While it is not accurate to use the term ‘diminishment’ to describe the overall experience, there is an element of the experience that involves reduction or loss. Participants commonly reported feeling diminished in the face of something larger than themselves, humbled by the place or less in control. Feelings of diminishment in the face of something larger were often in terms of the natural environment or the ‘place’ itself and were both spatial and temporal. Participants reported feelings of humility or humbleness that flowed from the natural world, and particularly its incomprehensibility.
Feeling small in the face of ‘something’ larger was a common description, and while participants could recall places and times when they felt that way, often involving particular features on the river, the sense of diminishment was not entirely in relation to those individual features. It was more that the features discussed were signposts to gaining a more general sense of the size of the place, both physically and temporally.
world. While is not surprising to feel small in relation to the physical features on the river, such as the towering cliff walls in the Ravine, what was perhaps surprising was the number of subtle ways in which smaller features along the river made
participants aware of something larger that was undeniable, humbling and beyond imagination.
Feelings of humility could also involve a perceived reduction of the self or a diminishment of one’s own importance. It commonly involved a sense of being reminded that the place, or the natural world generally, could carry on without us, without our input, and will continue to do so after we have left. For many
participants that level of diminishment was both terrifying and enjoyable.
“I think if I was to pick one thing that has stayed with me the strongest, it’s definitely the intensity and ‘immensity’, maybe is a better word, of that place. And how overwhelming that is and how that dislocates and displaces you as a person, I guess, because that’s something that’s really... An experience, is just thinking about... Yeah, kind of being lost in something that’s almost beyond... Lost in a space and experience that’s beyond your own comprehension or ability to place yourself in it or with it.” (Vickie PT1)
“And when you stop and you look around you, you realise how profoundly
unimportant you are to the natural flow of life as it unfolds in there. And I think, so I think that sort of lesson in humility. So when I say I'm left with this feeling of awe and an impression of the extraordinary beauty of it, its impact on me as a person is a humbling one. And it makes me profoundly aware of how unimportant I am
personally, that how either my species is not the be all and the end all. It's not the last word in value on the planet.” (Richard PTE)
Participants related feelings of diminishment to a loss of control. Certainly many participants were out of their comfort zone in terms of rafting the Franklin River, but there was a more profound loss of control. The river dictates where you go, weather and water levels allow you to proceed, rapids move with a sense of unstoppable gravity and power, and there is a sense of the inescapable on the river journey. Combined with this at times was the realisation that one’s presence in such an environment was in some ways inconsequential in the scheme of things.
“It was just, the scale of you as a human just becomes incredibly small and you’re looking around you and thinking, wow it’s a big tough environment and it’s uncompromising and it doesn’t care that you’re there and you’ve got to go in and
you’ve got to essentially meet it on its terms and if you think that, if you think that you’re ever entirely or 100% in control then you’re kidding yourself because it’s got to be respected and it’s got to be, it’s a balance between you and nature and it’s in nature’s favour and you just feel incredibly small but also incredibly happy to be there and to be aware of it and to see just how impressive the environment is… it’s just a wonderful experience for me.” (Donald PT2)
“Yeah and how it’s like wild. I guess I liked it because it was also like where you couldn’t really control it, that’s what I really like about nature, like you can’t control it so we didn’t really know what was going to happen and we just had to go with it whereas like here you know if it’s raining you can get in the car or something. That’s what, I don’t know but, there you know if it’s raining or something, I don’t know just, do you know what I’m getting at kind of?… Yeah not in control of anything really and it’s as if you’re closer to yourself.” (Amanda PT3)
There was a sense that the diminishment or loss of control involved a stripping away of something, perhaps some unnecessary baggage that makes one feel in control or try to stay in control. There was a sense that one could be laid bare to the world but that that could be a relief. It was both frightening and exciting. As Hay recalls of a trip down the Franklin River: “I stand on a rock high above The Churn and there is a grip of fear upon me. I lose words. I lose personality – and this is disturbing and exhilarating, both. I am challenged to know myself; I am challenged to lose myself. Perspectives change. I travel an arc of time that has become no-time” (2008, n.p.). This challenge to the self appears profound, and has as its companion the possibility of fear or vulnerability.
“The sense of diminishment that you get which can be both inspiring and also a bit frightening because it's ego dissolving.” (Richard PTE)
“I think it’s important for people to be a little bit dislodged. I think we’ve got a pretty unrealistic sense of control and I like the idea that people get sort of lost in something that’s beyond them, and myself. I think, in some sense it’s good to be, I don't know, to see something that you can’t see its frame or you can’t see its....I think it’s important, um, I think it’s also... I think that, I don't know, the gaps just widening between us and our connection to natural environment and I mean it’s... Like it’s becoming more and more about resources than actual emotional or physical experience for the individual. And you experience it through such structured examples, like I mean even a trip down the Franklin is structured in a sense, but it’s different from a video or a photo or your wall, calendar, or...yeah, I mean that’s a pretty extreme example.”
Interviewer: “So you’re wanting people to be dislodged. What would you hope that that would do for them?”
“Well I think dislodge but I think it can be kind of humbling and I think that’s probably important, considering the way that we tend to, I don't know, see ourselves I suppose. I think it’s good to be tripped up a bit, but I also think it’s really good to just indulge in wonder and let our imagination be, to just go exploring and experience things that don't necessarily have reason or...yeah, or even purpose. I think that’s really important for me and I hope, I don't know, it’s almost like that childlike thing of daydreaming or just letting your imagination…be taken out of your almost, out of your control in a sense as well.” (Vickie PT1)
Feeling diminished or humbled often appeared to have two parts, a tension between feeling threatened or vulnerable, and feeling comfortable or connected. This apparent tension was related by participants not only to the physical challenges of the trip inspired by the environment, but also to the potential challenge to the self inspired by the same. Certainly, there appeared for many participants a sense of intimidation garnered from the environment, particularly where the scale or power of the place was evident. While for some the experience was accentuated in particular places, for others it was an overall experience, or appreciation, of the place.
There was a sense of being ‘comfortably terrified’, which is not to say necessarily that there was comfort in being terrified, but perhaps that there was an additional element to the experience that provided comfort. What seems certain was that for many the experience was both threatening and comforting. It was about an interaction with the landscape which both threatened and enfolded.
“But the other thing is these feelings of diminishment and the ego dissolving nature of being on the river, part of which does come from the adventure component but part of which is simply a reaction to the grandeur, not the macro grandeur but also the grandeur of those little micro worlds, they could so easily, it could so easily not be awe inspiring and uplifting, but profoundly threatening too.” (Richard PTE) “In the Ravine I, it was the first time that I felt, um, intimidated by the environment. Where I felt very small in that place. And, the water was low, so, I mean it probably is much louder normally, but it still thunders in there, um. So it’s, I felt I got quite an adrenalin hit, like oops. Because we’ve got our little boats to start doing the first haulings and you sort of climbing along, we weren’t doing high portages but just, you know scrambling. And just the scale of it. Um, so there, it’s probably related. You know at times the sense of um, being very small was uplifting, in that I quite like knowing that my shit’s not really that important and that I’m just a tiny atom in this huge thing. Um, and then the flip side of that at times was ‘oh shit, I’m only this tiny thing’. So yeah, they’re two sides of the same coin.” (Morris PT1)