Between Worlds

July 18, 2014

VJ 2014-07-18 08.42.05

I was grateful that I would not have to walk out of Gundai, retracing my steps back over the Bismarck range to Kwima. When we had trekked in I hadn't known what to expect, and I had been able to keep my courage up hour after hour, depending mightily on Father Nicholas's steadying hand.

Now, for this leg of the journey, chugging under the clouds through the air between the steep slopes rising from the Simbai River, I placed all my confidence in the pilot. 

It turned out that he had flown in this area numerous times, carrying gold prospectors, government workers, and people in medical emergencies. He knew how to navigate in the cloudy weather.

He told us that there was no possibility of rising up into the sunshine. Instead, we had to remain at an altitude halfway between the valley floor and the surrounding ridges whose tops were hidden in the clouds. We would have to fly northwestward, following the course of the Simbai River itself until we would reach Simbai Station where there was a good spot to rise up and clear the ridge in order to get over the Bismarck Range and into the open sky leading to Mount Hagen.

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WTYSL 2014-07-18 09.12.28

WTYSL 2014-07-18 09.12.39