Boy do I feel like a jerk. I write an essay about hot dogs and disappear for almost a month. I intended to update this site on a weekly basis, but school and the particulars of establishing my new life in San Diego have kept me. I'm back, faced with the daunting challenge of writing about the most staggering experience of my trip to Argentina: Patagonia. My memories are now buried under almost two months of schooling, but I've salvaged a few salient experiences, each preserved by their association with a song. You'll need iTunes to listen along. I'm breaking up the Patagonia experience into a few parts. This is part 1.
Patagonia. Part 1: Glacial
Patagonia is the name given to the sparsely populated area between the Colorado River and Tierra del Fuego. The name Patagonia likely comes from Patagón, the name of a giant in some popular Spanish colonial era novels. The Spaniards called the tehuelche native Americans Patagones due to their large builds. Long story short: Patagonia means "Bigfootland."
Our trip to Bigfootland began in Buenos Aires's Aeroparque, a tidy and elegant domestic airport situated along the Rio de la Plata. We flew out over the wide river and hooked down into the country, high above endless Argentine plains. The plane eventually edged up to the Andes and we cruised south along the rocky peaks until we landed on a little airstrip outside of Bariloche.
Here's where the music comes in. We took off from Bariloche and caught a glimpse of its little ski resort town on the edge of a lake shining in the sun. We hugged the mountains, following the range closely as it guided us upward. The image of snowy peaks reminded me of this video for the song "Run Into Flowers" by M83, and then I recalled this song called "Slowly" by the same band (right-click and "save target as" if you're on windows or option-click if you're on a Mac). I fired up the iPod and flew out through the plane window into heaven.
Soon after returning home from Argentina, I took a multiple choice test to get my California Driver's License. When asked to identify the truth about large trucks, I chose the answer that says "trucks often appear to travel slower because of their large size." This is a trick that space and majesty play on our human eyes. I learned about it looking out the window of the plane. It's a trick that M83 somehow play on my ears when I listen to "Slowly." The pace of grandeur is a slow pace, and the Andes below our plane seemed to creep by as I listened and gazed out the window. The rocky peaks slid across my view. I saw lone trees cast their shadows in the snow. The air thinned before my eyes as I surrendered the rest of my senses to Slowly's patient bass line.
I went to Patagonia to see some glaciers, so it's appropriate that my flight prepare me for the beauty of the glacial. I had been given the chance to see the earth appear still, to glide over hundreds of miles of pristine mountains, to feel as though the epic landscape were posing for me as I flew by. I feel like I understood, however briefly, how the stars and universe swirl around us.
—November 7 2004