I wake up hungry. Time to find whatever grocery store serves the ferry terminal. But It turns out there isn’t a grocery store, just a really over-priced restaurant. I’d pass it up, but I’m completely out of food. I try to eat my scrambled eggs and toast slowly, even though I’d love to demolish the meal in three and a half seconds. If I eat slow, it isn’t as obvious that I’d need six servings to be full. But the food is too delicious for self-control, and I only make it last a couple minutes. I resist the temptation to order more my leaving as soon as I’ve paid.
It takes only a few minutes to pack my camp. Then I wander to the pier and sit on my backpack, waiting for the ferry. It’s a gorgeous day. Blue, warm, so calm that the ocean glints like glass. On both sides of the bay, steep, vivid green hills tower into the sky, bursting with the same lush plants I started seeing last night.
Cars start to line up at the pier, waiting for the ferry. It occurs to me that the drivers are probably bored to be stopped. I’d probably be the same if I was driving this road. This time would be something to kill, something to get over with. But for me, resting on my backpack after a month of walking, doing nothing is something to savor. I wait in calm contentment, watching the mountains reflected in the ocean, rippling slightly as the water wobbles.
Finally, the ferry appears from behind an arm of land. It docks smoothly, and then lets me on first, before the cars. It takes another 10 minutes to load the drivers, and then we motor away from shore. I relax in the sun, taking in the bubbly churn of the boat and the faint, chemical smell of the sunscreen on my nose.
I know that my rest is almost over. In a few minutes the ferry will land on a peninsula, a nature reserve 10 kilometers wide at the narrowest point. I’ll have to cross it in an hour and forty-five minutes, to catch a second ferry leaving from the other side. If I don’t make it, I’m stuck until 1:00pm the next day, with no food. 10 kilometers would be a breeze if I trusted my legs to run, but I can’t risk another injury. I’ll have to walk—and at walking pace, 10 kilometers in an hour and forty-five minutes will be a race.
I fasten my pack as land approaches. The boat eases into shore, and a minute later a drawbridge starts inching to the ground. When it makes contact, I speed-walk down the ramp and onto the road. All the tension melts out of my body. There’s no need for thinking now, nothing to plan or stress about. I just have to go.
I cruise for the first couple kilometers, fit and fresh from my rest. Cars keep stopping and offering rides. Someone in an official looking truck is almost argumentative, and I have to repeat that I’m trying to walk the whole Carretera. He looks skeptical. No—he looks like he thinks I’m crazy and is wondering how to say it politely. I add that I’ve walked from Villa O Higgens, starting about a month ago. He gives a surprised shrug and drives on.
Maybe people aren’t even allowed to walk this stretch of road. Maybe it’s one of those cases that’s so rare they don’t have a procedure for it. Well, so far they’re letting me do it, and that’s enough.
A little later, my left leg starts hurting. Soon, small, stabbing pains are shooting through my quadricep, spiking whenever I bend the knee. The pain is moderate, but I’m a little worried about why I’m hurting. I haven’t done anything that would cause a muscle to tear. I’ve just been walking, exactly the way I’ve done for the last month. I’m not even tired!
Well, it doesn’t matter why it hurts. I’ll just have to deal with it.
But the pain gets worse. By five kilometers it’s a tearing spasm, ripping across the muscle with every step. My face keeps wrinkling in a grimace, a tension of watered eyes and sharp, drawn-in breath. The pain vanishes whenever I straighten the leg, and rips back whenever I move.
Fuck.
I still have five kilometers. Five kilometers, and less than an hour left.
Seriously?
My body is breaking down now? From a problem I’ve never had? When I’m racing to avoid a day without food? I couldn’t make this up. If I read it in fiction, I would put down the book. Right. Someone walks for 1,100 kilometers with nothing wrong and then gets a leg problem for no reason, exactly when he needs to move fast. Come up with a plot twist that could actually happen. But somehow it is happening. Whoever said truth is stranger than fiction can go fuck themselves.
The thought is satisfying, but it doesn’t help the pain.
Maybe singing will distract me. I’ve been singing a lot in the last month. I never felt confident before, but something about walking all day alone made me not care if my voice was good. I start a sad, beautiful song I’ve been learning, about an unknown soldier in World War One.
Well how do you do, private William McBride
Do you mind if I lay here, down by your graveside,
And rest for awhile, in the warm summer sun
I’ve been walking all day, and I’m nearly done
I can see by your gravestone, you were only 19,
When you joined the glorious fallen, of 1916
Well I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean,
Or William McBride, was it slow and obscene?
The words take me out of my pain a bit, into the sad futility of the war. I’m lucky, to be here. I’m lucky to be suffering by choice, because of a silly goal I’d set. No one shoved a gun in my hands and told me to kill or be killed. I’m lucky to be facing a single night without food. No one took the crops I’d grown at gunpoint, to feed an army and leave my family to starve.
And did you leave a wife, or a sweetheart behind
In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined
And, though you died back in 1916
In that loyal heart are you…forever 19?
I continue singing in manageable discomfort. But putting my suffering in perspective doesn’t help for long. It’s human nature not toput our lives in perspective. It’s human nature to find our problems the most important and terrible things in the world. Within a few minutes of finishing the song, my thoughts are back on my pain.
Suddenly the quad rips even worse. My face spasms, cheeks wrinkling and eyebrows clenching hard enough to close my eyes. My inhale jerks inward, reinforced by a tensing of every muscle in my arms and chest. My legs stop.
I haven’t chosen to quit. My body just…did. And as I let my face relax, as the breath sighs out and my chest deflates, there’s no pain.
All I have to do it stop. All I have to do is not bend my leg.
If I don’t walk, it doesn’t hurt. If I don’t walk, it doesn’t hurt at ALL.
I stand for a few seconds, weighing the implications of that fact. And then there’s the sound of a car, a gathering rumble from the forest behind. I’m not taking a ride. Not now. Last time I had to, but this injury can wait. If I need to I can camp and try finishing the next day. I force a shuffling walk, and a few seconds later, the car emerges from the trees. Somehow I manage a smile when the driver offers a ride.
“Thank you. But I want to walk the whole Carretera Austral.”
He waves, and drives on. I stop again as soon as his car is around the corner, and the pain vanishes. Dammit. It’d be so easy to just…not move. All I’d have to do is accept a ride. I wouldn’t even have to stick out my thumb; I could just stop saying no.
I take in the day. The sky hangs blue and cool, clear and sharp and clean as fall. The sun is perfect. It’s not the enemy it was in the summer, or the heatless light it will become in another month. Instead it’s a gentle weight on my skin, soft and mellow and warm.
There’s no wind.
Trees stand motionless, down to the smallest leaf.
How often does that happen? How often is the forest this calm? And I’m only noticing it now, because I stopped. I’m appreciating this beauty because I’m hurt. If I wasn’t, I’d be cruising along and I wouldn’t really see.
A smile ripples into my cheeks, and the tension eases out of my eyes.
Maybe it’s good. Maybe it’s good this is happening now, when I need to make the ferry. Maybe it’s good that I have to earn the Careterra.
I breath out, savoring the autumn air tingling over my teeth. I take in the scene a moment longer, savoring the simple lack of pain. Then I brace my face and take a step. Then another. And then another. I can always take one more step. And every step helps. Every step helps.
I’m three kilometers from the ferry terminal when another wave of cars starts passing. Shit. This means the boat behind me made its second run and delivered its second load of people. Once these cars board the next ferry, it will sail. I pick up the pace a tiny bit, as much as I can. And then a bus drives by, carrying all the foot passengers who didn’t try to walk this part.
That’s it. That will be the last of the traffic. They’ll get on the ferry, and then I’ll be stuck camping here.
I’m not worried about the night without food. It’s more that missing the boat will take a day from my schedule, because the next one won’t leave until tomorrow afternoon. I harden my breath and wrench my leg onward. The road bends to reveal the back of the bus. It’s stopped. It must be waiting for me. Maybe you’re not allowed to camp here, and someone will make me ride the last kilometer.
But as I reach the bus, I realize it’s only the last in a long line of stopped vehicles. There must be some kind of traffic jam. Yesssss! I pick up the pace as much as I can with my leg. Soon, the road bends to reveal the ferry. They haven’t even started letting vehicles on. The traffic jam is the line to board!
I walk past the cars and onto the boat. I made it. Not just made it, I beat the cars. I got on before all the people who offered me rides. And now I’ll have a three-hour rest until the ferry reaches Hornopieren. Three hours of sitting. Three hours of resting, while my body moves faster than I can run. I never appreciated what a miracle that is.
It’s so amazing what we take for granted. We eat without even tasting our food, focused on whatever is more important than the flavors keeping us alive. We spend the last day of a family vacation on our phones, and then our loved ones die before we see them again. And…we go about our lives, not even realizing that our bodies aren’t hurting.
I let my muscles tear for the last steps, as I walk up the ramp. Then I find a seat, and the pain evaporates into bliss.
I made it.
