The Kepler Track: Days 3 and 4

It falls apart

The bridge on the Kepler Track via Getty Images

Back in the beginning, the day before we began, we’d driven past a tiny, walk-up pie shop. It was called Mile High Pies and had a large street-facing blackboard that listed all of the meat pies in hand-written white letters. As a native South Carolinian, I had taken a strong liking to meat pies and sausage rolls when I moved to Australia. Even the bad ones were kind of good to me, but a good meat pie was, as far as I was concerned, one of the most satisfyingly delicious foods on this planet. The pie shop had been closed, so we could only roll by, slowly, reading the hand-written menu aloud—venison, chunky steak, steak & kidney, steak & pepper, steak, mushroom & bacon, mince, mince & cheese, lamb & mint, creamy chicken, satay chicken, Thai chicken. I’d felt the first real pang of hunger I’d felt since my hospitalization and fearful fasting.

Over the course of our hike, the subject of this meat pie shop had come up often, especially in these last two days, which were marked by a persistent hunger, a great deal of boredom, and, most memorably, the fight.

You see, we had switched over from the extreme physical exertion phase, where our entire minds and bodies were occupied with getting to the end, the top, the bottom of whatever the day held. We were a team, united around a common goal. But now, the difficult things contained no seeds of glory. Now the game was: tolerating the soaking conditions, tolerating our heavy packs that had bruised our shoulders and left sores on our hip bones, and finding a way to pass the time as we trudged across miles and miles of flat land.

I started the fight. I was hiking in front, as I always did, partly to set the (rather slow) pace but also because I’m a small person and couldn’t really see much past my partner’s tall pack. We had been silent for a while, when I decided to ask, “If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?”

It is my understanding, based on personal experience, that there are formative arguments in every relationship. The kind that becomes fixed in your memory far more vividly than any hazy moment of love or passion. They are a moment of icy clarity and, ideally, a catalyst for change, even if small. But sometimes, there’s nothing gained, the argument itself remaining like a bruise on an apple that never quite heals. This was the latter.

It seemed a simple enough question, but I had unwittingly stepped too close to a sensitive subject in our relationship, one that would rear its head again and again: that I preferred to be loosely nomadic and my partner did not. This urge, to be almost constantly on the move seemed like a character flaw to my partner. His urge to settle down somewhere for the rest of our lives seemed, likewise, a terrible character trait. The innocent icebreaker I’d carelessly thrown over my shoulder turned out to be an invitation for an airing of grievances. My partner and I had moved countries three times in our three-year-long relationship, so there was a lot of material to get into.

We really shouldn’t have. I was fresh, a raw nerve, feeling emotionally stripped bare by all that I’d experienced and overcome in the past few days. Oli must’ve felt exhausted by how much weight he was carrying, both metaphorically and physically. His pack was double mine, and while he hadn’t had to overcome sickness like I had, he’d had to coach me through it and had to be both encouraging and respectful while shouldering the lion’s share of the effort. He’d had to be more than human.

I wasn’t able to process all of that in the moment, of course. Our argument caught and blazed into a full-blown fight within seconds and went on and on, the barbs coming from both sides. The terrain changed from dripping forest to grassy wetlands, and still, there was no reason to stop.

Then, suddenly, we turned a corner and arrived at the end of the hike, which was marked by a long wooden bridge that spanned an energetically churning river. After feeling like we’d been hiking for a lifetime, the ending had come too soon. I felt shock and a surprising sadness that felt like grieving. It had seemed a spectacular thing, this hike, but it turned out to be just ordinary life in another setting—here, too, you could argue with your partner while passing beneath giant ferns. Here, too, you could despair about your future together while stepping on a delicate lacework of ancient roots. The boards of the bridge felt strange underfoot—rigid and unforgiving and I found myself struggling not to cry.

Back in the parking lot, we stowed our packs in the trunk and I slipped into the warm, dry heat of the car. Without speaking, my partner drove us to the pie shop. The sun was bright in the sky, and there was a small line of cheerful-looking people waiting to place their orders. My partner got out—he already knew what to get, as we had fantasized about this precise moment many times over the last four days. He shut the door behind him and I shut my eyes. My feet, freed from hiking boots, throbbed pleasantly. Beneath my hat my scalp prickled, and inside my fleece I could feel my own body heat rising, my core turning molten.

Within seconds, it seemed, the door opened, and I struggled to open my eyes. Oli handed me a steak and pepper pie. It was warm and heavy in my palm, and I didn’t hesitate for one second. Mine was, and still is, the best thing I’ve ever eaten. The steak was tender, the gravy was thick, and the entire thing was so peppery it made my nose burn. As I ate, I felt myself coming back together.

My partner and I looked at each other. I began to nod, a bobblehead doll with no off button. He mimicked my movement, and we grinned, and then we were just two lovers again, our damp clothes drying in the still warmth of a tiny rental car, a whole lifetime ahead of us.