Terra Incognita of the Mind by Lance Mason

There is a land far, far away that should stay there. Patagonia’s grand features and wild places form a natural logic around its geographic solitude. Or planetary solitude, since Patagonia shares common traits with Planet Pluto—a long distance from the nearest neighbor, nasty weather discouraging recreation, and discovered late but always suspected: Pluto by astronomers contemplating astronomical things; Patagonia by Christians contemplating Purgatory’s mix of Heaven and Hell. And getting to Patagonia is almost as easy as getting to Pluto.

My LAX departure was scheduled for 01:30. The airline recognized this as an abominable hour and rescheduled it—for 02:30. With delays, we boarded at 03:30, enjoying a breakfast of shredded fax paper lightly sautéed in extra virgin castor oil, with a filtered, pasteurized orange liquid and a brown, soggy sponge. We set down in Mexico City for a two-hour stopover. It got cut to an hour. Airline math: Delay departure by two hours; subtract one hour from next layover.

An hour’s pacing of Mexican floor-covering ended with a boarding call for Bogota, where I’d be Aeropuerto El Dorado’s guest for nine additional hours. Airline officials, having cheated me of two hours at LAX, now added them to my Colombian layover, ignoring any losses in Mexico City.

For those who have never endured it, half a day in Bogota’s transit lounge is not boring. Equating boredom with this experience is like equating sunburn to 24 hours on a rotisserie BBQ. Time loiters around like a Sunday drunk. One’s bone marrow aches with the fatigue of sitting. You become jealous of people who smoke.

A pair of mustachioed travelers, mimicking two-bit assassins, cracked open a bottle of duty-free whiskey and a pack of cards. My hatred for them, occupied and happy, throbbed like a boil. Diverse scenarios for torturing airline managers flitted across my screen. Anger had disabled my feeble Spanish, so speaking with airport personnel ran the wild risks of insulting someone’s fountain pen or ordering a meal of yellow shirts.

I had with me a collection of a Nobel laureate’s short stories. So, I read. One story, two, three—they ran together like colors of paint, bold and vivid on their own but muddy and congealed in a group. I sulked in that Colombian dungeon, doing little else I can remember. Perhaps I read more. Or slept. Or practiced astral projection to Pluto. Regardless, I departed Bogota, Colombia, in the most foul mental and emotional state that my memory can recreate. Was I getting too old to travel?

Next stop: Chile. Santiago’s arrivals hall was more like it. My host and colleague, Julio, had been delayed and sent a driver. So civilized, these Chileans. A well-dressed man held a hand-lettered sign that read Manson. Well, almost right.

After three days of Julio’s generous hospitality, I pressed on. Train to Temuco. Plane to Punta Arenas, the world’s most southerly city. My purpose? Meeting two New Zealand friends for a week’s backpacking in Patagonia’s high, glaciated passes of Torres del Paine National Park, renowned for its challenging hikes, stunning vistas, and history of risky but rewarding mountaineering. We had no plans for the latter, but Garth, a keen and accomplished climber, would be thrilled just to be among those tall peaks and the stories they bred.

Santiago had emboldened my Spanish, so I asked a sprightly old shopkeeper at Punta Arenas’ airport where I could catch a shuttle into town. She offered to drive me. Delightful. Things were clicking. We walked to her car, a bold statement in inventive repairs. She inserted her key into the trunk lock, then sat on the lid to release it, revealing a space entirely of bare metal—no tools, spare tire, mats, or upholstery. To what reincarnations had the contents been diverted? Dropping in my backpack, I sat on the trunk lid to reclose it.

Entering the “passenger compartment,” I noticed missing knobs, handles, and gauges—all evidence of why this assemblage shouldn’t have functioned as an automobile. Yet it functioned. As did the woman in the most remarkable fashion. She perched her hindquarters on the lumpy, threadbare seat, her chicken-foot hands on the wheel as she peered ahead, looking for action. She fidgeted incessantly, shoulders rolling, torso swiveling, the car gently swerving to her rhythm. Tailgating cars in front, muttering at the taxis, she stomped her foot incessantly from throttle to brake, flashing me confident smiles of scorn for other drivers. Her whole style seemed at one with the car, accomplishing what appearances promised they couldn’t.

She mimicked a moto-racer with OCD, hopping around, twitching, speeding for daylight, and honking at cooperativos—local taxis—to dispel any notion they were the only maniacs in town. I endeavored to mask my anxiety, but my legs stiffened, my grip searched for handholds, and my guts conspired in rude noises.

Thirty dangerous km and one human half-life later, we entered Punta Arenas proper. I’d have exited the machine at the first rolling stop, but for my backpack stored in her trunk. Shouldn’t I take the nearest taxi to the bus terminal? No, she would take me.

Punta Arenas reflects a quaint dash of Europe—ethnic neighborhoods, imported cars, wind, sea, clouds, rain—and San Francisco’s house designs, crossing chalets with bungalows. After several perilous turns, my hostess spotted a bus barreling out of a crowded parking lot, slid her vehiculo into its path, leapt nimbly from her still-lurching car, shouting something at the bus driver, and vanished into an office. Back in thirty seconds, she told me the bus she’d just ambushed was mine, that I must board immediately, and implying with a picket-fence grin that Fortune had smiled upon us.

What I felt towards her was akin to the Stockholm Syndrome, what a hostage feels for his captor as freedom becomes imminent. The ride from the airport had been harrowing, nearly giving me the vapors, but this incautious woman had, at the moment of truth, delivered me with much goodwill. I was alive and unharmed, about to board the Puerto Natales bus, with timing that could not have been more precise (though the bus driver and passengers disagreed).

I gave the lady five bucks, grabbed my pack, and scampered.

***

My intended route to meet up with Garth and Gordon, with whom I had backpacked in New Zealand for ten-plus years, is “The Patagonia Boomerang.” Careening south from elsewhere in Chile, one hits Punta Arenas, then bounces north to Puerto Natales, from where we three would find our way to “Pluto,” i.e., Parque Nacional Torres del Paine, in all its snowy, isolated splendor.

The three-hour bus ride from PA to PN is white noise from start to finish, nothing of color, no gesture of relief, just carbon-gray skies, tussocky hills, anonymous sheep, and a few scrappy settlements. The faces of the locals told the story—life is desperate, dull, difficult, and wind-blown. Their expressions wished it could be better while admitting it wasn’t.

Patagonia has been portrayed by many people in many ways. W. H. Hudson, in Far Away and Long Ago, unmatched literature for feeling and memory, gives us a boy’s adventure of mid-19^th Century Argentine Patagonia.

The rooms at one end formed a store where people of the country came to buy and sell ‘the produce of the country’—hides and wool and tallow, native cheeses, knives, spurs, iron pots, and clothing, yerba mate and sugar; tobacco, salt and pepper, castor oil, cane-chairs, and coffins.

Bruce Chatwin, Eric Shipton, Yvon Chouinard, sailors, pirates, exploiters, farmers—they’d all been here and told their stories. The intrepid have survived: aboriginals, Spanish offspring, some German, Italian, British, and scattered Croats. No mainstreamers. No sunbathers. No easy-livers.

Nor has Nature made it easy in this sub-Arctic patch. Few trees, little firewood, scarce wildlife—the “Patagonian wolf” (a fox), a mega-hare, scattered birds including the condor, and the llama-like guanaco, who roams the protected wilderness. The wind blows 363 days a year—breaks at Christmas, Easter, and Leap Year—mainly from Antarctica, a harsher climate, but where no one raises sheep. The brief bouts of Patagonia’s summer only highlight the general dreariness.

Hence, one is driven to ask: what’s the attraction of this forsaken neighborhood? Not just for us, but for the locals, descendants of the intentional migrations? The answers are as diverse as the adventurers themselves. Yet, before we catalog the humans, let me try, perhaps vainly, to portray a more redeeming picture of the land.

Chilean Patagonia offers gin-clear saltwater fjords, freshwater lakes, and rivers in mighty profusion. The bold Andes descend to the sea in wild bluffs and canyons, granite precipices a mile high, and glaciers so impossibly large that they spell-bind the eye and confound the imagination. Guanacos prance free. Carrion-eaters cruise the mountain summits. A whirlwind corkscrews a 300-foot plume of driving mist off the face of an icy green lake. Avalanches crack off mammoth icefalls and boom down boulder-strewn ravines not 500 meters from your hiking track. The days die out in watercolor sunsets, and the nights are frigid, clear, and starlit. There, I’ve said it—Patagonia is incomparably beautiful…but weird.

***

An image from a Bergman film, the wharf in Puerto Natales was semi-desolate but pregnant with meaning. Fishing and tourism bristled from its pilings and piers, its surroundings showing little waste. Highly developed and well-kept for its location, it reflected motivated investors.

Garth and Gordon were due that day, Garth by way of Easter Island and Gordon via Brazil and family friends. Having rendezvoused in the Andean resort of Bariloche, G & G were then traveling south, 700 km by bus and ferry via Puerto Montt to Pto. Natales. Email and mobile telephony being sketchy at best in c. 2000 Patagonia, our coordination was old-school, intersecting by pre-arranged dates, locations, and many years of inter-reliance.

The three of us had shared backpacking trips as far back as 1975, my first year teaching in New Zealand. When I lived there from 1988-99, we had done yearly trips into the mountains and bush of the South Island, proving well-suited to each other’s company and attitudes about the outdoors and how to enjoy it.

Now, standing by a clapboard storage shed on the main pier, I sensed some movement off to my right. There is something primitive and nurturing in meeting close companions in faraway surroundings, an anchoring where you had none, a secure connection where you had been alone. Garth and Gordon strolled along the wharf toward me. I had been waiting an hour, maybe two, but there was no relevance to that now. How long had Livingstone waited for Stanley beside the Congo? After a celebratory reunion, we were off to our rooms. As was typical, Garth had all the preparations in hand—lodging, overland travel, and notable pubs. We had a meal and then went to sleep.

***

From Pto. Natales, one drives several hours north-northeast to Laguna Amarga and then by boat to Refugio Pehoe on the lake of that name, a common departure spot for mountain-and-glacier adventures in the heart of Patagonia. Yet Patagonia is a state of mind, beginning with Punta Arenas and then stretching north, encompassing Torres del Paine, the FitzRoy Range, and even into the Argentine pampas as described with melancholy by Hudson: Three centuries in that part of South America takes us back to prehistoric times—until you come out the other side, smelling what passes for civilization.

While rarely smooth and welcoming, the stark lines of this landscape can bring to mind the curvilinear perfection of Matisse or Modigliani. Yet, even as the gauchos adapted to a frontier often desperate and dull, a true Patagonian may develop cynicism about the easy pleasures of city life.

We did spend a stupendous, if rigorous, week in high passes, camping spots, and mountain refugios for which the area is famous. I could chronicle our week, day by day, vista by vista, meal by meal, but that is a narrative for another time. I’ll relate instead the oddities and the curious.

The refugios are unique. Unlike the mountain- and bush shelters in New Zealand and other wilderness locales, many Chilean hostels are staffed and fitted with kitchens and bathrooms. For three lads used to corrugated tin shacks, “long-drop dunnies,” and plywood shelves as sleeping bunks, these accommodations were palatial. In addition, our perspective of New Zealand as the premier destination for adventurous backpackers (trampers, in Kiwi-speak) was jaded and largely dispelled by those we met in Chile and their entries in the guestbooks.

“Nuevemente estoy aqui en este hermoso lugar.”

“We passed a most special day here, a place most beautiful, tranquil, with much peace and happiness. The refuge is well-equipped, clean and warm. Thank you for everything during our state (sic). Happy New Year 1999, and warm wishes. Isabel and Christian, Geneva.”

“You took excellent care of us when we were faced with sleeping on the ground.” Michael, Jody, and Susan—Canadian bums.”

“Many thanks to Juan Carlos and Christina. We adore you.” Lela and Roberto, Brazil.

“Dentro mi portero per sempre un bellisimo ricordo di questo piccolo ‘paradiso’—grazie di tutto.” Mano de Roma

While these grateful messages were typical of Patagonian hut books, my NZ mates couldn’t resist pointing out this whiny tantrum:

I plan to submit complaints to appropriate authorities unless appropriate redress will be taken care of (sic). J___ F______, Greenwich, Connecticut, USA – 15 Xxxxxx Xxxxx Lane, 11/98.”

I have redacted his name and address lest his Connecticut lawyers sue me for outing him as a dick. This pathetic whinger goes on to cite “two previous other cases (sic)” of people who, like him, fell in one of the shower stalls. He continued berating the hut and staff in his crybaby lament for all the world to read. That he was lucky to have a hot shower in the middle of Patagonia escaped his logic and adequately articulates my contempt for this cretin. It was appropriate that he identified himself in the logbook as American-—part of the country’s insult to itself.

My Kiwi mates needled me with further notations by Americans berating the refugios’ food preparation, flies, and, of all things, bacon quality. While log-book complaints on wilderness bacon contain a sardonic irony, Americans ought to be embarrassed when encountering the practice by their contemporaries on foreign shores.

***

Snow on our first day out, enough to respect the weather. The glaciers were immense, riven by crevasses glowing at their rims with blue light, and had carved out the mountains’ towers (torres) and peaks (cerros), but in ways devoid of the pretty and delicate. The cliffs were as threatening as a jailer’s face, the result of entropy progressing to chaos. Condors rode thermals, pirouetting in the sunlight below steam-puff cumulus. The scale and scope of it all rejected comparisons but nonetheless invited them. An impulse to record it on one’s map of life. The geographic isolation of this place. The futility to make it anything but what it was—gigantic, forbidding, and enchanted all at once. The harmony was not from any warmth in the picture, blended colors, or the meeting of sky and skyline but in the barren distances and primitive hugeness of the ice, the mountains, and the space. And, unlike most other remote spots on Earth—parts of Africa, Australia, even Siberia—there was no easy season here. Wind, ice, rock, dust, tussock, and glacial water, all conveying intensity. You took what God and Nature offered and were glad it didn’t land on top of you.

       From some of my notebook:

No designer, but the appearance of design leads one to believe in God. Myths and likenesses. Andes: like a diamond field, bracelets of ice and water, valleys vast and dark, the white fastness of limitless plateaus of snow. Nature’s whole, when it should seem disorganized and chaotic. Beauty as felt emotion: the absence of logic, reason, or order—the paradox of rational order and irrational feeling in nature, in music, in art, in writing. Emotions of surrender, submission, rapture.

Patagonia distorts the map where one keeps track of familiar places, attractions, legends, drawbacks, people, accents, etc. Not a country, it’s more like a planet, indeed like Pluto, far away, inhospitable, unsettled, unchanged, untamed, untameable—terra incognita of the mind, with refugios as space stations between what you know and what you don’t.

The wind is indigestibly fierce. Three days in, on a steep pitch of loose scree on the infamous “W”—a challenging series of slopes and passes deep in the Parque Nacional TdP—I lifted my right foot high off the track, and a gust blew me into Argentina. I was just reaching for my passport when it blew me back. For security, I tied thirty-pound rocks on top of each foot, which sounds excessive, but my pack had just registered an imaginary 257 lbs on my suffering scale.

This tramp closed a long and colorful chapter of my life. My backpacking was finished. A cumulative series of sports injuries, mainly rugby, had made my knees nonfunctional, swollen like cantaloupes, so stiff that I couldn’t stand in the mornings without assistance. Garth and Gordon had to leave me behind for the best parts of the final sections and then divide up my load on the descents so I could avoid doing a faceplant on the granite.

With good friends for twenty-seven years, I had wandered and explored the hills—Marble Mountain Wilderness, North Col above the Routeburn River, Ghode Pani Pass in Nepal, NZ’s Forgotten River country, the Mt. Whitney region, tiger-fishing the upper Zambesi, trout fishing on the Karamea, hiking over Rabbit Pass and down into the East Matukituki Valley, and dozens more of Nature’s delightful and difficult spots. Now here, in Patagonia, on the doorstep of one of Earth’s imagination-challenging mountainscapes, I had to sublimate the desire for the adventure by writing notes about it while G & G climbed into clouds without me.