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One Experience, Two Voices Part II

By Mike Beris - 2009-01-21

Tap, tap, tap, tap.

A steady tap against my feet has awoken me for the third time this night. Few things in nature are this consistent, I think. It must be water. Sure enough, the uniform dripping continues as the rain pools at the edge of the royal blue tarp suspended above me. My brain feels as foggy as the sky above the trees, and I struggle to remember how the heck I got myself into this situation. Oh! Thaaaat’s right. I put that monstrous pack on my back and walked for hours, only to nestle in the warmth and security of this degenerate plastic lean-to.

My faculties return to me and I remember our plan for the morning: to rise before the sun and watch it greet the three peaks known as the Torres (or towers), which are a difficult 45-minute hike away—make that, up. My own amendment to this plan was to reasses the weather at 5:00am, to see if the sun would be greeting anyone. Sure enough, a gray blanket floats behind our low ceiling of green foliage. Dang, guess I’ll go back to sleep.

A few hours later, I’ve completed the hike to the lookout point just in time for the clouds to start rolling back in. Looks like I waited too long for the sky to clear. I make the best of it and scramble around the rockfield to find some original perspectives in which to capture the Torres.

Daniel’s stomach is starting to feel worse and seems to be competing with his knee to see which can break him first. He says he’s starting back down to camp, but I want to hold out to see if the weather improves. It doesn’t. The wind pushes the dark clouds closer and closer until they’ve penetrated the hollowed-out bowl containing the sky-blue lake.

A friendly flurry turns ferocious, and soon huge flakes of snow are riding the gusts horizontally across the jagged terrain. I huddle behind a rock the size and shape of a VW bus, confident that if it got really bad, I could squeeze myself underneath to wait out the blind conditions. I quickly realize that before the snow will have a chance to let up, I will be completely drenched and sitting stationary in the wind, a surefire way to get cold fast. Cradling my camera like a newborn, I begin the descent to camp.

Cold, wet, and discouraged at the disappointing number of good photos I took, I returned to the haven of our leaky, windswept tarp shelter. I stuff my sopping sleeping bag into its sack and fall back on my heels, suddenly dumbstruck. After spending a dozen nights on the side of roads, with limited food and water, even once in a leaky fisherman shack, how on earth did we manage to find worse living conditions?

A few minutes later, Daniel is discussing the possibility of returning to town to give his knee a rest and sweat out his fever. And after a short millisecond of remembering that I’m spending an entire year being hardcore, I decide to join him. My first official backpacking experience has found a glorious light at the end of the tunnel, and in a few short hours, I would be back under a roof. Coffee would be served as our friends fawn over us, eager to hear why the two of us cut our 3-5 day adventure short. I would wear a look of concern on my face as I stuff jelly bread in my mouth, partially listening to Daniel describe his stomach pain.

Backpacking provided something few other things could: a bit of perspective. It’s easy to complain about how heavy my bike is, or how loud the tent is in the wind at night, until the weight of my gear is placed directly on my hips and shoulders and the tent is replaced by a single sheet of plastic. While both activities have their fans, I’m confident that bicycle touring is far more efficient and easier on the body. The bike is both a mule, bearing the incredible burden I carry, and an extension of my own body, totally obedient to split-second choices I make. Rather than simply testing my tolerance for pain (and blisters, and chafing, and shoulder soreness, and turned ankles, and wet cameras), the adventure that bicycling provides seems like a cushy chartered bus-tour: I get to sit upright and enjoy the steadily changing terrain around me. In a day or two, when we get back on the bikes, I’ll appreciate the butt pain and sore thighs in a new way, and remember how much worse it can get.