Patagonia

Just returned from a awesome trip to Patagonia with my brother Steve. I would write about it, but I think my brother sumed it up better than I ever could, so here's what Steve had to say.

"Somewhere in the fires of the del Fuegos up in the bogs of Ushuaia there was a milky blue lake from the glaciers far above in the snow capped mountains. I tossed my clothes to the pebbles and waded out and then dove in and opened my eyes and swam below the cold blue ripples as my body slowly began to freeze. We ran down the mountain, dodging beaver dams and mud and got lost somewhere in between, but shot a compass bearing and found our way. We drank golden whiskey from a flask and poured it over glacial blue ice and sipped and dreamed that we would never leave this land. Jesse awoke me in the night and we unzipped our tent and set out with Pat to the top of a mountain, where we shivered and wandered by a lake that rests below mighty Fitz Roy. The sun finally came and shot heavenly rays that burned the clouds and melted our hearts forever. We stood in silence, watching storms form and surge below in mountain passes, that later we hiked through on the edge of a rushing blue river, with our bodies bent to counteract the winds and only did we find solace in a warm refugio hours later and ate the meat of the land still harvested by cowboys. We all found ourselves at one point on a glacier strapped with crampons and guided by the blood of what we could only have known to be a Mohican. We saw ice formed and shaped by thousands of years of pressure and weather and cold and heat and drank the icy clear water from pools formed drip by drip trickle by trickle. At one point we ferried a boat to Penguino Island and saw the cute little penguins huddle together with thoughts of their journey they were about to embark on, for the season was ending and the lands of their ancestors were calling them. I awoke one night and did not know where I was and looked outside only to find all the constellations upside down and scattered from any pattern I had ever known. Pat and Carolyn and Jesse and I all raised our glasses more than I can remember and sipped on Argentinian tradition crafted through bodegas from over the centuries. We all had a grand time and found ourselves swearing that mere days had turned into months and the impossible weeks were years, but it could only be true in the Fuegos de la Sur... the end of the world. Jesse and I said goodbye to Pat and Carolyn, as they continued their journey and we caught a plane to Buenos Aires, where Flora met us and showed us her beloved city street by street and even through shadows of graves and lost alleys full of antiquities. In the huge Cathedral, I knelt down beside my friend in one of the vast seas of lonely wooden pews and we prayed together. We all walked out as the Padre was closing the massive doors. Jesse and I took an airplane back to the United States. I mowed the lawn and cooked some steaks and walked Jack and Humphrey to the cabin in the grove of walnut trees down by the pond. Spring is here, but a lifetime ago, in the fires of the south, at the end of the world, winter is surely coming."