"Give me silence, water, hope," Pablo Neruda
It’s four-thirty in the morning and Erin, a wild American expat, is driving them across the Patagonian pampa towards Torres del Paine for the start of his solo trek that begins with a twenty-mile day of hiking. He has way more cash on him than he’d ever take trekking back home, but she’s told him to bribe his way through if they won’t let him pass. He has a backup plan because that’s what he always does; he can catch a bus then a boat to the other side of the national park and spend a couple of extra days near Glacier Grey. Deep down, he wants to do that. But Erin has guided down here for almost twenty years and understands why he has come. She says she wants him to get to the backside of the park because it’s just perfectly peaceful.
“There are thousands of daisies right now that you need to see,” she says, as if she’s not just recommending what he does but gradually nudging him, tenderly encouraging him that he needs to do this. And after what he’s been through, he thinks she’s right. He needs to stop holding back. He needs to trust what the universe has in store, and if it doesn’t work out in an easy, safe fashion, then fuck it. He’ll deal with it. What more could he lose?
Because he booked this trip last June during the northern summer, two weeks after his partner broke up with him. He had been down here to Chilean Patagonia twenty-five years ago, but didn’t get to see the towers, the French Valley, or the backside of the range that Erin now says he needs to experience. So he booked the campsites on the O-Circuit in Torres del Paine, this trip to the southern summer, to the magical land of Patagonia, to be a shining spotlight on a very distant horizon. If he could get through six months of misery and processing of everything he lost, maybe he could go to southern Chile, the land of Neruda, and find something there. Maybe. Or maybe he could just disappear. He didn’t know. At the time, he just knew he needed something to look forward to and even if he couldn’t find the heart to look forward to anything, he at least needed to try to live for something meaningful. Something challenging, grueling, adventurous, and, hopefully, exciting. Something more than a vacation. Something to find himself again.
And then in November, five international hikers died on the backside of the park on the most remote and exposed part of the trail. Information outside Chile about the circumstances has been scant, mostly left for Reddit thread conjecture, but as of the time of his hike, through hearsay and anecdote, this is what he has pieced together as happening that spring November day on John Garner Pass. First, it was election day, and every park ranger and guide left to vote, as voting is compulsory in Chile. Secondly, there’s the weather, which is the wild force of this region, no matter the season. He’s only been here twice but has never experienced weather more powerful. On that day in November, a freak spring snowstorm swept across the backside of the range, and with no guidance from rangers, it is believed the foreign hikers either got a late start, or didn’t get a weather report and then got stuck, stranded, and or ultimately trapped to succumb to the snow and wind on the pass. As chaotic and bitter he imagines that day in the storm to have been, CONAF’s (Chilean Park Service) response had been as astonishingly unclear. A complete trail closure until December first was enacted for investigation, and then through December thirty first the trail was opened only to hikers who hired a guide, of which there were too few to go around. He was scheduled to begin his trek on January first.
As he arrived in the country, there still was no update on the trail restrictions as the date approached. Erin finally came into communication and told him its chaos down here. Nobody knows. Nobody can plan. It’s now the busy season. Guides are burned out. Tourists and businesses are frantic as there are not enough guides to go around. Plans are changing. Plans are cancelled. Reservations are not refunded. Yet business is lost. He had hired her to guide a day of photography before he started his trek, and she told him to still come, and she’d help him figure it out.
“They have to open it,” she said.
In Puerto Natales he asked around at gear stores and guiding companies. No one knew what the government would do. He and Erin stopped by CONAF’s office and at 2p.m., the door was closed, locked, and nobody answered when they knocked.
"He who does not know the Chilean forests, does not know the planet," Pablo Neruda.
So this morning, the first day of the new year, as they pull into the parking lot at 5:45 a.m., it is still unknown whether the closure is in effect, and that’s where the need to carry cash to bribe his way comes in. Erin walks him up to the top of the first hill because there’s a maze of trails and she wants to ensure he finds the right way on a big day. They reach a grassy bench, and the towers – Las Torres – rise above the hillside behind them, reflecting the first amber light of the morning. She tells him he needs a picture, so she takes his phone and captures him turned sideways, gazing at the pointed granite walls that he’ll see more closely seven days down the trail after circumnavigating the entire range.
She hands back his phone and says, “You are going to have the most fulfilling journey, so go now!” She embraces him and kisses his cheek European style. She steps back a few feet and stands casually. There is a gleam in her dark eyes and a Cheshire cat grin on her face as if she foresees the journey he is going to have, as if she envisions the life changing experience that is to come.
And he’s off, and he is, as far as he knows, completely alone. He hopes the trail closure will lift today, and he can stay at Refugio Dickson as planned. He thinks there will be internet so he can update his sister back in the states. He imagines he will meet people on the trail, along the same path and on a similar journey, but for now, none of this is known, and so for the moment, he is completely alone on the southern tip of this longitudinal Western hemisphere and for the next twenty miles, his thoughts, time, and the landscape are his existence.
"Do you hear the lingering water, the water, over Patagonia? And I reply, 'Yes, I hear it,'" Pablo Neruda
