Just me, and those winds.

Well, I've been back in Canada for 24 hours now, and I'm missing Argentina already. The day before yesterday I boarded a plane in Buenos Aires, on a perfect sunny day, with both contentment and sadness in my heart. All in all, it was a perfect trip, even though it seems to be otherwise at times. It gave me just what I was looking for: personal challenge, true independence, the knowledge that I am a strong and capable human being, the opportunity to meet the worlds finest, most lovely and caring people. I have felt so taken care of, so refreshed, and so comfortable. No part of me wanted to leave.

While this blog has not functioned as it was intended (to keep family and friends up to date on my CURRENT location), it has been a great source of inspiration for me along the way. It has made me consider my experiences in great depth, to look for my reactions, consider my thoughts, ponder moments of highs and lows. It has prevented me from simply going through the motions of travel life, rather forced me to always seek significance and meaning, to find the words to describe my most complex feelings. For the sake of always being curious, I hope to sustain this practice (though, probably not in blog form) in my seemingly less adventurous, "normal" life from now on. It really does make life much more interesting.

And so now, though very late, I leave one more post to sum up the other aspects of my life in rural Patagonia. For tales from my last month and a half of backpacking around Argentina, you'll just have to ask (or look on my Facebook for pictures...). Just know it was just exactly what I needed.

While life with Ginny posed a great challenge, my time at the chacra (Ginny's ranch) was so much more than that experience alone. Most importantly,  it was an introduction to a kind of life lived by so much of the world: a life of occupying ones days with the things that need to get done, without a great sense of materialism or individualism. It was a simple life, a life of ritual, of taking time to take time. 

When you want something from someone in rural Argentina, you show up at their house and clap and whistle outside their house until they come out. You don't make plans days in advance or worry about imposing on their day, interrupting a meal. Jorge and I would go to buy eggs this way at the house a few trees down. The whole family of 10 or so would come out, or we would be welcomed inside their 2 or 3 room cement home. We would then occupy at least 5 minutes kissing the cheek of each and every person. We would chat for a few minutes (or rather they would chat with Jorge and occassionally share a joke or snicker that clearly had to do with me), put a dozen or so eggs in a plastic bag, and begin the kissing again to say our farewells. It was an adjustment for me, to make such a small task a big social affair. I realized how unnatural it felt to take time to simpy be with people without it feeling like a diversion from the task at hand. Even in a life in which I had nothing but time, I was hardwired to rush, to always seek efficiency.  

I met our resident gaucho, Jorge, a few days into my trip. He phoned Ginny (modern day gauchos add cell phones to their traditionally tiny list of material possessions) from the top of a nearby hill, announcing his arrival. I was instructed to wheel Ginny out to the driveway so we could watch his decent. They hooted and hollered  back and forth for several minutes, he came into view, and made some grand entrance (galloped in, his horse spinning in tight circles intermittently). This introduction was very much representative of his role here. He's the man of the house, keen to show off, the master of grand entrances. Each morning I would wake to his daily "YEEEEHAAAAAAW!!" as he entered the house at 7am to prepare his mate. I slept in the loft above the kitchen, without walls between me and his ungodly cries. Once he came across me upset after an ordeal with Ginny. I told him I hadn't been sleeping well. He told me he would be quiet in the mornings. It lasted one day. 

Jorge became my main buddy for practicing Spanish. For the most part he was patient, and I couldn't blame him when he wasn't. Ocassionally he would take me on a horseback ride. I would finish the ride feeling totally refreshed and ready to take on the world. He would finish yawning, expressing his boredom with a trail he would do weekly to get from point A to point B. It's evident the novelty begins to fade when you use your horse as your main mode of transportation, but I was thankful that he allowed me that experience regardless. He has a wonderful, genuine kindness to him, and sometimes I wonder if Ginny realizes what a gift he is in her life.

Along with Jorge, Ginny has several other helpers. Three lovely women, Esther, Maria, and Rosa, alternate four hour shifts most days to do all the cooking, cleaning, and a fair share of Ginny's personal care.  There were also always multiple men working on construction, caring for the horses, and watering the ground. (Yes, you read correctly...watering the dusty ground - not garden -always took priority, even in a drought). There were always people coming and going. Visitors. Friends of Jorge. The empanada delivery lady. Guests on their way to or from Ranquilco (Ginnys ex's estancia/tourist operation). The local doctor. It was the busiest middle-of-nowhere I have ever been. It could be exhausting. Often there were too many hands and Ginny was constantly being redirected just as we achieved any start on productivity.  I could see how it drained her too, the unpredictability and unrest of it all. And yet she always seemed to ten too many hands around.

Life at the chacra was sedentary, save for a few outdoor tasks and horseback rides. Perhaps a reflection of my feeling stuck in my situation with Ginny, I felt imobile there. I could think all day about how good it would feel to move, without ever actually doing so. It was only when I felt extreme emotion, usually frustration or anger, that I was driven to sprint along our dirt road or to climb the nearby hills. The hills always taunted me, but I learned the hard way that they were not as welcoming as they appeared. Thick, spikey desert plants and my tender, pasty legs do not get along - the evidence of this has yet to fade completely. 

And if it wasn't a metaphor for my feeling trapped, perhaps my lack of movement was a product of my self consciousness. Even though I felt safe and welcome, I couldn't blend in. Here's what I reflected on this matter a few weeks into my trip:

"I notice how I hold myself here - I am becoming more hunch backed, my shoulders towards my ears and hanging forward. I am turning inward to protect myself from the vulnerability I feel here, a vulnerability which manifests physically all over my body as my white, white skin. I think I am attempting to shrink, occupy less space to pass by unnoticed. If I become small enough, will they think I'm a local?"

This physical state of curling inward, however, existed simultaneously to an opposing sentiment of expansion:

"It's a funny contrast to how I feel....more open. Like I can breathe more deeply. Like I have a vast landscape ahead of me which I am somehow permitted to occupy,  and as such be a tiny part of. I feel like Argentina is giving me the space to grow,  and that I am indeed growing. Or maybe not so much growing as simply learning to be present. I feel very present here. I think a lot. I have time to paint, and write, and be with the horses."

While life at la chacra felt monotonous at times, it also granted me the priveledge of some truly unique experiences. For instance, I witnessed more horse sex than I care to share. Also awkward, I attended an authentic Argentinian asado (barbecue) with Jorges family. Put a whole goat in a spit on the ground and voila! you have an asado. While Jorge's family all ate with their hands, he was sure to explain to them that I, as a Canadian, eat only with a fork, knife, and napkin. You should try eating a chunk of tough goat rib with a fork and knife someday - there's nothing like it to punctuate just what an awkward, white foreigner you are!

I spent February 14th making plum jam and an apple cobler from the fruit dripping off the trees at the farm. It is now my firm belief that all Februarys should be spent this way.

I taught myself to bake a damn good apple loaf in a gas oven with no temperature gauge, without brown sugar or vanilla or the flour or eggs that I am used to. Eggs are a little funky here.

I learned that having giant flocks of parrots around is not always a good thing. You never see them, they poop everywhere, and they deafeningly loud at night.

I had the experience of being the "help" amoung Argentina's wealthy estancia owners at a state fair. Perhaps it was all in my head, but I had several encounters in which people I had met with Ginny made no effort to acknowledge me, or paid little attention to my attemps to greet them thereafter. Even as a volunteer, I seemed to take on a lower social status.

And then there's Mate. To me, mate is the symbol of Argentinian life. Its the heart of most social affairs, the start and middle of each day, the fuel. People bring it with them EVERYWHERE...pack around a thermos of hot water, a gourde (the cup from which mate is drinken),  a bombilla (the filtering straw you drink it with), and bag of mate - even if it's terribly inconvenient. Its a ritual that is not confined to a particular wealth or profession. Gauchos drink it. Families of all walks of life pack it on the bus. Wealthy university students bring it to class. Most gas stations have a hot water station for mate much like you would find an ice box at home. I feel that the tradition of mate single-handedly slows Argentinian life to a healthy pace. It's the key to learning how to stop, to simply sit and talk with other people. There are a number of customs surrounding how you drink it, or rather (more accurately), a number of ways to do it wrong - all of which I personally discovered.

There is something about Patagonia that makes you so badly want to belong. The longer you stay, however, the more you realize it is a world that you cannot simply enter. You can only be a guest. And the most heart breaking moment is that in which you realize that, when you leave, it goes on without you. As Bruce Chatwin so eloquently expresses "Patagonia! She is a hard mistress. She casts her spell. An enchantress! She folds you in her arms and never lets you go." I'm sure my heart is only one of countless which are now scattered those hills.

To close, I feel it fit to answer the inevitable question, "what was your favorite part of the trip?". Well, I had this very conversation with 3 fellow backpackers the other week, just after I had finished my position with Ginny. After some thought, I told them it was not any grand event or stunning place, but rather a few select moments that I cherish most. You know those moments when you feel you have found your place, just for that moment, and swear you can almost hear your heart sing? Those have been my favorite moments. Galloping all the way home from the town center on Jorges mare. Sitting at Ginny's bedside over dinner, finding myself able to laugh and participate in a Spanish conversation without much conscious effort. Rounding the top of a nearby mountain alone only to be blinded by the setting sun. Or simply standing on a hillside, just me, warm sun on my skin and the howling winds in my ears. Moments of total ease, of acceptance. Of feeling capable, independent, loved. Free.

Me in one of my favorite spots, on a beautiful little mare borrowed from one of the gauchos.

Our kitchen at Ginny's place.

My loft at Ginny's place.

A little farewell plum jam that I made the day before I left. (My name was Lorena most of the time because Cedar is too hard to pronounce)

Ginny, with her daughter Sky and helper Esther, exercising in the pool. 

Fruit I picked at the chacra on February 14th.

"Just me, warm sun on my skin and the howling winds in my ears"