The source of the Nile

 Soon after leaving the John Matte Hut, we climbed up a rise to a large plateau. Here was a mildly vast wetland area. Vittorio explained he had once been with researchers up in the Ruwenzoris for 29 days. Their focus was on the Lower Bigo Bog (at least that is what I think he was talking about. I came at this very same topic three or four times over our eight day trip).

 The piece that I had to make very clear is the part where the bog is the source of the Nile River.
"How can the bog be the source of the Nile?"
"The plants in the bog pull water out of the ground. More than the rainfall and snow melt."

Now, for an area like this, that, is making quite a comment. I took this to state that the vegetation pumped water to the surface, which overflowed into the adjoining river, which is the highest elevation water flows in the direction of the Nile. On the western side of the Ruwenzori, I would think that water flows to the Congo River.

"What were the researchers looking at for 29 days?"
"The bog."
"Did they think it was the source of the Nile?"
"Definitively." He used that word. Vittorio is quite well educated.







So here I am, little old guy from Columbus, Ohio, bumbling along some trail in Africa to climb a mountain and just inadvertently hike up and over a world heritage site that is the source of the Nile.

My great, 'Man, I did not prepare for this one.' was not bringing a small empty bottle with me. I could have had a bottle containing a bit of the source of the Nile. I could put it on the mantle next to my squashed penny  from Yankee Stadium. And my Viewmaster slides of the West.

All kidding aside. There are places on the earth where you can't help but notice the energy there. Mount Rainier is a place. So is the Washington coast, west of Olympic National Park. Similar energy along the waterways on the inside of Vancouver Island, north of... Vancouver. Yellowstone. Tibet. New Zealand.
Even I could feel it. The guy who wouldn't notice the Dali Lama, if he was sitting next to him on the Bus. To start conversation, I'd probably ask him about how he does his trash pick up.

But, the Bigo Bog has this, 'Beginning of Man' energy about it. This pureness. So pure, I was not brave enough to drink from the source of the Nile.
Another one of life's opportunities missed.
This kind of stuff is the difference between people like me, and... Hemingway.
Some people live life. I just walk around the perimeter.

The trail through the bog is a boardwalk, to protect the bog. This boardwalk had the earmarks of the UN, or at least an NGO: 24" diameter plastic culvert pipe (the expensive kind), stainless steel bolts, sawmill wood (any piece of it would have, at home, sold as an exotic African hardwood). The boardwalk was well built and made the right statement. This place is too beautiful and valuable to scar up with a pig slop through it.

At the bog's end, we climbed through some higher ground and into the Upper Bigo Bog. It is not quite as much of a power center. Although the boardwalk here does possess less of a
'right-outside-National-Park-Service-headquarters-in-Washington-DC feel to it though. The boardwalk lays directly on the wet earth and may last an additional five years before it begins to rot too pervasively.

Above the Upper Bigo Bog, is beautiful Bijuku Lake. It is accompanied by a hut of the same name just above it. With a lake holding water here, acting like a battery for a solar panel, Why would this not be the source of the Nile? I asked Vittorio if it was so.
"Yes"
"Both the bog and this lake are the source of the Nile?"
"Yes."
Clearly, the concept of an ultimate piece of real estate doesn't compute here in the Ruwenzoris.

I'm glad it doesn't. Here is a place where 'this tree is no better than that one', 'you get the same respect others get, when it is deserved' and 'Nothing here is worth more than another element. Its value is as a complete system. You can't break it up and sell it for the most any and every single piece can demand.'