The hash experience

There's this thing on island called hashing.

Actually, according to that very helpful link, it's not just on island, but all over the world, as apparently men running through rugged natural/urban environment toward beer and bonfires seems to be a somewhat universally attractive pastime.

It was started by British expatriates, of course, in Malaysia, sometime in the 1930s. They were tired of sitting around the dive bar known for its "hash" food, and decided it would be a good idea to try out an old British school yard game -- hounds and hares.

Now, 70 some-odd years later, people around the world -- or, it seems, mainly Western expatriates in far-flung locales that provide scenic places for their version of tribal ritual -- run an array of hashes, which seem specifically designed for the amount of misery and/or filth they can inflict on the runners.

Trails are marked by the hares ahead of time. And there are all these very specific rules for following the marked trail -- there are little dots in flour along the way, which might, but might not, take you the right direction. The guys who set the trail typically try and find all sorts of ways to get people off trail, like setting three marks up a huge hill, which you have to climb most of the way up before realizing the marks disappear at the top.

When you're on the right trail -- or think you are -- you shout "on on" to whoever is behind. When you're not on the right trail, you yell "on back." If you're lost there's another call out, but I can't remember it at this late hour.

Ostensibly the goal is to catch the hares -- or the trail setters -- who get a 10-minute head start, and have the advantage of knowing where the fuck they're going.

The real purpose, as the guys who brief all the newbies (called FNGs for Fucking New Guys/Gals) will tell you at the start of the hash trail, is to get to the beer at the end.

I don't buy this entirely -- because there are easier ways of getting to beer than setting round-about hash trails through thickets of sword grass, jungle ravines, rivers and waterfalls -- but it sounds good.

The real motivation behind hashing, like anything, seems to be its ritualistic protocols.

Hashers are known by creative handles, some earned during foibles in the wilderness -- like the guy tonight who ran wrapped in a McDonald's flag, only to have it surface before he did, creating a momentary incidence of self-inflicted waterboarding. I'm not sure what his eventual name will end up as, but I was rooting for McGitmo.

Other guys -- Tampon, Silent But Deadly, Menstrual -- seem to be the typical male-humor equivalents of Mary or Susan.

At the end of all hash trails, when you get there, there's a summary gathering of hashers, who indulge in a bevy of hedonistic rites. And, there is a lot of beer.

They call it religion -- which is funny, and also true.

After I crawled my way up the last miserable hill, wet, scraped and inappropriately out of breath from navigating a rocky stream bed for what seemed like forever, I made it the "on home" site. At the top of a flat ridge, overlooking the dark skyline, the mud-scarred travelers were already gathered around the fire, making jokes, yelling into the flames, and occasionally singing chants with incomprehensible but still clearly profane lyrics.

Before things really kicked off, however, the FNGs had to be initiated. They were pulled out of the circle, asked their name, what they thought of "this piece of shit trail" -- to which the correct reply was always something a long the lines of "it sucked ass", and then had to tell a joke, sing a song, or a show a body part.

And the body part, as we are all reminded at the beginning, couldn't be a joke.

Through a kind of hyperventilation loophole, I managed to wriggle my way out of participating in religion (for the second time) tonight.

Heidi wasn't so lucky, but she got out of flashing anything beyond her sports bra, and only had to tell half a joke before the punchline was spoiled.

I sat in the back, unnoticed, eating junk food and recovering.

Watching the men and women holding beers, reciting familiar chants on cue, whenever a new FNG approached the bonfire, I was reminded of all the religious rituals I've ever witnessed and not participated in.

It was like a backward Easter Sunday hike -- the prayers were different, but everyone knew the words.


(Also, no, those aren't my legs. They belong to my slightly more physically fit and narrow sister, but you get the idea.)

Low tide at sunset...

with Heidi.

jungle jungle

I tramped through boonies the other day, behind a gregarious adventurer-historian, who took me to this very nice place in a river, overlooking a waterfall under canopies of trees.

Apparently Guam used to be forested in its heartland, until somewhere in its history people started burning shit down.




















And now it looks like this.

Mystical Catholic rituals and all that...

Whatever else you want to say about Catholicism, you have to give it to them for tapping into some very basic human aesthetic sensibilities.

Crosses just kind of look cool. And cathedrals, brilliant idea.

One of my favorite memories, to this day, is of the feeling I got walking into an entirely empty cathedral at Columbia University -- whose continued existence seemed to be based on the fact that the liberal, intellectual, highly distracted study body, who no-doubt eschew all things archaic and decadent (except for, of course, their library and well, the entire campus) didn't know it existed.

It felt like I was walking into my very own sanctuary -- a cave where light and darkness, wooden pews and stained glass all created a sublime and personal high.

Reformation protestants, in their no-frills reactionary approach to the 1000-year excesses of the church, must have felt somewhat hamstrung with their simple wooden crosses and spartan aesthetic.

Maybe that's why protestants are always so unnervingly nice, and bring guitars to everything.

As I climbed a hill yesterday, with thousands of islanders making a ritual journey up to the top of Mount Jumullong Manglo for Good Friday, I was struck by a similar feeling. Less catharsis was involved this time, and more wonder at the very photogenic nature of Catholic events.

I got to the mountain, located in the hilly southern region of the island, early -- around 6 a.m. The street below was crowded with cars parked along both sides of the highway, and as the day got brighter more and more people seemed to unload onto the hillside.

The progress up the hill was slow, as the the line of bodies, stretching all the way from the bottom, bumped into one on the way to the summit.

The views from the trail, which provided a relatively short and mild hike my even my off-island standards, were spectacular -- the early morning haze was lifting off the ocean, and the island's jutting coastline could be seen in both directions.



Along the path up, which was marked by homemade crosses made out of rebar and white plastic piping, people would stop and say one of the 14 stations of the cross. It's funny, but I never actually knew that there were stations of the cross, let alone that there were 14 of them before I moved here.

A little alcove carved into the cliff wall provided a particularly romantic setting. I wondered if it was my own secret Catholic sympathies -- no doubt stemming from a simplistic totemistic worship encoded somewhere in my pagan DNA -- that made me want to linger and light candles.







At the top, I was sort of expecting a somber, entirely devout crow. And for the few minutes when the much-anticipated new 11-foot cross arrived on the backs of a group of men, people were quiet.

Most other times, it was like any other widely attended mass event -- kids frolicked, teenagers yelled, parents took a break, people played with cell phones.

Some though, seemed to genuinely be surprised at the top of the hill, looking out at the wild regions of the southern part of the island, that being in nature could be, well, enlightening.



For me, I don't know, I think that at its best -- at its most pure form -- Catholic rituals, like any religion's, exist to tap into a universal human desire for wonder.

But maybe there is something basic about the shape of the cross, hoisted by a bunch of burly men in the sunlight, that makes us all go a little mad.

Still, I would like to think that I would have found wonder, that we all can, just by standing on a hill looking out below.