Towers Of The Blue
A Prerequisite in Goode’s
The Goode’s World Atlas, 12th Edition, edited by one Edward B. Espenshade Jr., became a Bible of sorts to me in childhood. I consulted it regularly, touched its pages as if they were part of an ancient text, studied countries, cities, oceans, rivers, elevations, keys, and meridians. I celebrated new finds and reveled in charts diagramming the Solar System, which prefaced the Maps themselves.
The Atlas was comforting, a ready escape when I was bored or lonely or troubled by some dilemma that I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around. It never disappointed. There always were new locations to unearth: some tucked away archipelago (how I luxuriated in that word when I first learned it!), tributaries in the Canadian wilderness, cities in Brazil, the very existence of Bhutan. The expanses, page after page, printed with exquisite detail, never made me feel small. Quite the opposite. I felt unfettered, empowered by the topographical sections, realizing borders were a fiction — or at least dramatically different — from Earth’s grander perspective.
Convinced that exploration was intrinsic to the duties, I remember a stretch of months in middle school when “Cartographer” became my ultimate calling. That was sometime before Foreign Correspondent, but after Cartoonist.
Many write about the how of a trip, the journey being the joy. That matters to me too, but, if I’m really honest, what I see once there has always mattered more. The physical features of the destination, a landscape I can touch — that’s what makes me feel closer to whatever divinity may exist. A dot on a map made visually whole, 3D, 4D, gritty, and soaring.
Las Torres
Torres del Paine National Park was my destination in Patagonia, the perfect place to come to terms with the what. The literal translation is Towers (Torres) of the Blue (Paine). Paine [pronounced pine-ay] is not a Spanish word; it comes from the indigenous Tehuelche (Aonikenk) people and characterizes the hue of the signature mountains that rise uncompromisingly from a sea-level steppe. Photographs of those mountains captured my attention 12 years ago. I swore I would touch them. In an age inundated by digital images, the power of striking photographs from a striking eye can still transport our souls and make us yearn. (Mine, by the way, are not striking. They do little justice to what surrounds you in Torres del Paine.)
We reached Las Torres on the first full day of hiking. Trekking may be the more appropriate term, as every stretch of the trail is arduous. Starting from the clean hostel-lodge of Refugio Torre Central, which sports a bar and meditation space, and resting with earned hot chocolate at the cozy, boisterous, and, again, notably clean (leave-your-boots-at-the-door) Refugio Chileno, the journey’s constant incline never felt below 10%. At times, it is higher, at least in the final hour up to the moraine, when you are sweating in 35 ºF and focused on your deep, slow, rhythmic breaths — that ultimately give way to panting despite your best efforts. Well, despite my best efforts.
What is there, waiting for you? The most seasoned experts and the guides themselves who have seen it dozens of times, like Las Torres virgins (i.e., the rest of us), unanimously light up. That view won’t be denied. It forces you into awe and worship mode. You either drop to your knees or spread your arms into the wild air like a champion. The granite spires are far more massive than typical photos convey, the glacial lake is the purest aquamarine (in fact, google image “raw aquamarine”). Both emanate from what looks like an imposing, ashy caldera, though it is not. The dramatic places of Earth make you see Earth for what it is. You see the organism that it is, the god that it is, the particle that it is, the mass that it is, the mother that it is. All routine, blinders, human hierarchies with their fighting and folly, just fall away.
At Mirador Las Torres, the lookout point, the wind doesn’t just bite your skin, it bites away the insecurities. It swallows your heart. It demands that you rise to the occasion of this life and do what you are capable of doing. “Stop fucking around,” that landscape thunders at you. Stop treating others poorly, in any capacity. Stop wasting. Stop being selfish and greedy with your meaningless little toys. Be beautiful. Be essential. Be generous. Pour your love onto your lover. Tell your family and friends how much they mean to you. If you’re alone, create symbiotically and express gorgeously. In the paradox of an infinite moment, beneath the Towers, you are filled with insight and strength. And, you are changing and dying too, of course, so look, look, look and understand, and when you go home, give. Fuck being a good little consumer in a faceless box. If you’re human, you have a bit of poet inside you somewhere. Dig her or him out and let that worthier instinct guide you.
On the way down, my right knee tendon was somersaulting in protest and agony at what I’d put it through. I am certain it was also mocking me under its ligament. One of our amazing guides gave me an ointment; one of our amazing group members (a doctor and yoga practicioner) instructed me in novel stretches and performed some kind of magic on my lower back. Ibuprofen also figured into the healing regime. Food. Wine. Jokes. Sleep. So closed Day One of the W Trek.
Los Cuernos
My body wasn’t quite conditioned to optimal Patagonian grade prior to this undertaking. I lost five pounds in five days and could feel my core becoming more and more badass with each passing kilometer of terrain. Day Two was a long, sloping hike, winding past Lago Nordenskjöld, through a forest that resembled gargantuan bonsais (really), and up foothills to Refugio Los Cuernos. Quarters are tight here, but the effort to keep it tidy and to keep weary hikers warm, fed, and feeling welcome is most notable. The option exists too to pay a bit more (in advance, everything books quickly) to sleep in one of the bright, porched cabins scattered on the hillside. They feature wood stoves, skylight windows-onto-the-mountain, a funky outdoor hot tub, and a shared bath separate from and not as busy as the Refugio’s facilities. As with every Refugio in the Park, there is also a campground for the heartiest out there. But, I urge choosing the cabins or Refugio. For warmth. Staying warm and dry, once stationary, isn’t easy and isn’t really negotiable, even in the Patagonian summer. “Four seasons in one day,” our guides told us at the outset, predicting the future exactly. Camp only if you are expertly prepared for heavy rain and hail in freezing temperatures at night.
Most striking is the situation of this outpost at the base of the climb to Los Cuernos, The Horns, which are the distinctive, “postcard” peaks west of Las Torres. In particular, it is Cuerno Principal and Cuerno Este that rise above the outpost, reminescent of El Capitan in Yosemite. Their sheer rock faces glow in the gold and red tones of the late sunlight of summer at the end of the world. That light doesn’t yield to a suggestion of darkness until after 11 p.m., on December 19, at any rate. But, a punchy, happy exhaustion makes sleep easy and inevitable, especially knowing what the next day brings. Day Three is the ascent up French Valley to behold The Horns at close range. Then, it’s on to the rolling foothills below Paine Grande, the Park’s highest peak, and along the trail overlooking Lago Skottsberg.
Let’s zero in on the ascent up French Valley to the gasps and avalanches (yes, avalanches) of Los Cuernos lookout point. This ascent matches that to Las Torres in both technical challenge and jaw-dropping beauty. I haven’t yet mentioned the rivers and waterfalls ubiquitously cascading from the folds of every mountain in the Park; now is a good time. The waterfalls typically plunge from a thousand feet or more — vigorous, elemental, and pure — culminating in foaming rivers and pristine streams. Rio del Frances, a wild and gorgeous companion, is with you, on your left, as you hike French Valley. At the urging of our guides, we drank from certain streams they pointed out, filled up our water bottles, and splashed our faces. Familiar with the protocol for several continents (as a foreigner with different bacteria in my body), I had a filtration system comparable to the LifeStraw, just to be safe, but Carlos smiled and assured me it wasn’t necessary. By the third day, every one of us took his advice. “The purest in the world,” he said. Indeed, no one had a problem. The water tasted, you know, like God’s tears or the first melted ice of the first glacier in an unspoiled land of fairytales and blazing constellations. It did.
Trekking ever upward and across an arresting rock scramble, you finally reach the lookout and confront the Paine Massif and its extraordinary glacier on your left; on your right, behold Los Cuernos, all of them. The latter, also called Cerros (peaks), are Fortaleza (Fortress), La Espada (The Sword), La Hoja (The Blade or Leaf), La Máscara (The Mask), Cuerno Norte (North Horn), and Cuerno Principal (Main Horn). They are massive, jagged wedges of stone, sober citadels shrouded by ice and clouds.
This is another reality check hour-or-so of communing with the what of Earth. Assisting you in that endeavor are the occasional thunderous avalanches on your left. What a sight an avalanche is! (I heard “holy shit” in five languages. When floored, humans of every nationality tend to surrender their poetry to vulgarity. Alas.) Paine Grande’s avalanches, no doubt, would wholly consume any mortals who might dare come closer. The mountain has no sympathy nor need for mortals. The cost of knowing it at intimate range would be life. But observe, human, from a safe, high distance on yonder ridge, the churning of geology, of planetary concerns! The heartrending reminders of Day One, with their philosophical direction in aesthetics and ethics, are amplified by Day Three’s frontal metaphysics assault. That’s right. What is the fundamental nature of this piece of world I’m seeing? Of this Atlas page constructed into such magnitude and dimensions around me? Why does the mountain affect us so? We are in love with it. We weep inside ourselves breathless with awe. What is the mountain? Why would magma or plate tectonics mean so much to humans viscerally and universally? The highest point of Paine Grande has only been climbed three times in recorded memory, due to its instability. Its ultimate reality, whatever it is, whispers to human perception and human limits. But we can’t quite interpret the full content of the message.
Hail Mary Paine Grande
The Park’s central mountain group, including all of the peaks and formations mentioned thus far, is called Cordillera del Paine. That its collective shapes are sharp and dense, that the cut of Cuerno Principal is so distinctive only increase the sweet crisis of what.
With the Cordillera’s magic flowing through our veins, we descended from Los Cuernos lookout, lunched, then embarked at midday on the long, long hike to Refugio Paine Grande on Lago Pehoe’s northwest shore. On this stretch of trail, I had my first and only bout with fear. In the previous days and hours, there had been weariness and exhilaration, physical pain and emotional ecstasy. In daily life, I rarely experience fear. This, this was fear.
I have no photos for this section. (The ones below are actually from Day Two, to give a general idea of the foothill hiking and our group on the trail together.) On the way to Refugio Paine Grande, I didn’t have time to get my camera out. I had time to do one thing: move. Move at all costs. Here’s what happened.
Four in our group chose not to make the ascent to Los Cuernos lookout; the day’s journey was stunning but long (as expected), and they were ready to head to shelter at Refugio Paine Grande. Rather than wait more than two hours for us in damp cold, one of our guides, Omar, led them on. Carlos led the five of us. Maybe an hour after our descent and lunch feast on Rio del Frances’ rocky bank, we paused for rest and Carlos assessed the sky. He advised us to put our rain gear on if we hadn’t already done so. The wind had picked up considerably and a wild gray seemed to roll in, brooding … unpredictable. Within 15 minutes, The West Wind was upon us. I am thinking of it as characterized in Greek mythology, since I’m ignorant of native wind deities among Patagonia’s early people. Zephyrus, often gentle, was in a foul, foul mood. Very strong wind is a standing feature of the region and we’d been instructed earlier on how to cope — trunk and head down horizontal into the wind and move forward on the trail. We walked in gusts so intense that some steps forward were close to a standstill. Then, during this one-foot-in-front-of-the-other battle for ground, came the hail. Pea and dime sized hail. In that wind. With your full backpack. For an hour and a half. It stings and reddens you if you look up.
This is not actually what frightened me. In some ways, I had wanted this. The Park, despite its handful of self-sustaining refuges, is real wilderness. It is backcountry. I didn’t want Disney, I wanted an elemental encounter. No disappointment there. But, at some point, our group thinned. I couldn’t see the person in front of me, nor the person behind me. They were there, of course, a trot ahead and a trot behind, but I couldn’t physically speed up to catch the person in front and stopping in that cutting howl seemed genuinely foolish. In this circumstance, a realization sets in too, that, if the wind speed goes much higher, if conditions deteriorate further, finding immediate, temporary shelter will be a necessity. My training as a private pilot kicked in. There are basics you learn in the disciplines that interface directly with Nature, whether it’s flying, sailing, guiding, ranging: once Nature meets a, b, and c criteria, drop the hubris immediately and follow procedures. My mind was on the edge of all of this. Feeling separated from my tribe was ramping me up.
Finally, the wind and hail settled a bit. I was still alone. “Just stop and wait … Carlos, Chris, and David are behind you,” I counseled myself. But, I didn’t want to stop. I wanted to get. to. the. Refugio. I wanted to catch up with my other two compadres ahead.
It was about this time when my mind, for whatever reason, wandered to the Park’s wildlife. Maybe it was that ‘environment-responsive-procedure’ thinking or just the freshness and vivid color that follow a storm. We had seen a bright, bushy-tailed fox the previous day. We joked that the condors frequently soaring overhead were spirit birds, ancient ancestors surveying the slow human sojourns in the Park. But, it was discussion of the puma that kept coming back to me. Pumas are in Torres del Paine, rarely seen, but residents quite real. In 2004, in California, two mountain lion attacks grabbed headlines. In one, the cat had the woman, teeth into her head, while her friend held onto her legs in life-or-death contest with the cat. Neither would let go. She lived, after weeks of hospitalization, because another mountain biker heard the struggle, ran in, and threw rocks.
Of course, such attacks are rare, but they do happen. In backcountry. And, you’ll never hear or see the cat until it has you. Granted … the likelihood of a puma emerging on the trail and dragging me off, when there were so many bunnies and small beasts milling about everywhere in that land, must have been negative three percent. But, I could not shake the feeling and I felt fear. Despite probably being the weakest hiker in our group (I was sure some puma had me pegged as such), adrenalin does crazy things. Convinced of my imminent mauling, I picked up a rock. And, I picked up my pace, by a lot, despite the hours of hiking and climbing, despite the weather we’d just been through. Finally — I saw Becca’s red jacket on a hill in front of me! Saved by the twenty-year old Cambridge student! When I told her (very good-humored and clever in her own right) what had been going through my head, well, you can imagine … in her smart British accent, “Raacquelll … come. on.”
Humans are regularly eaten alive by cancer or by some cannibal-amoeba-bacteria disease or other. And, we bravely fight those little beasts. No one wants to be eaten by another mammal — the fight time is reduced to minutes.
Maybe 45 minutes later, Refugio Paine Grande appeared in the distance at the edge of the lake, Lago Pehoe. I don’t think I have ever been so ready to be inside a building as I was to be in that building. An oasis!! Omar had actually walked out onto the trail towards us, two-way radio in hand, predicting our arrival. He was highly aware of the weather that had swept through. Seeing him coming our way was like seeing a best friend you thought you’d lost forever. Smiles. Hugs. Tales of The Hail. Warm lodge. Hot chocolate. The Wine’s on me! Dinner. Laughter. Puma stories. Sweet, sweet sleep in a comfy, comfy bed. A glorious Day Three ended.
Blue is the New Grey
The W Trek, named for the shape of the trail on a map, can begin on the upper left serif of the “W” or the lower right join of the W’s second “U” and proceed in either direction. We began at the latter (in the east) and ended at the serif (in the west), where the final wonder awaited: Grey Glacier.
Grey Glacier, viewed at close range, is blue. Its hues range from pale, icy white-blue to full-wattage electric blue. La la I just freeze every time you see through me … la la … Well, no one actually belted out that gem from the late ‘80s, but it crossed my mind. (Whoa, I am kidding.) More operatic and tragic would be the “music” of this chunk of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, which, as a whole, is rapidly losing volume, thinning, and contributing to sea level rise, according to Scientific American and other publications. I had never seen a glacier in person prior to those of Torres del Paine and am thankful I have lived to do so. Everything about Grey Glacier exceeded expectations.
After a four hour morning hike along ridges, alternately rolling and steep, above Lago Grey and below the Cordillera’s west side, we reached stylish Refugio Grey and its docks. Zodiacs took us out to the Grey II, a bright, tough-looking, double-deck vessel that hosted 30 or so passengers that afternoon. From the upper deck, we witnessed the ice. Grey II got close. And, when it did, the brawny shipmates suddenly appeared with trays of Chilean Pisco Sour for all, a drink popular enough to be a national pastime. The ice cubes were glacier cubes. Touristy? Fine. But, utterly delightful. We each had two.
Is it novelty that strikes the soul? The novelty of the glacier, rather than the glacier innately? Or, do particular landscapes themselves, even for those with lifelong familiarity, have some deep, connective quality? Some bonding agent linking consciousness and Earth? I asked myself these questions on the boat and determined that this type of inquiry presents a false dichotomy. Novelty certainly can strike the soul and we do long for greener fields, but it’s a non sequitur to suppose familiarity with something that feels authentically sacred would diminish the strike. It didn’t for our guides. Does a sunset for you? I grew up with Gulf of Mexico sunsets every evening. To this day, they wreck me in the best possible way, every single time.
Would there be less violence, less boxing into hierarchies, and less greed in the human heart if the angry, ignorant, and jealous walked in the grandeur of Torres del Paine and in Earth’s other luminous realms? Probably.
Torres del Paine has been designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve since 1978. And, it’s been healing souls since long before 1978. Maybe, in a certain light, ‘biosphere’ is like a threshold, both mundanely and profoundly binding those things living and those things of a larger scale. The flight from Punta Arenas to Santiago was a wistful one.
Last Word, Last Day: Murals in the Barrio y Demanda de Verdad
On September 11, 1973, a United States-backed coup d’état overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende (father of Isabel Allende). General Augusto Pinochet of the Chilean Army took control and became Dictator until 1990. His regime established a concentration camp at Chacabuco in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, an area now renown worldwide for its astronomical observatories. Pinochet is responsible for the torture and murder of thousands of political dissidents. Mothers still search for the bones of their husbands and children in the desert’s shifting sands.
Chile’s current President, Michelle Bachelet, whose own story is remarkable, inaugurated El Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos (The Museum of Memory and Human Rights) in the capital, Santiago, in 2010. A few neighborhoods away is the barrio of Bellavista, a hip, touristed bastion of visual expression. This is where I spent my last day in Chile, amid socially and politically charged murals. Provocative, screaming with color and symbolism, there are dozens and dozens painted on exterior brick walls. The effect is that of an open-air gallery of collective soul and truth.
Chile, see you again.
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