To Shake the Sleeping Self

by Jedidiah Jenkins

  One scene stands out, though.

  A mountain range divides the skinny nation of Panama down the middle like a spine, with jungle on the Caribbean side and golden grass and hot air on the southern side. Birds squawked and tree limbs shook from unseen animals jumping around as we made our way up. At the top of the divide, we found a little guest room in a wooden shack perched on stilts over a ravine and leaning toward the sunset. It had a “hostel” sign, though it really looked like a large outhouse.

  “This is like a postcard,” I shouted. “Let’s see if they have room!”

  A tiny woman met us at the door, visibly thrilled to have guests. She had deep wrinkles and jet-black hair. She ushered us in with a few words, showed us a room with bunk beds, and then sat us down on a dusty old couch. The place was crammed with knickknacks and piles of crusty National Geographics. While our host went off to the kitchen to make us beans in an ancient metal pressure cooker, I flipped through a magazine.

  I remembered holding Nat Geos as a kid like some kind of porthole to a life of discovery. Now I gazed upon the adventures with a different eye. One article featured an anthropologist in Indonesia, traveling into the mountains to document rare birds-of-paradise. A year ago, I would’ve lusted for his experience. Now I saw his bags, his cameras, his bug spray, his soggy clothes, and thought, He must be miserable.

  I looked at Weston, sitting next to me, writing in his journal. “Are you having fun?” I asked.

  “On this trip, or like, writing in my journal?” he asked.

  “The trip. Is it what you thought? I’ve been struggling a bit. Not bored. Just…we have so much farther to go, and it’s hard. And monotonous.”

  “You think that? I do, too,” he said, “but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t think you did. You’re always so amazed by everything and every bird, I thought you couldn’t get bored.”

  “I can. Though I’m ashamed of it for some reason.”

  “My money experiment stresses me out. Mostly because it stresses you out.”

  “It doesn’t stress me out,” I said, lying.

  “I know it does. You don’t hide annoyance well. It’s okay. I know it’s annoying. But my experiment isn’t just an experiment. I don’t have access to money like you do.”

  “Access? I saved money up,” I protested.

  “Yeah, but if you run out, your parents can bail you out. You know that no matter what happens, you’ll be okay. I don’t have that. If I needed a hundred bucks, I wouldn’t be able to get it from my family. I mean, they’d find it for me, but it would hurt them. That insecurity fucks with my mind. It’s a different existence.”

  I looked down at the National Geographic in my hands while Weston continued.

  “I wanted to go on this trip to prove that someone like me could. You’re an upper-middle-class white guy—of course you can do this. I wanted to show that almost anyone could. And it’s been hard. I know you get mad at me buying weed. But it helps my anxiety. You’re on this trip to reach a destination. I’m on this trip following ideals.”

  I felt transparent. “Dude, I’m not a rich kid,” I said.

  “I didn’t say you were. But you are, in the scheme of things. That’s okay. I’m rich in the scheme of things, too. But that’s the cycle I’m trying to get out of. There’s lots of people richer than you. But if that’s all you compare yourself to, then those left behind get lost. That’s the problem with capitalism. I’m just saying I don’t have it quite like you, and that’s just how it is. Though I know I’m a straight white guy with all the privileges, I’m not going to be incarcerated by the U.S. government because of my skin color, or the gram of weed I have in my pocket. I know that. It’s just something I think about, economic access and ability and the psychological burden of financial insecurity. And food insecurity.”

  “That’s what you think about while biking?” I said with a smile, trying to lighten the conversation.

  “Yes.” Weston laughed.

  “Do you think we’ll get the excitement back? For biking?” I said.

  “We have to choose it. It’s like a marriage. The honeymoon’s over, and we can jump ship or we can choose to love the one we’ve got, and make it fresh. I mean, dude, we have Colombia next! That’s exciting. That’s like, when you’re married and then you have a kid.”

  “This metaphor is stretching,” I said. “And don’t you ditch girls after a few months? What do you know about marriage? You get bored with jobs and girls and philosophies faster than anyone I know.”

  “Easy, tiger,” he said. “I outgrow them. I want this trip. I am testing my philosophies. I know what I’m doing.”

  “Frijoles!” the lady called from the kitchen. While we’d been talking, the shack had filled with the aromas of refried beans, rice, and fried eggs.

  We went to the kitchen, where she had us sit at a small wooden table. She served us the meal and watched as we ate hungrily. Learning what he thought gave me a new sense of Weston’s depth; it brought him closer. I thought I had him figured out, but I didn’t.

  We slept peacefully, with full bellies, in the woman’s shack, and in the morning we headed down the mountain. I watched Weston load up his bike and ride off ahead. I thought about all he was thinking about. I thought about how he thought I was spoiled. Or lucky. Or just free from the burdens he carried.

  Jungle gave way to golden grass and cows and a landscape that reminded me of California. Trees clumped in dark green patches, cleared fields, ponds, farmhouses and barns. We passed coffee farms, with signs for tourists to stop and buy beans or take a tour. For a whole day, we rode downhill, covering seventy miles without breaking a sweat. Then the land leveled off to a busy freeway along the coast toward Panama City.

  We slept that night on the coast in a cheap motel and then started out for the city. The heat was so intense and the exhaust from trucks so terrible and the road so busy and ugly, we decided to hitchhike in.

  “I’m not fucking riding in this congested shit after that full day downhill in paradise,” Weston said.

  When hitchhiking failed us, we tracked down a bus, threw our bikes underneath, and let it carry us into Panama City, its enormous white skyline of condo towers standing over the ocean.

  The family of an old friend had offered to host us here. I was ready. I wanted to drink some nice beer and enjoy the city. I wanted to get a tattoo.

  Chapter 10

  HARRY DEVERT

  (Panama)

  8,514 miles to go

  Our friend’s house was located in a maze of suburban streets, with homes built for Americans back in the fifties and sixties. Strange but nice. A haunting of American influence, now proudly taken back by the Panamanians. Our friend’s dad was a Panama Canal boat captain, which felt very cool and on the nose. We called him “Captain.”

  Suddenly, it was the end of February. I spent mornings reading the news and catching up with friends on Instagram and Facebook. One morning, I noticed that someone had left me a strange comment on my Instagram.

  “Have u heard of Harry Devert?”

  Harry Devert? No idea.

  “#prayforHarry” they said.

  I clicked through the hashtag. A bunch of photos of a handsome thirtyish guy on a motorcycle, smiling. It looked from the photos like he was in Mexico. Everyone was saying #prayforHarry. Why were we praying for him? Obviously, something had happened. I found his account. He had last posted on January 25, in Morelia, Michoacán, putting up a photo of the very cathedral I had marveled at a few months before. I found a news story from his hometown. Harry had been missing for a month. In cartel country.

  Lots of people were worried. In the comments on his last post, I read, “I haven’t seen a recent post from you. Hope you are ok, bro.”

  Then, “Harry, I read your mom’s message on Facebook. Hope all is well! Stay safe.”

  T
hen, “Come on Harry post a photo of you enjoying a tequila shot on the beaches of Mexico already…I’m praying to all the higher powers, cosmos, energies and everything Alan Watts has mentioned…that you are safe and happy.”

  Then, “I will move earth and sky until you give some life signs. Maybe you’ll laugh at this when u appear hahaha.”

  I learned that Harry Devert was thirty-two years old, a former stock trader who had given up his job to travel the world for the last five years. He was taking his Kawasaki motorcycle from the U.S. to Brazil for the World Cup.

  I found his blog, called “A New Yorker Travels,” and I started reading his posts. He reminded me of me. He had left his job to travel and see the world and celebrate it. He had a brightness, a bravado about him that felt bigger than me, more exaggerated. But even so, he felt like a kindred spirit. Like someone I’d enjoy swapping stories with.

  “I’ve run with the bulls and broken 3 ribs because of it in Pamplona,” he wrote in the “about me” section on his blog. “I’ve spent time in a small jail in Paraguay, swum in the highest waterfall in the world and almost died swimming in a hurricane. I’ve climbed the highest Tepui mountain in the world and almost got stuck at the top of a mountain in Brasil until I made a rope out of vines and got myself down…” The stories went on and on. “I’ve run 3 miles to try and save a bird’s life, and I’ve sat and watched as someone was hacked to death with a machete only a few meters away from me. I choose my battles. I’ve been in the largest food fight in the world in Spain and eaten some of the world’s best in France. I’ve been chased with a gun in Colombia, chipped my tooth on a gun that was shoved in my mouth in Venezuela…danced with a pirate on a beach in Peru…

  “I think that life is a pilgrimage.

  “My life is something like a small boat in the middle of an ocean driven by the weather and the tide. All I carry is faith.

  “I dream, I search, I love, I live.”

  Sure, it was cheesy, but he seemed to really be living. He seemed rungs ahead of me. Less confused. So full of discovery that discovery itself had become a religion. I felt like I was sitting here, hunched over in a tangle of feathers, while he was flapping his wings over the world.

  Harry Devert’s Instagram posts and blog had one sustained theme: Human beings are lovely and kind. Each story testified to the kindness of strangers, the beauty of travel, the universal goodness of humanity, and the freedom of deciding to ignore fear and trust people. His first post in January read: “Feliz Año Nuevo from my new Mexican friends and I…wishing everyone all the best in 2014….have a feeling this is going to be an amazing year!!”

  He was so full of life that he made me feel shitty for being tired. I should be more joyful. I should be more grateful. I am on the trip of a lifetime. I am staying with a Panama Canal captain. I am amazing. This guy is doing it right.

  Where the hell are you, Harry?

  He was a year older than me and living in parallel lines, following almost the same route as I was at almost the same time. The only difference was that he was traveling alone, and by motorcycle. Wouldn’t that be safer for its speed?

  A young man goes missing in Mexico while chasing his wanderlust for travel. His last Instagram post floats indefinitely on the Internet, showing a beautiful cathedral in Mexico. And there I was, in Panama, waiting. Not sure what I was waiting for. Well, yes, I was. I was waiting for my mom to find this story and send it to me. I was waiting for Harry Devert to surface from one of Weston’s spiritual sweat lodges with some vision to bring down capitalism, and to vindicate me.

  I checked his Instagram every day for weeks, hoping he’d start posting again. I added his name to my Google alerts. I read everything he ever posted. He said that he was headed to Zihuatanejo, the beach from The Shawshank Redemption’s closing scene. He had always wanted to go there. I loved that movie. I had always wanted to go there, too. I began to care for him because he was like me and he was missing, and his poor mother, and his family, and all of it.

  As I explored Panama City with my temporary family, and planned to cross into Colombia, the thought of Harry colored everything. The way someone waits for news about a job application or a doctor’s call back about a biopsy. Everything I did carried with it the smell and shadow of the question: Where the hell are you, Harry? What will the news bring? When I’d forget about him, something would trigger the story, and the weight of it came right back.

  Google alerts told me that his mother flew to Mexico. That there was a campaign throughout Michoacán to find him. That the Guerrero state police asked for tips on Harry’s whereabouts.

  Harry sat in my mind, whispering to me.

  Chapter 11

  A NEW CONTINENT

  (Crossing to Cartagena)

  8,430 miles to go

  Our week in Panama City gave us good food, craft beer, and a few dance clubs. The towering giant white condominiums of the city fascinated me. “They’re all empty,” the Captain told us. “They’re built to launder drug money. They’re just empty. No one lives in them.”

  The economy of the drug trade never felt real to me. Sure, I knew the cartels were big. I knew millions of people do drugs. But it always seemed like something in the movies. Not a real thing. Panama showed me that it wasn’t just a Weston-like friendly handoff here or there. It was a multibillion-dollar industry. San Francisco had its skyscrapers built from tech money. Panama City had skyscrapers built by cocaine.

  We had to plan our route to Colombia. There was just one problem: the Darién Gap. Panama and Colombia are separated by a stretch of roughly eighty miles (maybe a hundred miles, no one really knows) of absolute wilderness. There is no clear border between them. Just jungle and mountains and rivers. There is no road that connects. The impenetrable, untamed jungle is home to indigenous tribes, antigovernment rebels, and the drug trade.

  The Panamanian side is mountainous and steep. The Colombian side is mostly the Atrato River delta: marsh, swamp, bugs, and mud. The Captain’s stories about “The Gap” left our jaws on the floor.

  The first crossing by vehicles—a Land Rover and a Jeep—occurred in 1960. It took the expedition 136 days to go 100 miles, and most of their forward progress happened by barge. That same year, a man named Danny Liska attempted to cross the gap with his motorcycle. He was traveling the entirety of the Pan-American Highway and refused to let the Darién Gap stop him. He ended up abandoning his motorcycle in the jungle and making it to Colombia on foot and by boat. In 1987, drivers in a CJ-5 Jeep completed the first all-land auto crossing. It took that Jeep 741 days to travel 125 miles.

  “We are definitely doing this!” Weston said, looking to me for enthusiastic agreement. I thought about Harry Devert’s disappearance, and wondered what would happen if we disappeared in the gap.

  Then, just as I was ready to agree to it, the Captain said, “You can’t. You have to have military permission to go now. You won’t get it. It’s too dangerous. You have to go by boat.”

  Weston looked crestfallen. “Should we still ask the military?”

  “You will not get permission,” the Captain said dismissively.

  But I was already thinking about Plan B. “What’s the boat situation?” I asked.

  “Many backpackers and travelers do it,” the Captain said. “It is a sailboat. It takes five days. You sail from the Caribbean side, through the San Blas Islands, which are very beautiful, to Cartagena, Colombia. Many tourists do it. It is very good.”

  I got on my computer that night and did some research. It was expensive, $600 a person. It was five days, meals included, and would take us through a Caribbean paradise to Colombia. Fifteen people per boat. Shoot. How would Weston afford this? I wondered if we’d have to split up. I mentioned the price. “I can’t afford that,” he said.

  We sat quietly for a minute. I was thinking about how much money I had left. About five thousand dollars from the sale
of my car. Weston had next to nothing. I guess I could pay for him. That’s twelve hundred bucks. Sheesh. But I can’t do this trip without him. I’m not ready to be alone. I really rely on him. And once we get to Colombia, it’s a straight shot down. I won’t have to pay again. I guess it’s just a cost of the trip.

  “I’ll pay for you.”

  “You sure? I bet I can find my way onto a boat. Maybe a cargo ship,” he said with a playful tone.

  “I’d die without you. You know that.”

  “Yes, I do,” he said. “See, the universe provides—just kidding, just kidding.”

  “I’ll kill you.”

  “I guess that’s the thing,” Weston said, an aside to himself. “This experiment with money. The universe will provide, but it’ll cost you your pride. Seriously, thank you, brother.”

  “Just fix my tires when they pop, okay?”

  We took a taxi to a hostel downtown that brokered the boat trips. The girl told us we could choose among several skippers and services that could take us there. Weston, with his love of warm air and warm water and boats, was cheery. If he couldn’t risk his life through the Darién Gap, why not work on his tan and hope to kiss a Swedish or Israeli girl on a boat?

  We booked a trip on a sailboat called the Wildcard, and on the night before departure, decamped to the hostel. Jeeps would pick us up at six the next morning. We woke up at five and carried our things out to the sidewalk, where a cluster of sleepy backpackers awaited. A fit Asian man with a shiny bald head and nice clothes; an angel-faced blonde girl with a scowl and a predawn cigarette hanging from her mouth; two more blondes in their pajamas speaking Swedish; a handsome boy and his pretty girlfriend leaning on him, unhappy at being awake, speaking a European language I didn’t recognize.