It’s been two days since the camp near the cliffs. Two days of fast, steady marching, over 50 kilometers a day. And until a couple hours ago, it was two days of strong, sunny skies. But now the weather hangs thick and cloudy, with the pressing weight of air about to rain. It’s near sunset, maybe past. I can’t tell with these clouds, but it’s the right time of day. The light is dull, and I have the energy I always seem to get near night-fall.
A little way on there’s a dirt road, heading down toward the river. Perfect. I’ll camp on a beach, away from traffic noises. But a few minutes off the highway, the grass is cropped short and littered with manure. Horses walk here, and they might step on my bivy sack in the night.
Maybe I should turn back. The daylight is going. Shadows have already conquered the undergrowth, building into an army of night about to invade the rest of the world. Still, there should be horse-free camping by the river, and it was near the road on my map. I continue onward, steps slightly faster as the daylight bleeds away. In a few minutes, the road reaches a clearing by the water. But there’s no gravel bar, just a long stretch of sand that’s more like mud. Damn.
I’m scanning the riverbank when a dog snarls, low and grim.
I spin toward the threat. There’s a driveway I didn’t notice, with a dog on a leash and a horse tied to a paddock. Further back, a small dark house squats in the shadows. Branches lurk over the hut like claws, black and ominous in the dusk.
My lungs stiffen and my legs jerk, angling into a sprinting stance. The movement was faster than consciousness, almost as if my body wanted to escape from…something. I feel a strong, sinister vibe, something I can’t explain from the evidence of my eyes. There’s no reason to fear a house and a horse and a chained dog. But even if my fear isn’t rational, who cares? If I’m going to feel weird all night, that’s enough reason to leave. I hurry back the way I came.
By the time I reach the highway, the world is a mass of grey. It will be fully dark in 15 minutes, and there’s nowhere to camp. Both sides of the road are choked with vegetation, and far too uneven to pitch my shelter. But my headlamp died a long time ago, so I’ll have to find somewhere soon. I start running a little, even though I said I wouldn’t risk re-injuring myself.
Eventually, I reach a clearing that’s recently logged. It’s a mass of woody debris, a jumble that looks hopelessly un-flat for camping. But the light is almost gone, and there’s no sign of livestock that might squish my face in the night. I’ll have to take the chance and hope there’s some scrap of level ground.
I hurry off the road, clambering over piles of wood. In the deepening grey, I find something slightly flat. I clear a pile of slash, shoving aside branches that are black in the foggy dusk. Then I rip stuff out of my pack. As I’m gathering my gear, water starts falling in cold, stinging spears. Goddammit. Of course it would start raining now. Fuck you, sky. In a moment, I snap out of my self-pity.
Bitching won’t help.
I throw the tarp over myself and my whole sorry mess of gear. It makes things drier—somewhat. There’s a thick, claustrophobic humidity instead of the outright rain outside. But the price is losing most of the little light left in the world. I fumble with the bivy sack, making silly mistakes in the dark, annoyed at my dead headlamp. By the time I’m set up, it’s full-on night.
I eat some bread and mayonnaise and hotdogs, choking down the calories as drops splatter the tarp harder and harder. It’s sort of comforting and sort of claustrophobic, eating shitty food in the dark, wearing a tarp and listening to the drum of the rain. Finally, I take off my shoes and crawl into the shelter.
Over the next half-hour I almost sleep. I’m warm enough, but I can’t quite fade all the way. The night rains on, second by second and minute by minute. A slimy humidity seeps through my clothes, pressing my skin in an un-consensual caress.
Hours pass.
A weakness creeps into my body. But it’s not the wholesome tired of sleep, or even the dull fatigue I’d felt a week ago, when I’d over-trained. This is the ghostly, draining tired of sickness. The feeling deepens as my body finally fades, into a sleep that feels like death.
When I wake, the rain has stopped and the night is over. But I have an absolute lack of energy. It’s not the yearning for rest that I feel when I haven’t slept enough. It’s worse than that. There’s a deadness in my very brain, a greyness that would let me lie forever without being happy or bored, without sleeping or wanting to move.
It takes a while to make myself unzip the bivy sack. Outside, dull thin fog sulks over a dull woody field.
I should sit up.
The thought comes from somewhere, but it’s not a desire. It’s more like advice, words that an out-of-body observer would prescribe for someone in my situation. It takes awhile to act on it, and when I do, I find that sitting up is only the first battle. It’s another struggle to put on my socks and shoes. And then I have to make myself stand.
Packing is a rambling daydream. I’ll stop unconsciously, and then realize I’ve stood for five minutes, staring into the fog. At least it’s not raining. The thought is slow and uninterested, something I barely care about.
Finally, I pull on my pack. I shuffle to the road and start plodding. Twenty minutes on, I’m still lifeless. Maybe food will help. I take out a dry, crumbly biscuit, but my body reacts with the same, sullen indifference toward everything else I’ve tried this morning. It takes twenty minutes to coax the food into my uninterested stomach. But some intellectual corner of my brain knows I need the energy. It’s still 22 kilometers to the next town. I’ll try to make it there, and then sleep for as long as I need.
It takes seven hours. Seven hours for twenty-two kilometers. It’s a woeful pace for terrain this gentle, wide valleys without serious hills. I get a room in a hostel for $20 and choke down another snack. Then I pass out, two hours before the sun will set.
