Heysen Day 32: In Town We Worship The Wall Heater

Miles: 6

I slept terribly. I’d set up my sleeping pad on a hump, so my legs and head felt like they were both falling in unison all night. The wind howled and raged above us, but at least we were safe in our tent, unaware of all the madness surrounding us, even if I tossed and turned until morning.

I woke groggy with the sun, rising from my quilt as it rose into the sky. Another road walk today, but short and into town. Town was our prize for everything that had happened before, for the bad sleeps and the aching knees, for the tangled hair and worn-out shoes. We were still wearing all our layers as the sunlight hid behind the clouds. The clouds tumbled all over each other in the wind. I drew my rain jacket tighter around me, shivering as we walked.

We ate breakfast at a café where just one lady attempted to take orders, make coffee, and cook that morning. I felt bad for her, but at least we sat there, perhaps the most patient people in town. We have time on trail like we have air, limitless, unending, a bottomless resource.

The hotel Spicy had paid for on my birthday the day before (he knows me) called to say check-in would be late. The whole town was understaffed, but that is the way things go. You think they will go one way and they don’t; all you can do is accept it and move on. I’ve been trying to learn this lesson my whole life. That rumination on things you can’t control robs you of good moments, of hours, of years. Acceptance, as it turns out, is the answer to almost all that ails us. I didn’t know yet that I wouldn’t fully find acceptance on this trail, but in the future, I would.

We finished eating and mulled around the visitors centre. I sat and read New Scientist magazine in a corner, growing more and more cold, until Andrew texted me to tell me there was a heater in the exhibition upstairs (he knows me so well). I stood by the heater and cooked myself silly, making me sweat in my rain jacket, enjoying the pleasure of being warm on such a cold day. I was growing tired of being exposed to the elements, but it was also what made the heater feel so good. Do we always have to suffer to be happy? maybe.

The water heater was broken at the hotel when we finally checked in. While we waited for it to be fixed, I lay on the crisp white bedspread in my sleeping bag, not to leave dirt smears on the linen. Then finally, my body was under copious amounts of hot water, the internal chill lifting and the tiredness deepening as it always does when I have been too cold. Spicy showered too, and when we returned, we heated the room to an unbearable temperature, only to lay in the sheets basking in it, like lizards in the sun on the rocks.

We braved the cold again, down to the supermarket, filled our arms with as much discounted produce and strange drinks marked to clear as we could hold, stumbled back to the hotel and ate bowl after bowl of fries in a little booth, everything happening around us, the lights were too bright, the people around us too loud. We were too used to the quiet of the trail now.

We dragged our bodies back up the stairs of the pub to our room that overlooked the courtyard. Music mixed with either enthusiastic drunk patrons or it was karaoke night, the sounds drifted through the cracks in the windows and the floors, but I didn’t even care. I was sound asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. The noise was drowned out in the quiet of sleep. Our bodies were safe and warm under the heavy blankets, the world was alive until the small hours without us. Our suffering was over, we were happy.