Fascinating Humanity

One Scout summer camp in Belgium’s eastern Ardennes region in 1947, when I was 14, I suffered humiliation that would torment me a whole year. We were camping near Malmédy. Our leaders woke us, over 20 scouts, at midnight to challenge us to walk alone through a long stretch of woods and back. The forest path led to Lake Robertville, near the ruins of Reinhardstein, a 14th-century castle. A German nobleman had built it at a time that Reihardstein was part of Germany, centuries before Belgium came into existence as a country.

A walk in the woods at midnight towards a medieval castle seemed too spooky to all but one of us. He was my 15-year- old tent mate and first cousin, Jean (John in English), whose virile qualities I grudgingly, though secretly, acknowledged and tried to emulate. At that time, he towered above me, he was a born artist, and his good looks made him very popular among girls. He lived on a Canada street and was known as Don Juan du Canada

Another factor tinged my relationship with my cousin. My mother’s humble origins were cause for some disdain from our father’s family. She wanted her sons to be as good as, or better than, their cousins, and she found in my competitive nature a born ally. She was mad at me when I was not first of my class, which fortunately I was much of the time. I was an eager pupil, choosing the front bench, eyes and ears open, and an arm always up. Like many Third-World children I would photograph later in my travels, school was exciting entertainment to me, as well as a chance to prove my worth.

It took cousin Jean an hour round-trip through the woods, and he slept soundly after that, as he well deserved. But I could not find sleep for the rest of the night because shame would not let me. I tried to console myself with the excuse that I was a year younger than he. But I knew that if that was the honest excuse, I would need to return, at 15, and repeat his feat. To prove to myself that I was no coward, I decided to do him one better: I would spend the night in the castle. Fortunately, I had a full year to build my courage.

Next summer came, and my Scout troop traveled again to the Ardennes, not far from where we had camped the year before. I let my parents believe that I was leaving with the Scouts, but I would rejoin them only the next day. First I had to keep my vow. I had to know whether I had the makings of an explorer. So that evening I took the train by myself. Alone in my train car, I nearly missed my destination, for the train only stopped for 60 seconds, and in the dark I could not find the sign giving the station’s name. No one else got off. The station and the hamlet before me were deserted, and the forest loomed just beyond a few fenced pastures.

My eyes quickly adapted to the darkness. I crossed the silent hamlet and squeezed through the fences of the few pastures, the last of which was where we Scouts had camped the year before. Squeezing a little too fast through barbed wires to evade an approaching bull that probably meant no harm, I ripped my shirt, and wondered what Mother would make me pay for it. I stood now at the edge of the forest—at the mouth of the dragon.

Initially, the stars had lit my way, but none shone through the forest canopy, which looked to me like a frightening trap. I found the path, took a deep breath, and pulled a flashlight and a Scout hatchet out of my backpack. I would not have felt differently entering a forbidden temple.

With heart beating hard and a tight grip on my hatchet, I took cautious steps before quickening my pace. The air was cool and infused with soothing smells. Though I tried to tread lightly, I sometimes stumbled over stones and protruding roots. The sounds of my feet drowned all other sounds. When I stopped to listen, the forest seemed quiet for a few seconds before filling slowly with furtive and snapping noises. I could see nothing beyond the reach of my flashlight and so switched it off. Then I realized that the faint light from the night sky filtering through the leaves gave me a better idea of my surroundings. It lightened the blackness that the flashlight created all around––the great black regions where bad people might lie in ambush--while the darkness helped make me less visible. Now the forest no longer looked so threatening.

I moved on, thinking that my cousin Jean at least must have had a couple of leaders secretly watching over him from the shadows. But I was alone, and no one would rush to my help if needed. Even if I did not spend the night in the castle, I was already doing better than he. I told myself this in case I would not find the courage to face my own ultimate challenge. Though the walk seemed to last an eternity, it took me through the woods to the lake in half an hour.

Now Lake Robertville spread out in front of me, as mysterious under a cold white mist as the forest and the castle nearby. Indistinct under extra layers of mist up a hill nearby, the castle looked ominous. I lingered at the lake, struck by how different its mood was from the one I had experienced before under a bright sun. I was in no hurry to test myself further. All was amazingly quiet, and I felt calmer. I took another deep breath and forced myself away from the lake toward the castle, still not sure whether I would dare enter it.

The breeze caused an unsettling noise––that of the rusted iron grille gate grating on its hinges. I had heard that sound in horror movies. But there was no turning back. Otherwise I would not be able to live with myself, and I would never become an explorer. I forced myself to ridicule my fear. I tried not to think. Nervously, I tightened my grip on the hatchet again and moved inside the castle’s walls. I had been inside the castle with the Scouts during the day, but outside the beam of my flashlight great black shadows lurked all around. Shadows hiding what? I wondered again. Now I could not switch off my flashlight, as I was no longer under a forest canopy but under a high ceiling, and the blackness all around would remain threatening to the end.

I found the stairway that spiraled up one of the towers and started climbing. Halfway up, on rubber legs, I bumped into the tower’s circular inner wall, dropped the metal flashlight down the stone stairs, and nearly fell down the stairs myself. Now in total darkness, I felt my heart beating all the way to my ears. Cascading down the stone steps, the flashlight’s loud metallic noise echoed around the castle. That noise would wake anyone sleeping there, and I wanted to run back down. But it was as dark below as it was above. And in such darkness I could not run in any direction. I listened for any suspicious noise, heard none, and calmed down again.

You’re almost there, I told myself, and winning your wager. Getting your humiliation off your chest. Thus heartened, I resumed my climb, feeling my way along the humid and musty curving stone wall like a blind boy, stumbling sometimes. I stopped occasionally to silence the echo of my footsteps and listen for outside movements. But again there was none. The climb in the dark now seemed longer than the forest trail itself.

A faint light finally appeared above. I had reached the top of the tower, open under the starry sky. I looked down at the dark forest and the misty lake, amazed to be standing atop the castle wall. Blood raced though my veins, and my chest suddenly seemed too small to hold my heart. But this was no longer fear. It was fear conquered. I knew then that my life would never be the same again.

I spread my sleeping bag on the stone floor but was too elated to sleep. Like that humiliating night the year before, I could not close my eyes. Not for shame anymore, but for pride. How beautiful the stars were! Never had I seen them so bright. Later in life, as a man dedicated to photographing and describing the lifestyles of indigenous peoples in the wildest corners of the world, I would often lie awake all night under the stars, so bright away from city lights––so humbling in their wonder, that to close my eyes on them felt like sin. Those countless nights under foreign skies, like the starry sky I described at the beginning of this story, would always remind me of that wondrous night atop the castle, when the stars blinked with approval.