Reaching My Limits

It’s been over a week since the ferry, when the kind stranger fed me until I almost burst from smiling.  Since then I’ve been up and down.  I’ve pranced in the sun, and I’ve staggered into walls of rain.  I’ve eaten good food, and I’ve crammed rations into my throat.  I’ve woken near beautiful rivers, and I’ve slept in a bus shelter.  I’ve felt peace, and joy, and loneliness. 

Now I just feel tired. 

I plod down the path with a dull emptiness in my thoughts.  Finally, the road turns to revealthe town of Cerro Castillo.  It’s maybe a hundred houses and a few shops, nestled beneath strong, solid mountains.

I buy pasta and sardines, canned mussels, apples and tomatoes and onions.  I want to cook in a proper kitchen, so I check into a hostel.  It’s a gorgeous wooden building, casting a scent of new, living timber from a tree I can’t quite place.  In the main room there’s the classic Chilean woodstove, a big iron hulk sending coziness in all directions.  I bask in the warmth as I stir-fry veggies and boil noodles.  Finally, I’m ready to eat.

My feast is glorious.  Every bite is an explosion of flavor, tomatoes and noodles and oil mixing with oregano and garlic and thyme.  I have a huge plate and I want more, but my stomach has shrunk.  I chill by the woodstove and make easy conversation, waiting for my body to process enough food that I can refill it.  Then I stuff myself again.  Afterword I lounge by the fire in a softening daze.  I snap out of it long enough to stand up and brush my teeth, even though I’m ready to pass out in a chair.  Then I make my way to my sleeping bag and dissolve. 

It takes a long time for life to return.  Gradually, I start to feel my body on the bunk, dull and lazy, muscles hoping they won’t be ordered to move.  I lie calm and peaceful and not really wanting to do anything.  Finally, I open my eyes.  Light streams through the window, clear and strong and warm.  The sun must be high in the sky.  I check the time.  Nine thirty.  I’ve slept 12 hours.  12 hours without waking up to pee; 12 hours without dreaming.

I should be rested.

I should be excited, to go on.  It’s great weather.  No wind, and a perfect ozone sky.  The route will go off the road, through a 40-kilometer stretch of mountains that tower over the town.  That’s what I came to Patagonia for, walking in mountains.  But my body just wants to lie down. 

I could take an extra day here.  15 dollars is in my budget.  I check the weather and see that tomorrow won’t be this nice.  And in two days, it’s back to rain.  If I want a view, I have to go now.

I drag myself out of the hostel around noon.  At the edge of town, signs direct me off the main road onto a rancher’s driveway.  A little way on, there’s a trail.  It weaves through open grass and sand, past a few dry, tough clumps of shrub.  The path goes around some cattle fences and then crosses a small, vigorous creek, bubbling with cold, clear mountain life.  Soon I’m in a cool forest, wetter and more living than the scrubland below.

I meander up for awhile, my mind growing more sluggish with every step.  The trees thin a little.  I turn back to look at my progress.  I’m only a couple kilometers from town.  Only a couple hundred meters above the valley.

Before I’ve made the choice, my body is sitting in the moss. 

It takes awhile to summon emotion, even recrimination.   But the judgment comes eventually, and hard.  What’s wrong with me?  I’m fed.  I’m rested.  I’m not sick at all.  I wasn’t even breathing hard.  I just have no energy.  My body wants to do absolutely nothing.  

What’s WRONG with me? 

Maybe I’ve hit my limits.  Maybe two weeks on the road is too much.  Maybe I can’t maintain 40-50 kilometer days without a break.  Maybe I need a couple days doing nothing. 

I need to get up and go on.  Come ON. 

My body doesn’t even pretend to obey.  Okay…I need to at least stand up.  That’s the first step.  I’ve finished a 100-mile running race.  I can stand up, can’t I? 

It takes three tries.  Then I’m on my feet, still wearing the pack, feeling a hint of chill from the sweat that’s cooled as I sat.  It’s another battle to walk.  I manage it after some timeless staring into space, listening to thoughts I’ve lost even the illusion of directing.  My feet shuffle into something resembling a pace.  I reach a point where the trail forks.  One route heads up to Cerro Castillo and the other goes to a high valley where people day-trip.

Hmm.

Maybe I need a pure walk, something that’s not toward any goal.  I dump my pack at the junction: I’ll just move with my body.  I also take my camera—and my wallet and passport.  It feels…unclean, having to bring them.  Money and documents shouldn’t be my most critical gear.  Not here, in this land of wildness and peace.  I feel a moment’s sadness at the world we live in.  Well, it’s what it is.

I plod onto the side-trail.  I hear my insight from the pampas, the last time my body felt defeated. 

Let go the distance.  Let go the goal. 

Live each step.  Each hundred meters.  

I can still enjoy what I do have.  My life, intact, on vacation in Patagonia.  Even exhaustion is a gift.  It’s why I wanted to try this.  To reach my limits.

It’s okay.  Okay to just…enjoy the day.  

I forgive my body.  I let my thoughts drift to the sunlight, streaming through the thin, leafy forest.  I focus on the mountain air, sharp and cold and living as water from a spring.  I can taste it in my throat, on my tongue and in my lungs.  I’m lucky to experience this.  I’ve made mistakes in life…but they’ve brought me here, in these cool woods.  This is where I want to be, right now, of anywhere in the world.  Where I already am.  I smile.  A hint of life stirs into my steps.  I let it build at its own pace, without trying to force it.  

Three kilometers later, the forest opens into a wide meadow and a small lake.  Mountains thrust overhead, steep and somehow welcoming, like arms of rock guarding the life below.  I stride to the edge of the lake and lie down on my stomach.  I kiss the water and swallow long, clean gulps of energy.  It feels pagan, like drinking the life of the mountains.  And it gives a strength I haven’t felt all day.  I stand up and wave goodbye to the valley.  Then I start off, back to my gear.

I’m feeling okay still, as I put my pack on.  There’s a normal tiredness, not the dead helplessness I’d suffered earlier.  As I move upward, the trees shorten and thin.  Then they disappear, giving way to a gentle blue sky.  The sun is cool in the late afternoon, almost kind.  I find an explosion of berries and stop to stuff myself.  As I move higher, berries and shrubs grow sparse.  Soon there’s only lichen and rocks; uncountable rocks, as if a god made a mountain by putting rocks in a pile.

I reach a high point when the sun has almost set.  The ridge flattens out, giving a partial view of the valley beyond.  I find a little stretch of flat rocks, and maneuver them into something resembling a level surface.  I’ll put my bivy sack here.

The air is almost still, broken only by the softest breeze.  A deep coolness settles as the sun nears the horizon.  It will be a sharp, cold night.  But I’m untroubled.  My body almost failed today, and now it’s working.  That’s what matters.  I set up my Ipad to take a time-lapse of the sunset.  Then I pitch my shelter, and put on all my clothes.  I eat dinner in slow, smooth bites.  Last night’s pasta is good, even though it’s cold enough that the olive oil is an amber solid.  And then I’m done eating, and there’s nothing left to do.  I can just enjoy the evening.

The sun hangs on the horizon.  I try not to stare, but I want to watch it sink below.  When it’s half-way under, the light grows softer.  Soon there’s only a fierce yellow arc, blazing defiantly on the mountains across the valley.  The arc narrows into a line, lighting the land for a last brave moment. 

Then…an urgency leaves the world.  Peace.  Calm.  Not a sleeping infant’s breath of breeze.

Colors cool.  Minute by minute they soften, growing grey with the aging of the sunset.

On the horizon, yellow deepens into orange.  Mountains harden into black, sillouetted against the glow.  The orange weakens into a dark red, like the embers of a starving fire.  And then, breath by breath, the red surrenders into the night.  Without it, the landscape loses shape.  There’s no earth anymore, just a deeper blackness without stars.  There’s no sky; just a softer darkness with stars. 

I can’t remember being this content.  It’s not the wild joy of reaching a summit or seeing someone close after a long separation.  It’s more reserved than that, and deeper.  It’s the feeling that time has stopped.  No, it’s deeper than that.  It’s the feeling that the past never was, and the future will never be.  It’s the feeling that I’ve always been here, watching these stars.

I lie down in my shelter, but leave my face exposed to the night.  Soon my body melts away. But my eyes stay open a long time, drinking the stars.