Walking Home

reveries of an amateur long-distance hiker

In Patagonia Day 20

March 11th, 2018

In Patagonia Day 20
El Chaltén—Lago del Desierto—El Chaltén

Today was about borders—national, hydrological, botanical, and geological. My last day in Argentina’s Glacier National Park was a shuttle ride up a rough gravel road with many one-lane wooden bridges to Lago del Desierto, a long narrow lake 37 kilometers from El Chaltén. The plan was simple: visit the lake, climb up to Huemul glacier, then mountain bike back to town, so maybe the first border I should mention is the one between me and the bicycle seat—wish I had packed the spandex riding shorts. The primary border that framed today, what has defined this area in the last 50+ years, is the watershed, the continental divide which, after much contention, settles national borders. A drop of rain falling on the mountains just past Lago del Desierto either flows to the Pacific and therefore is Chilean water, or it ends up Argentinian Atlantic water. It has not always been so simple (and probably still isn’t) but here in the 1960s, the two Patagonian countries argued about who governed a nearly empty (of humans) and generally unstudied region. In 1965, following a dispute about which country a farmer owed allegiance, there was an incident between Chilean and Argentinian forces near the lake. A Chilean, Lieutenant Hernán Merino Correa, was killed and now is considered a hero, buried in a special cemetery in Santiago. Both governments were in some internal political turmoil in that era, and the argument was not really settled until 1994, but now the area is officially part of Argentina, though from the base of the lake you can see Chilean mountains. It had occupied a place long ignored by both Argentina and Chile, so it was a marginal zone crowded in by mountains, glaciers, and impenetrable ice fields.

The story of El Chaltén itself helps explain the complexities of stabilizing borders. The Rio de Los Vueltas valley had been partly settled by Scandinavian farmers setting up estancias. Perhaps most famous was Andreas Madsen, a Dane who wrote Hunting Pumas in Patagonia and Tales of the Old Patagonia (books I have not been able to find). Still, the upper reaches had been largely ignored, and Argentina’s response after the 1965 skirmish was to push a road up to the lake and a rough path further on to the border. Today that point is occupied by the military and is a checkpoint for intrepid souls hiking through to O’Higgins township on the Chilean side. The real political move though was establishing El Chaltén itself. The youngest town in all of Argentina, it was founded in 1985 in order to open the land around Fitz Roy and Torres to tourism, and essentially to occupy a place that had previously been scarcely experienced by large groups of humans. The native Tehuelche who did not settle that particular site and who were pretty much exterminated in 19th century by General Roca, called Fitz Roy “Chaltén” which means “the mountain that smokes.” It doesn’t have the feel of a planned community. The bus station is at the entrance to the town and a wide boulevard leads to the first major intersection, continuing on after a dogleg to the left until it meets a terrace with grid steel walkways to go up to the next level. If you take a right back at the first major intersection followed by an immediate left, you are on the main road heading out toward Lago del Desierto and the Chilean border. It is initially lined with restaurants (with their competing happy hours), hostels, and outdoor adventure storefronts. Unlike El Calatafe, El Chaltén is much more relaxed. They aren’t hustling tourists to the Perito Moreno glacier but instead simply let everyone wander off on spectacular day hikes or multi-day treks. Although I have no idea what life is like there in the off-season, it does seem a vital community. Across from my hostel was a school full of boisterous children. Roberta, the hostel owner, has a daughter who attends. And isolated as Chaltén might be, that small population was out marching on International Women’s Day. It is hard to comprehend that 35 years ago, this was a windswept plain. Had Bruce Chatwin’s peregrinations taken him here, he would had to seek shelter from one of a few widely spaced estancia houses. I was enchanted by this outpost at the end of the road and near the end of the world.

Those estancias stretching up the Rio de Los Vueltas valley and in the plains to the east bring a different border awareness— the thin soil horizon, often absent, that gives ground to tufts of some tough grasses and provides grazing land for sheep, horses, and cattle. It is difficult not to be struck by the miles of fencing even in the most isolate desolate areas. At the end of summer with plenty of rain the plants are still brown and crisp. Often there are simply large open patches of granite gravel— river wash—which forms the foundation for the thin soils. It’s some hard living for plants, animals and humans. The farmhouses are easy to pick out at a distance as they are planted up with Lombardy Poplar windbreaks (similar to the high hedges on windswept farms in New Zealand). You can imagine the calm refuge they must provide and the shock of stepping out of the lee to head off into the lea for daily chores. The poplars are not indigenous but seem to thrive. The surrounding mountains are generally bare, so it is easy to see their geological architecture, but in sections sheltered from the more brutal winds, two varieties of nothofagus live. Indigenous to the area, the larger are the celebrated Lenga (Nothofagus pumilio, the best restaurant on Puerto Natales is called Lenga). A nearly identical appearing but smaller variety is the Ñire. By observing their clusters, you can understand other sorts of borders—soil horizons and microclimates. Early 20th century ranchers burned off sections of hillside to stimulate the growth of grass, but since much of the area is now National Park (the Glacier National Park is a UNESCO world heritage site) and the surrounding private land has some use restrictions, the nothafagus forests are regenerating. In the marshy and heavily disturbed areas, the Ñire do their work, and in the more stable (though still thin soiled) areas the Lenga go about transforming the barren and windswept into calm peace.

One last border—the Pacific Ocean, not as an end point but as a new barrier separating lands that had once been cheek by jowl. Recently scientists using flora and fauna similarities have agued that New Zealand was once nestled against the Patagonian coast. Apart from marked similarities in geological activity, those two places are one of the few places where nothafagus exist indigenously, though instead of Ñira and Lenga, the Kiwis have red, hard, mountain, and black. As Joan Maloof and Peter Wohlleben each observe, the beech is a tree with special qualities, as anyone who has wandered through an old growth beech forest can attest. Technically the nothofagus are not actual beeches, hence the appellation “false beech.” The Patagonian/New Zealand versions are different from their European and North American counterparts, but as someone who has had the opportunity to wander through groves of each, they are every bit as magical.

T. Hugh Crawford

In Patagonia Day 18

March 8th, 2018

In Patagonia Day 18
Poincenot Campground—D’Agostini Campground

Woke to a cloudy windy morning but the rain had stopped. Took my time leaving as the wind soon dried my wet hiking clothes (which meant I still have dry clothes in my bag—always a good idea). Today I walked the trail that connects the Fitzroy loop with the Torres loop. This is not a common route, so I had it to myself, hiking beside two long lakes, and then winding through a magnificent grove of Lenga trees before finally descending into another river valley, fed by the Torres cluster of glaciers. The path went up that river which was nearly out of its banks. For some reason it is the Fitzroy River even though it has no connection to the peak. The Beagle’s (and Darwin’s) captain sure got around. Arrived at the campsite around lunchtime again, so followed the same drill—set up tent (glad I did as the camp became very crowded later in the day), ate some lunch, packed gear in daypack and headed up to Laguna Torre. What a difference a day makes. An easy walk half a click from the campground, the skies clear, windy but tolerable. The path led to the base of a round lake surrounded by three peaks. The sun baked down on the rocks so I was soon reclining and basking. Earlier in the day I had to cross a flooded stream, so took off my soaked shoes and let the wind and sun have at it. A parade of day hikers continued to pass, and I got to see them right when they crested the ridge and the scene opened up to them. They always said “beautiful” but in their own (many) languages. I think the greatest pleasure was in being able to linger at the mirador. I’ve arrived at so many places where the view is breathtaking, but so is the wind limiting the chance to take it all in.

Back on day 4 of this trip, I described how I like to go into a cathedral and, rather than wander, just sit in a pew waiting to see where my eyes take me. Today’s mirador was like a church, and that pile of rocks was my pew. Directly in front was the lake, almost perfectly round. I could see across the lower part of the glacier where the meltwater flowed in, and off to my left, the roar of the Fitzroy river leaving. But in the middle, opaque milky brownish water with the wind whipping up big waves, driving them toward where I sat. In the apse on my left, there were at the top the now familiar sharp granite crags, the pure upthrust of molten rock, but part way down was a band of lighter, almost yellow stone (the rounded fragments of which mix with the granite stones that make up the round-rock and sand landscape of my end of the lake). Down the middle of that mountain trails a wild swirl of a waterfall. To my right is another peak of similar height but much different appearance. It has its share of granite crags, but just beneath them are layer upon layer of slightly tilted strata. This entire mountain was uplifted with those layers nearly intact. Perhaps because of that, huge piles of rocky scree slope down to the water’s edge, as if this mountain is in a hurry to slide down to the lake below. Like all my views of Mt. Fitzroy, Torres was also encased in clouds, only offering shadowy glimpses of the true heights. Its base was crowded with glaciers of very shade of blue and every shade of white.

T. Hugh Crawford

In Patagonia Day 17

March 8th, 2018

In Patagonia Day 17
El Chaltén —Poincenot Campground

As is often the case with full day trekking, it was a day with a split personality. None of these sections involve any real distance, so I caught the 9:30 shuttle to the trailhead, accompanied by a number of folks including two American couples with a baby packing in steaks and eggs. The first part of the day felt like any number of Te Araroa days. The bus was more of a truck with a compartment on the back— you entered from the rear by climbing a pullout ladder. The road was gravel and followed a fast moving braided river. The bus turned at the opening of a smaller river valley and dropped us off. I made haste to get distance from the crowd. Just like so many days on the South Island of NZ, the path followed along a fast moving glacial stream, slowly gaining elevation, then after a bit turning uphill and gradually climbing to a saddle which is usually crossed around midday. This was not a a hard climb but it was beautiful, passing a high mountain glacier feeding a nearly as high lake which of course emptied via a high waterfall. The wind was strong and occasionally there were sprinkles but the morning was mostly in the sun. I arrived at the campsite midday. It which was in a grove of very old growth Lenga trees. Previous campers had piled large logs and branches upwind on the camping clearings, signaling the weather to expect. I set up my trusty Zpack solo, ate some cheese and crackers, put my foul weather gear in a daypack and took off for Laguna de Los Tres, which was only a few kilometers up from camp. In these mountains, the glaciers crowd the peaks, with their meltwater converging in high mountain lakes which spill out to form the milky torrents cascading to the valley. Laguna de Los Tres is one such lake, catching the water from glaciers coming off the Mount Fitzroy cluster. At first the climb was easy and still sunny, but soon it was incredibly steep and the rain started to settle in. I pushed on, wishing I had my trekking poles (I had left them holding up my tent). By the time I was 3/4s up, visibility was near zero, the wind was strong enough to blow off my glasses, and I was soaked completely through. Yes a schizoid day. Made it to the top, the clouds held back long enough to take in a view (barely got pictures as it was too wet to get my phone to open), then proceeded to the long slow climb down, arriving back after a long hour’s descent. Quickly made some pasta and climbed into my tent just as the rain really hit. It poured and howled all night, soaking many fellow campers, but, as usual, my Zpacks solo (which is the merest wisp of a tent weighing in at 1 lb.) held firm and kept me dry. What a brutal evening.

T. Hugh Crawford

In Patagonia Day 15

March 5th, 2018

In Patagonia Day 15
El Calatafe—El Chaltén

I started reading Jason Moore’s Capitalism in the Web of Life the other day. In the opening chapters he lays out an argument familiar in 21st century environmental philosophy criticizing the notion that humans are actors—agents of history— acting on a mute and stable Nature. Societies have history, Nature does not (ironically, what we today call science was once referred to as natural history). Of course people have long recognized that nature is always in some flux—earthquakes, eruptions, floods are all transformative—but the science that emerged in the Modern era was a description of underlying stabilities, uniformities, laws, and it rests on familiar binaries: subject/object, society/Nature, what in a slightly different form Alfred North Whitehead called the “bifurcation of nature.” But Moore’s is not a science studies book; rather he wants to understand how capitalism(s) use (and indeed are constituted by) the capital “N”Nature of modern science.

Reading is a material practice. Words can’t be abstracted from their substrate, but instead participate in specific material economies. It matters where and how words are produced and consumed. People often comment on how different a book is on re-reading, but such a claim depends on abstracting that text from the point of its consumption. From a materialist perspective, there is no such thing as re-reading as all readings necessarily involve a different configuration, setting, and materiality. That is all just to say I was reading and thinking about Moore while moving about in southern Patagonia. The question that nagged was why modern science—depending on atemporal, universal objects—emerges in Europe. It is, of course, a tired question, one chewed over by philosophers and historians for centuries, and probably not one to even ask in a hastily written blog about walking, so I’ll limit myself to walking speculation.

The Pennine Way runs up the backbone of England 200+ miles from Edale (near Manchester) to Kirk Yetholm just across the Scottish border. Days walking this path usually involve loitering in pubs in the Yorkshire Dales, strolling from picturesque village to picturesque village, occasionally up and over a ridge in high wind and blustery weather—the heights truly do wuther. Generally it is a peaceful, intimate environment though there are moments when, for example, entering Malham Cove or gazing out from High Cup Nick you feel something momentous and non-human has happened there, some environmental upheaval. But by and large, the walk is one through human history, one deeply felt. An early center of Modern Science was the English Royal Society, where the fellows defined the principles and practices necessary to articulate truth claims about the objective world. Much has been written about the complex politics of these emerging protocols (in particular Shapin and Schaffer’s magisterial Leviathan and the Air Pump). Later, in the 19th century Lyell and Darwin were able to bring long-scale earth history into the discourse, but remained magisterial. Still, I just want to make one small observation. Walking across England produces a sense of an environmentally stable world —Nature—written all over by Human history.

Walking in Patagonia is imbued with a hyperawareness of environmental conditions. It is raw, elemental. The wind flays you, the temperature swings cause constant adjustment, and its sheer vastness makes you feel insignificant. It is a land in flux—the actual land. Early European explorers derided the people they found living in this part of the world, criticizing their hygiene, clothing, housing, food, and social practices (even as late as the 19th century, Darwin was particularly vicious in his appraisal of the Tierra del Fuegeans). They were also condemned for their non-modernity, their failure to see the earth as object and instead finding all manner of spirits, animisms, and active agents in their Nature. They lived in a world full of what Jane Bennett would call in the 21st century “Vibrant Matter.” Most people who travel to southern Patagonia try to visit the Perito Moreno Glacier. It is an amazing sight (see “Day 14” below). Glaciers bring geological time into awareness, enabling us to see ice-age conditions and the massive disruption caused by the slow movement of active matter. Something visitors tend to miss, though, are the peaks that loom over the glacial valley. From the lake you can see four, each heavily eroded revealing clear strata marking upheaval and slow erosion. What struck me was how the first two showed perfect horizons of strata, level lines marking out the ticking of a long slow clock, while the the next two, made from what appears the same temporal and material strata but thrust up by different forces, were a twisted curving, almost writhing mass of flux. Looking at those peaks doesn’t give the sense of long past environmental transformation. You too are caught up in the geological maelstrom. I can imagine an emerging scientific practice here that does not start with a subject/object distinction, but instead begins with a world tangled up, erasing human/nonhuman binaries, and vastly complicating any sense of time’s arrow.

T. Hugh Crawford

In Patagonia Day 14

March 3rd, 2018

In Patagonia Day 14
El Calafate—Perito Moreno Glacier—El Calafate

Yesterday evening I had a good IPA Esquél at the Wanaco bar looking out the window onto the main street of the old section of El Calatafe. It is lined with tour agencies, souvenir shops, restaurants, and hiking equipment stores. Divided by a green median with an alley of tall trees, its cars pass sporadically, chased by mongrel hounds. Trekkers with large packs march past on their way to some hostel, while couples young and old peruse the restaurant menus, and kids eat ice cream dashing madly up and down the sidewalk. A young woman walking arm in arm with an elderly lady passed the window several times. In profile, it was clear they were related, pretty sure a granddaughter out with her grandmother. Unlike nearly everyone else on the street (who tend to wear some variation of Patagonia or Northface gear), the granddaughter wore a long blue wool coat, one you would see in a large city, while her grandmother had a long quilted coat with (probably fake) fur on the cuffs and collar. Her hair was up in an old fashioned style, and she carried a wooden cane with a shiny brass handle. What initially drew my attention was how solicitous the younger one was—they walked with such care. What then became clear was a deep affection between them, bordering on conspiracy. Much more than familial obligation, it was obvious these two genuinely enjoyed each other’s company. They were good friends. I was touched, and grateful for a rare glimpse of deep human connection and compassion.

Apart from people watching and souvenir shopping, the reason everyone comes to El Calatafe is the Perito Moreno glacier in a park 70km west of the city. It is possible to take a bus there, but with a little bit of a splurge, you can go on a small tour bus and also spend an hour on a boat cruising the face of the glacier. I splurged, and you can imagine my pleasure when I boarded the tour bus and there seated in the front row were last night’s strollers, complete with cane, coats, with the addition of big knit wool hats. Erica, the guide couldn’t quite suppress a frown on learning that my Spanish was too weak to follow her discursus on all things glacial during the day-long excursion. Everyone else spoke Spanish or Portuguese (the two women were from Buenos Aires), so Erica would talk a long while, complete with visual aids, then glance down at me and deliver the condensed version in English. I did learn a lot, and she sure put on a show, all but rolling a drum as we rounded the bend for our first sight of the glacier. It was drumroll-worthy. From that point on, words were unnecessary. The boat was a large catamaran with glassed-in seating surrounded by a catwalk. The morning had started off cold and pouring rain, but by the time we were onboard, the skies were clear and the sun was shining, though it was still fairly cold—those were many square miles of ice we sailed next to. The hour on the boat was spent slack jawed staring at a wall of ice fissured with blue. The rest was moving around the catwalk taking photos, selfies, and snapping portraits for those leaning on nearby rails.

Recovering terra semi-firma, we bused up to the balconies— a vast complex of wood, stone, and steel walkways winding about a point of land affording views of both faces of the glacier (I only saw one face from the boat). We all spent several hours taking in every angle possible. The grandmother was only able to walk out to the first high balcony, but on my leaving, I witnessed yet another scene of true tenderness between the two when, because of the wind, the young woman lit her grandmother’s cigarette for her.

T. Hugh Crawford

In Patagonia Day 13

March 3rd, 2018

In Patagonia Day 13
Puerto Natales—El Calafate

Today was uneventful except for a border crossing—actually two as leaving Chile required an exit queuing in a dusty gravel wide spot in a narrow dusty gravel road. Then a couple clicks further, entrance queue to Argentina. Such processes remind me of many border crossings, always with a bit of tension and the absurdity of how meaningful an arbitrary line is. I’ll be in Argentina for a while, and since nothing else of note occurred today, I’ll just list some quick observations about my time in Chile.

Puerto Natales has many accommodations on all levels of luxury— my nights at the We Are Patagonia Hostal were as good as anyone could expect—clean place with wonderful staff who bent over backwards to make things smooth, but I’m curious about a group of Bucky Ball tents around the corner. I remain intrigued how Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic design functions as canvas sleeping quarters.

Surfer and rock climbing videos: sadly many bars/restaurants have hung TV screens on their walls, but rather than streaming live sports or maybe the news, they alternate films of surfers and rock climbers (I’m waiting for the sociological study of race, class, and gender when it comes to rock climbing).

Music: in Santiago music by local artists filled the air, in the deep south moving from cafe to cafe the “Eye of the Tiger” follows me around, along with many 80s power ballads, but then they play Sinatra. I took great pleasure listening to old blue eyes in La Lenka, an amazing restaurant in Puerto Natales, but was jarred a bit by the Aerosmith followup. And I still can’t quite embrace reggae versions of Pink Floyd.

Receipts: Chile is a country awash in bits of paper with a personal touch. Every transaction brings a handwritten receipt, often on plain white note paper. At first it seemed odd and probably inefficient, but it structures the time of the transaction, slowing it down, and making it very personal.

Dogs: Also already talked about this, but I remain struck by how loose dogs are simply part of the fabric of the city, in the same way as trees, streets, and sidewalks. They sleep on the stoops, greet you when you pass, control the speed of traffic as it moves through the towns. Last night I sat in a cafe overlooking a park and watched two dogs fight. At first I was concerned that this would be bloody, but they seem to recognize and understand limits. I couldn’t help comparing the fight with the current American political scene (i had made the mistake of reading the news). The difference is the dogs did understand limits and actually showed dignity.

I saw a condor near Lago Sofia. I’ve always wanted to see one fly, but all I got was the image of a big-ass buzzard huddled on a ledge.

Speaking of strange animals, on leaving the park at Torres Del Paine, I saw herds of guanacos grazing in the draws just above the waterfront. Beautiful animals with generally white and light brown fur looking like wild llamas, which is pretty much what they are. With some trepidation I ordered guanaco last night as a specialty of the restaurant (which was Puerto Natales’s primary locavore establishment). Have to admit it was tasty though I felt strange eating them. It was odd being in a town founded as a meatpacking center in a culture that has long been defiantly carnivorous.

El Calafate is a tourist town, crowded with travel agents and outdoor equipment stores. Everyone who walks by is dressed to withstand a Siberian blizzard . I’m enjoying a Esquél IPA (local brew) while REM echoes in the the bar. I did make the mistake of turning to see their TV screens are tuned to golf (Nobody needs to do the race/class/gender study of that one, it’s self evident). Tomorrow I set off with all the other tourists to see the Perito Moreno glacier. Will get that blue ice thing figured out.

T. Hugh Crawford

In Patagonia Day 12

March 1st, 2018

In Patagonia Day 12
Puerto Natales—Mylodon Cave—Puerto Natales

In a glass case at the Salesian Museum in Punta Arenas are two pieces of mylodon hide. Although extinct for at least 10,000 years, the fur looks fresh as if the animal were killed this year. Bruce Chatwin begins his book In Patagonia describing a piece of the same hide, but his was in a glass case at his grandmother’s house in England (and was later lost in a move). His obsession with the hide—first he thought it was brontosaurus, then mylodon (giant ground sloth)—is the ficelle for his book (see Day 4 below for more on that).

Chatwin begins his adventures in northern Patagonia, works his way south to Tierra del Fuego, then up the Chilean coast, first Punta Arenas, then a bit further north to Puerto Natales (then Puerto Consuelo), to the story’s origin and the culmination of his quest. On his arrival in 1974, Chatwin had to seek out Herman Eberhard’s grandson for directions and access to an isolated cave carved by ancient seas in a conglomerate hump, barely a mountain, rising out of the flat plain beside the Devil’s Seat rock formation. Today the mountain and its caves are part of a small national park complete with a visitors center (selling mylodon tchotchkes) and a network of trails doubling as mountain bike paths. Rather than an example of crass commercialization, there is something endearing about the whole place. The larger region caters to tourists ready to spend a lot of money to be shown mountains, fjords, and glaciers, but my trip to the cave was a morning drive in a plain passenger van complete with a mylodon decal on the side accompanied by a driver and four Americans looking to spend a morning away from high stress tourism. On one level the caves are underwhelming, so they serve exactly that function. The primary cave is grand with a high arching ceiling and a flat fine grained dirt floor. Apart from some very simple explanatory plaques and a life-sized model of a mylodon, there is little else to see. But of course there is much more.

Chatwin’s arrival at more or less the end of his journey and more or less the end of his book was also underwhelming. He enters the cave unhampered by today’s sidewalk and boundary ropes, digs around in the dirt, finds some “leathery turds”of extinct sloth (all I saw on the dirt were old footprints and many round stones that had fallen from the ceiling. If you squint a bit, they could be turds). He looks into some of the holes his grand uncle helped dynamite in order to make off with bones and fur, and comes up with a few familiar reddish hairs which will happily serve as substitute for the lost hide, but what he does not see is a past: “I tried to picture the cave with sloths in it, but I could not erase the fanged monster I associate with a blacked-out bedroom in wartime England.” He could not reconcile his childhood image of the hide’s source with science’s depiction. Given the numerous mylodon images in and around Puerto Natales, it is perhaps a disappointing monster. But more to the point, In Patagonia is a book of stories—the stories of people. The mylodon is connected to the story of his relative, Charlie Milward. The actual sloth is never more than prompt and a bit of extinct flesh. This morning I had the advantage of seeing a cave without the lens of human history. The conglomerate erratic “Devil’s Seat” has a story, one of ancient lakes, eroding mountains, underwater debris and pressure. It is also the story of upthrust and the receding of Lake Sofia, and finally the story of how it came to be where it now rests. Clearly it travelled, a wandering rock, from a place closer to the cave or perhaps from an even more distant formation. Darwin speculates that many large erratics in this region arrived on icebergs.

The twisted strata of the surrounding hills tell tales of slow sedimentation and violent disruption. On closer timescales, the cave tells of inhabitation by extinct horses, sabre-tooth tigers, ground sloths, and early humans. Their lives—sleeping, eating (or being eaten), living, dying—still reverberate in that place. Of course Chatwin saw and heard; his ability to listen was incomparable. He simply had another story to tell, and at this point in the narrative, it is his own. The recovery of the fur sample takes him back to childhood memories, and his wild things, which at least in part keeps him from seeing the wild things in the actual cave, ones that “roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws.”

T. Hugh Crawford

In Patagonia Day 11

March 1st, 2018

In Patagonia Day 11
Grande Paine—Puerto Natales

This morning the sun came up over the ridge as brutally strong winds whipped up Lago Grey, dragging aloft a fine mist which made rainbows.

One of the most common words in The Voyage of the Beagle is “wind,” but of course that’s to be expected in a nineteenth century book about a sea voyage. Winds always howl and even scream when literary ships round the Horn, but the word appears just as often in Darwin’s descriptions of his land journeys, and the bulk of those are in Patagonia. The Voyage details a nearly five year circumnavigation, touching at numerous exotic places (he was one of the world’s first eco-tourists), so I find it striking that in the conclusion Darwin singles out Patagonia: “In calling up images of the past, I find that the plains of Patagonia frequently cross before my eyes; yet these plains are pronounced by all wretched and useless.” When I let my mind simply drift over long treks, what is most vivid is usually not the picturesque—more often the memory partakes of the open: the vast, the empty, and usually the windy. Darwin’s “plains of Patagonia are boundless, for they are scarcely passable, and hence unknown: they bear the stamp of having lasted, as they are now, for ages, and there appears no limit to their duration through future time.” Of course they are passable. The cordillera and some strong rivers make passage difficult, but what Darwin speaks of is not obstacle but difficulty, rugged terrain, profound weather, and an abiding sense that, like Thoreau’s Ktaadn, this is not a place for humans to linger.

W. H. Hudson, always ready to defend the Patagonia he cherished in Idle Days finds the wind salubrious, “I do not myself believe there is any climate in the world to compare with the winter of the east coast of Patagonia; and although its summer might seem disagreeable to some persons on account of the violent winds that prevail at that season, the atmosphere at all times is so dry and pure as to make pulmonary complaints unknown.” Of course he describes the eastern region near Rio Negro and not the dry dust of the west. Odds are, some pulmonary complaints have been lodged there. Chatwin is the one who brings together the magic and the violence of the air, “a country of clean air and open spaces; of black mesas and blue mountains; of grey scrub breaking into yellow flowers, a country of bones picked clean by hawks, stripped by the wind, stripping men to the raw.”

There is something special about the wind in the Southern Hemisphere. Apart from being in or near hurricanes, or perhaps standing on top of Mt. Washington, I don’t recall any time in the north where I felt I would actually be sent sprawling by common, everyday wind. In the deep (global) south it’s another story. I was blown off the north side of Mt. Tongariro with gale force winds, horizontal rain, and zero visibility. Just outside of Wellington I crossed a ridge where I first staggered, and then had to hold onto my pack to keep it from being torn off. Several times on the South Island I simply had to sit to avoid falling. My walk yesterday back from the Grey glacier was in calm weather, enough to make me forget how strong the wind blew the day before. When I arrived at Paine Grande, the flags were simply rustling, but I considered what I thought would be prevailing winds when setting up my tent. A word about my tent— I have an unnatural attachment to my one pound, Cuben fiber ZPacks soloplex. My trekking poles are the tent poles, and the floor is exactly the size for my gear + me. I have spent many a comfortable night in it, but it is open all around, so wind generally makes it heave and shake, but not fail. The only exception thus far was my second night in it. After spending my first on New Zealand’s Te Araroa Trail in a campsite, I had to follow the ninety mile beach and therefore camped one night just back in the dunes. Of course that night a huge storm blew in, the pegs would not hold in sand, so I spent most of the night in the rain lying on top of my now-favorite tent to keep it from blowing away. Since then, it has never failed, though I have spent some nights awake holding the poles in place as the wind howled and sometimes screamed.

Last night, I went to sleep in a sweet calm (after the American college students in the next tent who clearly had skipped high school goverment class finished talking politics). Around 2:00 the winds came in and did not stop the rest of the night—no sleep, just constant flapping. I well remember spending summers on the ocean at Nags Head, North Carolina, where you might not know what day of the week it was, but you damn sure knew when the tide came in and which way the wind was blowing. Wandering the Southern Hemisphere brings back that element. Daily life is significantly directed by the strength and direction of the winds, and in some circumstances, your very life is dictated by it. I think what drew Darwin’s (and Chatwin’s) memory to Patagonia is this elemental nature, one that brings awareness, and strips you raw.

T. Hugh Crawford

In Patagonian Day 10

February 27th, 2018

In Patagonia Day 10
Lago Grey—Grande Paine

Slept in a bunk room at the Lago Grey Refugio and in the morning snagged coffee from the dining hall while the sound system played Bob Marley—odd breakfast music, but all part of the experience. The park is truly magnificent, but the tourist experience is overwhelming. Last evening, while sitting outside watching the setting sun reflect off the mountainside, I had to put on headphones to drown the chatter from the sitting area inside. Never quite understood the need to fill up all the air and time with words. Imagine my exhilaration this morning when I walked the trail up the lake (away from Grande Paine) for about four kilometers, crossing two long swinging bridges to sit on a rock high above the glacier. The path went up through old beech and was absolutely quiet—no sign of any hikers until my way back. It was sacred. The only sound on my rock was the occasional crack of the ice and the faint tap-tapping of some type of woodpecker. The wind blows so hard here, it’s rare to hear a bird call, but I had noticed nesting holes in the older beeches and so had been puzzling about tappers. Never saw it, but she kept me company this morning. The hike back to the lake and my campsite tonight went fast, though by midday there were hordes heading up the trail. Found a good place to pitch my tent and discovered stuck on the back a campsite sticker from trekking in Iceland—a well-travelled tent. Tomorrow I repeat the transport cycle back to Puerto Natales, but tonight I get to sleep outside.

T. Hugh Crawford

In Patagonia Day 9

February 27th, 2018

In Patagonia Day 9
Puerto Natales—Lago Grey, Torres del Paine

One of those days that makes me wonder about transportation infrastructure for scenic hiking. Torres del Paine is probably the largest tourist draw in southern Chile. A park with mountains, lakes, glaciers, and well-designed paths, it serves to draw huge numbers of walkers, each with varying experience. The systems in place—buses, ferry boats, refugios, campsites, equipment rental companies, hostels, and travel agents—all conspire to both attract visitors and fulfill their needs. The stress on the ecosystem is palpable, though the number of people has been restricted in the past few years, owing to a fire that destroyed much of the hardwood forests growing in the park. It was started by some foreign campers causing something of an international incident, apparently with the offending country paying reparations to Chile. Now I understand why when I bought matches at the supermarket, the cashier asked if I was going to Torres del Paine and frowned when I said yes. There is much resentment for the destruction, which I saw firsthand today as all the trees were dead, dried bones with scorch-marked still-standing trunks. My transportation started with a very early walk to the bus, three hour ride (the last on gravel roads) across huge tracts of grazing land, both sheep and cattle. After entering the park (which seemed like crossing an international boundary) the bus wound past tall, jagged mountains with a lot of snow-pack at altitude. The rock strata are clearly evident with the upthrust pitching the lines at all angles. The bus dropped the crew at Lake Pudeto to await a water taxi to take us to Paine Grande— a deluxe refugio (that also has a campground) which serves as one of the entrances to the trails. As I could not get enough sites reserved to make a substantial trek, my days are determined by the reservations I could make, so today I walked to Refugio Grey along the lake to the glacier, and settled in there. Tomorrow I explore a bit then back to Paine Grande to camp and catch the ferry the following morning. Not exactly a rigorous trek but been really having knee problems so it’s just as well. The beginning of today’s walk brought double deja vu—the very beginning was exactly like the start of the Laugavegur Trail in Iceland, but once the path started up a narrow valley and the sun appeared, it was exactly like the opening climb up Kinder Scout on the Pennine Way.

It was a rocky path, though the ascents and descents were gentle. The campsite at Grey is in an unburned woods, including an old growth section of beeches that closely resemble the ones in New Zealand, which helped give some sense of what the park used to look like. It was also one of those walks with a climax at the end. At the head of the lake is a large glacier, and the path stops at a viewpoint just above a quiet cove filled with huge pieces of blue and white ice broken off and just drifting. Curious why the ice is so blue, but as I write this the Internet is no where to be found. Besides, I just want to think about it for a while. As I sat there watching the sun sink, the air would echo with sharp cracks which I first took for avalanches up the mountainside, but then realized (of course) it was the ice breaking off into the lake. Evening music.

T. Hugh Crawford