It is a fresh wound, a whole shoulder torn, with a watery ooze and a hole that's getting bigger. I'm walking through a hanging bog, one that is cupped by the upper reaches of a mountain. Stunted trees bend sideways like dislocated hands. As I walk, I see how the wound grows, where backpackers have climbed farther up to avoid the mud but, in so doing, have torn the Earth's skin more.
How fragile we are. We being humans and this mountain. The sun is gone and snow clouds pour in. The trees thin. Gary has sprinted ahead and disappeared, and it's hard to guess which of many trails he's taken. I choose one and enter the wound, trying not to get my feet wet because snow clouds are gathering and surely it will freeze by evening. My foot is a knife, tormenting the mountain's body.
A lone hiker comes from the other direction looking haggard, his leggings torn, boots muddy, with a trail of blood down his neck where his earring was snagged and torn. Is it wet up ahead? he asks. No, it's an easy forest walk to Lago Dickson. He thanks me. Sydney? I ask. “No, Perth.” Ah, the home of the writer Tim Winton! “Yes, it is,” he says, smiling brightly, and continues downhill. I go the opposite way, though for a moment I want to join him.
Bog walking is like these mountain conversations: it means jumping fast and running over uncertain ground. But my pack is heavy, I'm tired, and the spring has gone from my step. I hop, sink, pull my leg out, tip sideways, hop again. One misstep and my boot sinks deep. Soupy mud pours in around my feet. In the muck I see flecks of ice as if whole winters have been lost here.
Yet my sense of this place is of a shoulder that's inflamed. Rain and snow may fill it, trying to put out the fire, but there is no balm. The word pantano means not only “bog” but also “impediment.” I think of the ones between Gary and me and trip on tree roots buried in brown taffy. The coming storm makes me worry about hypothermia, wet feet and boots. I continue up alone. Es muy borrascoso—stormy. Am I lost? The ground steams. The stunted trees are bent completely over. I step on a path. It leads me out of the bog onto dry ground.