Cochamó to The End of the World

Oh dear. I need to update this blog more often... Shall I recount how it is to herd geese on a swimming horse in a beautiful bay at sunset? What it feels like to reconnect with beautiful long lost friends beneath impossible granite megaliths? What about my experiences as a recent victim of theft and impermanence, or my 30 hour long existential bus ride South, or the way in which Nathaniel and I battle travel-weariness by scrambling chocolate chip cookies on the stove top?

In the face of profound absurdity I suppose I will start with Thanksgiving. On November the 25th I found myself with one of my best childhood friends in the Chilean equivalent of Yosemite, a 10 mile mudslide away from civilization. There in the wilderness a French woman had taken it upon herself to recreate the North American holiday of Thanksgiving by employing pack horses to cart in turkeys, wine etc. We were an eclectic Thanksgiving bunch, and the motif of bubbles pervaded our conversation as we consumed a miraculously delicious, abundant, and authentic Thanksgiving meal. When it was my turn to say what I was thankful for I said freedom.

And then it began: the sudden dessimation of my most valuable possesions. While hiking down a step slope I fell directly upon my high-falootin-oh-so-convenient electronic reader and shattered any hope I had of finishing Cat´s Cradle. Then in the Puerto Montt bus station some light-fingered asshole lifted my small backpack whose contents included but were not limited to my computer, my camera, my iPod, and a significant written segment of my soul.

Luckily travel insurance will cover some portion of the loss, but my journal is the really big heartbreaking problem. I had been writing in this journal for the past three years. I had filled up all the fronts of its 180 pages with the tiniest handwriting I could muster, and I was starting to fill up all the backs of the pages too. It contained the only truly selfish writing I´ve ever created, and all of my secrets, exaltations, and tragedies that seemed too raw or trite (or maybe too true) to share with another human being. It was often sad and rambling but sometimes it was beautiful and I loved it because it was a part of me. It was like a fucking Horcrux.

And then some dude in a bus station stole it and he probably can´t even understand English. As our Patagonia-bound bus pulled out of the station I cried for the first time on the trip, and I also wondered about the deliberate construction of ego, attachment, and suffering.  Ah, impermanence, when you strike you strike hard, you bastard.

A thousand miles and 14 degrees of latitude later I find myself in Punta Arenas, a bleak windy outpost city that overlooks the Straight of Magellan. The wind is so strong here that the trees are bent, and geographical phenomena are named things like "The Last Hope." The times have been a bit demanding lately, what with the theft of my things and a pesty stomach illness of Nathaniel´s. We have consoled ourselves with culrinary adventures and incredibly improbable duels with fate and fortune. Most notably, we have scrambled cookies, purchased scratch-it lottery tickets, and composed a letter to an admiral of the Chilean navy explaining why he should grant us passage on a naval vessel bound for Antarctica.
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In three days we are going to be commencing a three-week volunteer position in Torres de Paine national park. I have no idea what we are going to be doing. All I really know is a) it is supposed to be jaw-droppingly beautiful and b) we will be living in tents. Hopefully I´ll also befriend a gaucho with a horse, meet some other interesting people, and find something vaguely festive to do for the holidays.

And thus live continues to be vivid, overwhelming, beautiful, unexpected, and all that jazz. To Freedom. Cheers.