A Love Letter to Patagonia
On January 1, 2019, Matt and I made our way all the way to the southernmost tip of South America, that wild and rugged end of the world. Patagonia is a vast, mostly uninhabited expanse of land that runs through Argentina and Chile.
Patagonia encompasses a massive 400,000 square miles. From north to south, visitors to Patagonia will first encounter steppe-like plains, extensive lakes, lagoons, and coastal bays.
These grasses and depressions then rise high into lava plateaus and the Andes Mountains. Ice streams, deep fjords, volcanoes, glaciers, and snowy cordillera cap off the edge of Patagonia, known as Tierra del Fuego. Antarctica, just a short boat ride across the infamous Drake Passage, blasts and freezes the southernmost part of Patagonia, known as the Southern Patagonian Ice Field.
Matt and I had the joy of traveling to Patagonia at the beginning of January in 2020. For four nights, we stayed at a luxury campground right in the middle of Torres del Paine National Park, where we explored ice fields, glaciers, and mountain ranges, made friends from all across the world, drank gallons of Chilean wine and Patagonian coffee, hiked so far we could barely stand the next day, and saw countless wild creatures.
On the last full day of our visit to Patagonia, I found myself alone one afternoon walking along the “Contemplation Trail” while Matt took a yoga class. After hiking across a stream, I sat down on a little wooden bench and took out my notebook. This is what I documented in that moment:
On our first day at Ecocamp, we took an excursion to Grey Glacier. On our second day, we hiked fifteen miles (24km) to the base of the towers (Torres) that overlook our campsite. It took ten hours to complete the hike, and the last kilometer was a straight scramble up rocks. All in one day, we encountered snow, forest, and morraine. Today, all I can think of over and over again is one phrase: gratitude and the unspeakable pleasure of being. I’m sitting on a bench in Patagonia. The air is soft and cool. Every now and then, a sharp, fierce breeze blows over me. Then the sun flickers overhead and I am warm. To my left, I hear the trickle of a stream. Underneath my feet, ferns and orchids, purple and yellow. And in front of me, stern, cold, imposing, impossibly hard–Las Torres. Three sharp mounds of magma, 12.5 million years old. Clouds get caught in between their spindly teeth, then break apart and I see the blue sky again. New snow appeared on their peaks last night, and the effect is white against coal. I hear birds–parakeets–and see a condor in the distance. Somewhere nearby, a fox and her cubs. Lupins, blue, purple, pink. All around and through my lungs, cold, clear air. My knees hurt from the Torres, but it is a sweet pain, full of memory, and one I’d gladly feel a thousand times over. I never thought I’d connect so strongly here. But I’ve been made stronger. Patagonia demands it of you. Perhaps that is what happens to a person in Patagonia. Muscles, bone, sinew, but also forged connections with other humans, with nature, with your fears and limitations. And knowing you reached the peak, you have the solid ground to know you can do anything. I cannot write because there is so much left to live. The towers are there, the birds cry, everything to me is an adventure. Maybe it’s exhaustion but I think it’s really my lack of Wifi or service–my mind feels like a beautiful, clear, serene slate. On it, the only thing written is the feeling of being in Patagonia. The only sensation is wonder, beauty, perspective. Everything is peaceful and renewed. No one can steal this experience from me. Patagonia is written on my heart.
And finally–
El que se apura en Patagonia, pierde su tiempo (he who rushes in Patagonia wastes his time). Take it slow. Breath by breath. Open to joy. Explore kindness. Be in wonder. Remember how this has felt.
