Ferguson and Black Lives Matter and Transparent and transgendered people and the Bible and my mom and my sexuality and Terry Gross and Ebola. And this bird, unaware of it all. Looking for some roadkill, probably. It was not thinking about identity or gender or going extinct. It hungered for dinner and hungered for a mate. That’s it.
I wish, I thought.
Then the condor opened its wings, and with considerable effort lifted into the air, and flew in widening circles over the Chilean border station, and we entered the new country together.
Chapter 20
ALONE IN GOD’S MOST OBVIOUS WORK
(The Carretera Austral)
1,222 miles to go
The road was paved for a few miles, then, as I entered the Chilean town of Futaleufú, the surface turned to gravel. I had arrived at the start of the 700-mile stretch of gravel I had been told about. This was the Carretera Austral, a legendary road through Patagonia for motorcyclists and bikers that winds south through fjords and inlets too numerous to count. The coast is shredded into thousands of islands, with the Pacific Ocean weaving through. What isn’t ocean is lake. Lakes everywhere. Evergreen trees and sheep farms and so many waterfalls that most are not named on any map I could find. I would cycle down this for the entire month of November. I would have Thanksgiving alone somewhere. Then, at the town of O’Higgins, where most people end their Carretera adventure, I would ferry across a glacier-fed lake back to Argentina one more time. Then walk or carry my bike twelve miles through a dense forest. Then another ferry. Then I would be in El Chaltén, the home of Mount Fitz Roy.
By now, I was so accustomed to my new routine, to biking and living out of panniers, of eating salami and crackers and sleeping outside, that the approaching end of the trip felt obvious. I was just stepping into completion. It was all surprisingly transactional.
I spent the night in Futaleufú and woke up to tackle the endless gravel. I set off and the gravel was there to meet me. I rattled for the whole day. Several times, my backpack and sleeping bag shook off the back of the bike and fell in the road. I had to tie and retie my things. I was frustrated. My God, 700 miles of this?
The rivers turned an even more absurd color of aquamarine, flowing from glaciers around me. Bits of snow hid in the shadowed places. Everything was beautiful but the shaking really took a toll. Would I enjoy this? After thirty miles of vibrating down the road, I checked into a hostel in a little town. The hostel was actually the upstairs room in a family’s home. I slept blessedly rattle free, and in the morning the daughter made me coffee.
The next day, I was prepared to rattle for six hours. I gave myself a pep talk over coffee, and headed out. But right out of town the gravel smoothed and became packed and hard. The riding was actually nice. Now I could enjoy the cliffs and the giant ferns and cascades, one after the other, spilling from mountaintops. The occasional truck roared past, kicking up a funnel cloud of dust. I put a bandana over my mouth to save my lips and throat.
The next night I slept by a river. In a thicket of trees near a pebble beach, the canopy had created a soft brown pad of moss and leaves. My tent fit perfectly.
And the site was perfect for bathing. I saw no sign of humanity anywhere, not a sheep or a fence, just river, mountains, tall trees with gray bark and dark green evergreen leaves, waterfalls, and the river valley extending forever south. I got naked and took a dip in the turquoise river. It was freezing—so cold, I lost my breath and could only submerge for two seconds. Maybe less. I got wet, clambered out to apply soap and scrub down a bit, then took another dip. Then screamed. The whole time, I was talking myself through this out loud. “Okay, now you dip again—AHHGG!!—I know, Jed, you hate it, but it’s a necessity—FUCK!—Your bike shorts are disgusting—SHIT!—and you can’t have your grundle being a filthy crevice—GRRRR!—You owe it to your bike seat.”
I crawled in my tent feeling fresh and clean. I snuggled up and put my winter jacket behind my head on top of my backpack for a pillow. I opened my laptop and checked what movies I had downloaded. It would be nice to have some wine and watch a movie. All alone out here. Outside, the river’s white noise filled the air.
I had downloaded season one of The Walking Dead.
Zombies walked through the streets and yards, busting down the door of a suburban house and killing and eating the guts of humans. The music was scary. The lighting dark. This kind of thing wouldn’t bother me in the least at home. But suddenly my hearing was superhuman. As I watched the show, I heard bugs walking outside, or was it a person? Am I being hunted? Will I die out here?
I closed my laptop and chugged my wine, angry that I’d watched even part of the show.
The following day I camped in someone’s yard. I rolled up to the little town and asked if there was a hotel. They said no, but pointed to a house. I knocked and asked about camping. The lady said sure, and pointed to the grass next to the toolshed. I paid the family a little bit to let me use their bathroom. After I set up my tent, a group of backpackers appeared in the yard, apparently sent here by the same person. They were gregarious and confident, speaking Hebrew and laughing as they set up their tents. I deduced that they were from Israel. When I greeted them in English, they responded warmly. Soon I had shared my box wine and they gave me a cigarette. But I was tired and not much fun and went to bed early while they cracked one another up all night. I wondered if the lady in the house regretted her generosity.
Ten days down the Carretera, the road had become lonely routine, cycling on gravel, staying at a little house or camping. Everywhere, the wonders of Patagonia rose up around me, but by then, and with no one to exclaim to, I stopped exclaiming. I looked, and my eyes were happy. But I had no one to sing the praises of Creation to. Only the Creation itself. Maybe God was there, proud of His work. But He isn’t surprised by things, and He doesn’t respond with laughter when I jump for joy. Not that I could tell anyway. So I stopped jumping. I just tried to make the miles. I stopped taking photos of waterfalls.
The days dripped by and I spent a lot of time in silence. I didn’t have to camp as much as I’d thought. Even the smallest towns had a room for rent. The Carretera was used to hosting cyclists.
I spent Thanksgiving at a simple hostel on a lake. Chile doesn’t celebrate American Thanksgiving, of course, so it wasn’t much of a celebration. I sat with my coffee in the morning and wrote in my journal.
Thanksgiving, 2014. Lao General Carretera, Chile.
I am alone. Near no one I know. This is one of America’s biggest holidays, at least in respect to family. And they are very far from me. So, as an exercise in mindfulness, and because I believe gratitude is the door to joy, I am going to list some of the things I’m thankful for: Parents I respect. A mother of strong and tender character, endless talent, humor, wisdom, playfulness, taste. A father of kindred heart, with a hunger for adventure, laughter, experience, love. They are both so full of love. My sister Rebekah, her heart and mind of fire, her caretaking powers, her love! My brother, his angelic spirit and perfectly matched wife, I love them so! My little sister. She is a soft voiced, strong-hearted force. I love being near her. What a modern family made whole with grace and kindness!
My health, my strong bicycle, this natural beauty, fjords, so many waterfalls, rivers, God’s ridiculous paintings, and all those hearts I carry in my heart, those boards and nails that build my house….
And then I went on for two pages listing every friend that has touched my life. Pushing out words of thanks felt important in my fogginess. Fake it till you make it. It isn’t that I wasn’t thankful. It’s that I felt so bound up in my unknowing that I couldn’t figure out who to thank or who to curse. Should I be angry with my past? My faith? My parents? Or should I be thankful?
When I had finished, I closed my journal and went for a walk. I felt fully loved by the people I’d listed. I felt that I had seen them by writing their names, that I’d called them
forth. But then, a rush of feeling alone. I knew no one in the nation of Chile. And yet names and faces swirled around me like fireflies. I held my life, so graced with kindness and friendship, in my mind’s eye as I walked around the tiny town on the edge of a lake in Patagonia. A stray dog came up and trotted next to me, as if drawn by my thinking. As if responding to some deep calling in every dog to comfort a lost boy.
* * *
—
LITTLE HOUSES ALONG the Carretera Austral post signs to attract cyclists. Hotels offer musty lounges, old sofas, and instant coffee. But mostly, I camped. I met only one other cyclist in two weeks on the road. He was a handsome tan Italian with expensive gear and a shiny new bike. We got a beer together at the only restaurant for miles. I drank my beer and he looked at me longer than usual. I didn’t give him any cues. But when we parted, I felt handsome for a moment.
I was in the zone, each day biking farther than the last, and becoming ever more accustomed to my solitude. An entire day passed without me speaking to a single human. I did speak though, just to the world. I love talking to the road and to trees and birds. My voice keeps me company.
Cycling alone had me back in my head. Here I was, near the end of the journey, and wondering what I’d learned. Had I found freedom? Did I know what I thought about God? No, I just had more fucking questions. Did I feel more awake and young and alive? Yes, I guess I did, but had I experienced page-turning revelations? Some flag to plant in a new continent of understanding? No.
One day, exhausted from a frustrating uphill stretch where my tires kept spinning out, I decided to take a nap in the midday sun. I pulled off the road and found a grassy meadow next to a creek. I lay down and closed my eyes.
I was roused by buzzing. Not the thin whine of mosquitoes but the sound of something heavier. Bigger. When I opened my eyes, I saw bees. Dozens of bees hovering and circling around me.
Then I noticed that I had lain down next to a hole in the ground. The bees were pouring out of it. They were crawling on me and crawling all over my bike. The bees were much larger than I was used to, more like bumblebees, and solid orange. Like flaming hot Cheetos. But weren’t bees from South America supposed to be super poisonous? Or was that Africa?
I got up in a hurry and, using a twig with some leaves, gingerly brushed the curious Cheetos off my shirt and bike. Then I got back on the road.
Strangely, I hadn’t seen a bee in months. I’d actually forgotten about the bees from the beginning of my trip. How they seemed to give me encouragement, signaling to me that I was on the right track. They’d left me for so long. But here they were near the end of my trip—different, bigger, friendlier, impossible to overlook.
That night I stayed in an old lady’s house. It was full to the ceiling with knickknacks and every manner of thing. She was a little gnome of a woman and a hoarder. I loved her right away. She rented an upstairs room and promised breakfast for cheap. I told her about the strange bees, resorting to drawing one on a Post-it note and saying “naranja” and how I was scared they would attack me. She laughed. “Oh no! Bees here do not sting you. You are safe.”
New bees. Bigger bees. That don’t sting. I liked that, whatever it meant.
Three days later I took a hard fall. At the edge of a forest, my bike skidded on the gravel, I lost control, and fell into the ditch amid a gnarl of logs and stones. For a minute, I lay on the ground, tangled in my bike and bags, wondering what kind of damage I’d discover when I stood up. A gash, a twisted ankle, a broken bone? I moaned and rolled over and pushed myself up. But underneath the scratches and dirt, I was okay. Banged up but fine. And my bike was fine.
As I got back on my bike and tied my things back on, Machu Picchu and Weston and Jesus came to mind. All those dangerous conversations. Those bike crashes in my head. I had been told that to walk away from Jesus was to walk away from eternal life, from truth, from community and everything. I would be leaving a weeping mother and a broken life. I would be labeled deceived and lost and a backslider. But as the scenario had been playing out on the trip south, it wasn’t so black and white as that. Along the way I’d asked hard questions, entertained “wrong” answers, held new ideas with an open hand, and waited to be scalded by fire. Waited for the twisted ankle or broken bone. But it hadn’t happened. But then, I wasn’t rejecting Jesus, was I? I wasn’t walking away. I was just wondering if God was bigger than what I had been told in church. If perhaps He wasn’t so jealous, so frightened by the rest of His creation.
Backsliding felt a lot like walking forward. Like expanding into love and wonder. I had dared to crash with my old beliefs into the ditch, and I stood up fine.
A week later on a Tuesday, I reached Villa O’Higgins, the terminus of the Carretera Austral. The hamlet, named for the hero of Chilean independence, is laid out on a grid in a valley near the lake of the same name. I would need to take a ferry across this lake back to Argentina. The houses were constructed of tin siding with tin roofs, and some were falling apart. Grass grew tall in most yards. People sat on their stoops, staring without hurry at the world.
Actually, nothing hurried here, and I was in a bit of a time crunch to get to Punta Arenas and meet my mom. It wasn’t dire, but it wasn’t like I could sit around either. Just finding the crossing proved a challenge. The woman at my hostel (where I was the only guest) told me that the ferry was operated by a man in the house with the tractors.
“Which house is that?”
“You’ll see it.”
“Do I just go and knock?”
“Yes.”
So I set out on foot to wander the town in search of a house with tractors. On the far corner of the grid, I found it—a lean-to of rusted tin with three or four tractors in various states of disrepair parked around the yard.
When I knocked on the open door and peered inside, a small, elderly woman appeared. She said something in Spanish that I couldn’t understand. She didn’t seem to have any teeth. I said, “I have a question about the ferry.”
“Yes, come,” she said, and waved me inside. I walked through a dark room cluttered from floor to ceiling with tractor and boat parts. She led me into the other room of the house. It was so full of oily, dark metal parts that only a hole in the middle of the room had been carved out. In that hole was one recliner holding an old man who was watching a television a few feet from his face.
He glanced up at me then back to the television. “Yes? Hello.” He was smoking a cigarette. The entire house smelled like smoke, and the ashtray next to him had at least three packs’ worth of butts piled high. The ceiling, what I could see of it above his chair, had turned black.
“Ferry? When is the ferry?” I said, terrified and suddenly forgetting any Spanish I knew.
“No ferry today,” he said, looking at the television.
“Oh, yes, ferry tomorrow?”
“No. No ferry.”
Oh, God. No ferry. Did he mean ever? Or not tomorrow? He wasn’t giving me anything. I was mad at myself for not understanding Spanish better. Not taking lessons. Not trying harder. Letting everyone speak English to me. I couldn’t ask the way I needed to. I was so fucked.
“Ferry is possible?” I asked.
“Ferry on Friday. Nine in the morning.”
Oh, thank God.
“Okay, come here?” I asked.
“No, take bus to the dock. Bus from the library.”
“Okay, thank you thank you thank you,” I said. He smiled, but he was smiling at the TV. As I let myself out, I said thank you to the old woman.
I spent three days in Villa O’Higgins. I read my book. I met a few other backpackers and even a bike-touring couple from England. We drank beer. I ate cookies. I hiked to the top of a nearby hill. It was altogether very nice.
On Friday I caught the ferry. We crossed a huge turquoise lake for two hours before we were dropped on the other side. The port here consis
ted of a cabin painted white with a green roof, and a gravel road leading away from it up the hill and into a canyon between two mountains. That was my route. Twelve miles through the woods, then I’d cross into Argentina again.
I tried to ride but the road was really just a path of baseball-sized rocks. I couldn’t ride at all. So I walked my bike. It was already early afternoon and I walked my bike for several miles and then camped in a field with horses.
As I fell asleep, I realized that tomorrow would be my final day on the bicycle. I would reach El Chaltén, and then be done. I would see Fitz Roy, stay the night, and take a bus down to the airport in Punta Arenas, Chile, to meet my mother and friends. Then we’d come back north together to explore the scenic wonders of Torres del Paine. I was almost done. All night, I froze, and only my grin poked out of my sleeping bag.
The next day I walked my bike through dense forest, carrying it over log bridges crossing creek after creek. Before long, my muscles ached. I struggled to stabilize the heavy bike on the skinny path, and actually dropped it all in one of the creeks. But I was so high on finishing that I hardly cared. I sang to myself, mostly “look at this stuff, isn’t it neat” from The Little Mermaid.
Finally, I saw a sign, “Welcome to Argentina.” In the distance, behind the sign, were the peaks of Fitz Roy. I took a photo of my bike in front of it all. My day ended with another ferry ride across a small lake, then, after three miles on a nice gravel road, I was in El Chaltén.
In town, I parked my bike outside a hostel, where I found myself surrounded by tourists and backpackers, some of whom had also cycled the Carretera Austral. After setting my stuff on a bunk bed in a crowded room, I walked back out to the main street.
To Shake the Sleeping Self Page 32