is right, after watching the movie Everest and seeing more experienced climbers than her lose their lives, I would say that it's not so much the mountain that you have to worry about, but the weather. 

I thought Everest was a film worth checking out and I hope Alyssa has seen the movie just to know that it is no walk in the park, and I'm sure she has.
Every time that I picked up Into the Heart of the Himalayas after having seen the movie Everest, I couldn't help looking at the picture on the front cover of Jono's book and seeing the "Death Zone" and imagining those frozen corpses that are still up there to this day. 

As far as climbing Everest goes, I'll just stick to virtual reality climbs instead.
Climbing Solfar's photoreal Mt Everest is virtually the real thing
I certainly can see the attraction of climbing, but I'll stick to my own league when it comes to hill climbs.
Climb Every Mountain?
Everest will never be placed on my bucket list, I'm afraid ... and I mean I'm afraid in literal terms.

I started reading Jono's book around mid September in an effort to have it finished by the time the movie Everest came out at the cinema and the first words that struck me when I started reading the book were on page 48 where Jono writes that the Buddha's last words to his disciples were, "walk on".
And I'm sure the Buddha wasn't throwing in a product placement for Johnny Walker scotch, either, since most Buddhists don't drink alcohol ... and besides scotch hadn't been invented yet.

Walk on?

Jono tells in the opening of the book about his younger brother Gareth's tragic death in a freak rowing accident on what normally was a calm lake.
Jono later realized the walk he did was a personal pilgrimage to try and come to terms with Gareth's death and the book explains many of Jono's thoughts along the way,
I remember thinking how freaky that accident that took Jono's brother's life was and how it wasn't something you would read about in news stories as common a car crash death, for instance.
And then a few days later I read this story in the news -
Two Monash University students die in New Zealand kayaking accident, police say
New Zealand Police said US national Daniel Hollnsteiner, 21 and James Murphy, 20, from London, died after they were thrown into the icy water when a strong wind change whipped up waves.
Local police commander David Gaskin said the two men were part of a group of 11 people from the university who got into trouble on the lake.

Lake Tekapo, in New Zealand, where two students died when they were thrown from their kayaks into icy water.

That news story above was a very eerily similar incident to the way Jono lost his brother in a Canadian lake. 

A lot of recent books and movies that I have read, or watched over the past year, or two have carried the same theme of the pilgrimage from A to B in a quest to find something, or prove something on some unconscious, or spiritual level to that person, or person's being.

 The thing I have found out on most occasions after reading, or viewing these personal stories is that the journey doesn't really end for that person at point B, even though that was the imagined destination point of the trekker.

On an inner sense these authors are still walking that journey and will continue to walk that journey for the rest of their lives.

Life is a journey, not a destination.

Usually the walk never really ends for these people at point B, because point A was just the beginning of a life walk.

Walkers tend to keep walking far past the point B that they thought would signal the end of their journey.

Walking home … again …

The Way To Byron Bay Via Spain
It was probably Ailsa Piper who got me hooked on these walking/journey books when I happened to go to her talk at the 2012 Byron Bay Writers Festival.
Doppelgänger Bloggers?

Chapter 11 of
  Into the Heart of the Himalayas, Gratitude.

One theme that I have noticed running through most of these pilgrimage/trek stories is that of gratitude, or grace.
The Goodwill, Grace and Goodwill 
And the elephant in the room in most of these stories seems to be a supernatural feeling of connectedness, or even fate to some degree.

And while talking about elephants in the room, just about everywhere Jono went in Tibet and surrounds the locals kept offering him Chang.
I thought this must be one hell of a popular brand of beer throughout Asia, but it wasn't the Thai beer the locals were offering him, chang must be the word for beer in those parts, so I learned something a little extra while reading Jono's story.
Cheers, Jono. 

And still on the subject of elephants in the room, I still have this box of stuff to sort out from my recent move:-)

On a personal note, I had to have a chuckle when Jono wrote that the 19th November was one of the worst days on his trek because these kids followed him and threw rocks at him.
November 19th is my wedding anniversary and that date came up as a bad day in my last post oddly enough,
Saint Bob

Jono ends the November 19th entry by writing the "walking is my yoga", all I could think about that date was that walking down the isle was my folly;-)

Scene from Peter Jackson's King Kong

On a side note I decided to rent the Peter Jackson movie King Kong on DVD the night I opened my Father's Day bottle of 

Johnny Walker Red.
I don't think I have ever sat down and watched the whole movie before, as I could never really be bothered to watch yet another Kong movie, I only decided to rent it after watching Jake Kotze's  
420 Kong vimeo.

Scene from Peter Jackson's King Kong

And then I see these scenes in King Kong of Jack Black cracking open a lemonade case during the prohibition in the 30s on alcohol, only to find it full of Johnny Walker Red scotch. 

Scene from Peter Jackson's King Kong. Keep walking?

Keep Walking?

And on the subject of walking, Shannon Noll put on a gig right across the road from the Brisbane Lions club where the Thirsty Camel bottle shop is where I bought the Johnny Walker Red, and I could literally walk from where I lived (and did), have a few beers, enjoy the show and walk home again.

Great show (there will be a post on that show soon) and Shannon even sung the song he wrote about his father called -
Now I Run
"I'm just my fathers son
Taught me to walk, now I run
I run"

Seems to be a theme running right through this thread, doesn't there?
 Walk on!