It’s been two days since the sunset in the mountains, but it feels like a distant haze in my mind. Here the horizon is only low, gentle hills with a few patches of trees. And I’m tired again. It’s a deep, dull tired, a stubborn weariness that’s starting to live in my bones.
I’m over-trained.
That’s all there is to it. I’ve been too tired too long for it to be anything else.
I’ve been aiming for a small city called Coyaique, with the aim of resting there for two solid days. I’d hoped to reach it tonight, but that’s not happening. I pushed hard today, and I’ve only managed 45 kilometers. Now the sun is about to set, and I’m still 15 kilometers away. I could force-march on, but I don’t want to show up at midnight and try to find somewhere to sleep.
But there’s nowhere to spend the night here, either. The roadside isn’t developed enough for official camping, but it’s way too populated to just put up a tent. Everywhere looks like private land—open, shelter-less fields behind barb-wire fence. Worst of all, the whole landscape seems visible from someone’s house.
My anxiety mounts as the sun sets. Normally sunset is a time of peace, an hour to watch the day soften and fade. Now, I’m racing to find somewhere private enough to camp.
Five minute later, there’s a dirt road leading away from the highway. It looks like it might go somewhere less developed. On the other hand, it might dead end in a cluster of houses. Then I’ll have to waste ten minutes of daylight retreating back to the main road. I wince for a long, stressful moment. Then I take the chance. I head away from the highway in quick, tense steps, nervous energy rippling from my shoulders into my legs.
The side-road meanders up a hill, through fields with barb-wire fencing on both sides. A little higher, there’s a small patch of trees. The grass nearby is tall and un-trampled by cattle. Good. Cows won’t step on my face in the night. And I’m not line-of-sight with any houses, or at least, none that are close. I’ll take this. It’s the best I’ll find.
I cross the fence. I find the least sloping patch of grass, and put up my bivy sack. By the time I brush my teeth, the world is a dying grey. 200 meters away, on the main road, headlights sharpen into harsh, glaring spears. The cars make a grating roar as they pass. Not my finest camp spot. Well, it’s what I have. I pee, and take a sip of water. Then I crawl into my sleeping bag.
I can’t relax. I’m exhausted, but there’s a tension in my limbs, a jumpy energy at the thought of being discovered. The nervousness sharpens my ears, making me over-interpret every noise of the night.
I feel a sudden empathy for people who sleep in fields because they have to. Lots of people sleep this way because they would have been killed if they’d stayed in their homes. Lots of people sleep this way because their crops failed. They worked long, desperate months, trying to nurture seeds from land without rain, and they watched their plants die and their children grow thin. They made the terrible choice to leave, in the desperate hope that somewhere else was better. And now they’re treated like criminals, because they didn’t want to starve.
I’m lucky to be sleeping in a field by choice. I’m lucky to be doing it for one night, with excellent gear.
Maybe I shouldn’t be here.
Maybe I shouldn’t be hiking across Chile. Maybe I shouldn’t be just…enjoying my life. I’m reasonably talented. I could be doing something to improve things politically, or working a lucrative job and donating to good causes. Instead I’m following my passion for nature and hiking.
Should I follow my passion? What if my passion doesn’t do anything for the world? What if the only thing it does is make me happy? And if I am obligated to help others instead of enjoying my life, where does that obligation end? How much should I be helping? I remember a philosopher who said we should give everything we don’t need to famine relief. We should give up the luxuries in our own lives so that others can live at all.
Is that too extreme? Obviously I’m acting like it is, wearing outdoor gear that costs a year’s supply of rice. But something isn’t right just because I’m doing it. It isn’t right just because everyone else is doing it, either. And even if we shouldn’t donate to the point of joylessness, that wouldn’t make it okay to do nothing. But then…what is the balance? What luxuries are unethical? A nice apartment? A vacation in nature? Watching Netflix, when we could be registering people to vote?
My thoughts stew for a long time. And then I notice a light behind my eyelids, strong and warm. I feel my body in my sleeping bag, life stirring into it. I must have slept. I must have faded very gradually and woke very gradually, so that I never felt unconscious. But I must have been, because it’s daylight. I haven’t been lying awake thinking for nine hours.
I open my eyes to the green-gold glow of sunlight penetrating the bivy sack. I unzip the shelter to reveal a strong, sweeping blue sky. It would be a view to enjoy, if I was camped somewhere else. Instead I roll out of the bivy sack and pack quickly, without eating. Back at the road I put on sunscreen and have a couple crumbly biscuits with salty Chilean butter. Food is another reason to reach Coyaique. I want to eat veggies again.
I make the city before noon. I set up in a camp-ground hostel, where you sleep in a tent but have access to a kitchen and showers. There’s a yard full of other tents, and a bunch of scrawny, hairy cyclists and hitch-hikers. Most of them are Chilean. That was a pleasant surprise about the Carretera, how many of the other people have been local. Everywhere else I’ve traveled it’s been other Americans or Europeans, and a few Canadians and Aussies.
I hit the supermarket and then return to the hostel. I’m cooking a spicy pasta sauce when some Chileans join me. We chat in Spanish and they compliment my language skills, which surprises me. But their tone sounds genuine, so I don’t think it’s just politeness. Probably, they have low expectations of foreigners. A kind young woman asks where I learned Spanish.
“In high school, and then in Spain and Mexico.”
“Mexico is a good place to learn,” her boyfriend chuckles.
“Not here. Chilean Spanish is ugly. Go to Bolivia to learn, their Spanish is beautiful.”
“Want to drink?”
He holds a bottle with something that looks alcoholic.
Fuck it. I’ve been on the road forever and I’m over-trained and this is my rest time. Maybe drinking will loosen my muscles up…okay that’s bullshit, it’s not going to help me recover. But fuck it. I smile hard and drink, in the middle of the afternoon. Because why not? What’s the point of traveling, if you aren’t doing things you couldn’t do normally?
We chat awhile longer, pleasant rambling about things that don’t matter. I don’t usually like that sort of chat. I remember someone weary of travelling, complaining about having the same conversation 100 times in six months. I’d agreed: it can be draining to keep saying where you’re from and what you do in the ‘real’ world. But today it’s pleasant to trade my story with strangers. Maybe I’ve been lonelier than I realized, walking all day into the wind.
That evening I meet a tanned woman with short blond hair and a cyclist’s body. She’s smart and well read, with a sassy vibe that might be flirty. We end up talking for a couple hours and then she goes to bed without anything happening. Still, it felt good chatting with someone hot and cool in a situation that felt like it had potential. It’s been awhile since anything like that happened.
I lie in my bivy sack, pondering my trip. In terms of getting laid, there’s way better places to travel. And it’s not just sex I’m missing: it was good having a real conversation, too. It was nice even having a nothing conversation this afternoon. Maybe I’ve been on the road too long. There’s other places I could go in South America. There’s buses out of here tomorrow that would take me to better food and more people and less effort.
My mind flickers to the sunset over the mountains, three nights ago. I remember the peace of gazing into the stars, looking at the view I’d earned with the struggle of my body. I am on the right path. There will be time later, to be social. I have my whole life for sex and good conversations. I don’t know if I’ll ever be here again, in Patagonia, with the chance to do something this hard and rewarding. I smile into the darkness of my bivy sack. I’ll enjoy my second rest day, tomorrow. And then I’ll move again, far and fast.
