Valle Cochamo and the Soggy Fog Goddess (Wilderness part II)

LA LLEGADA AL SUR
Agapito and Juan were both intelligent, philosophically inclined and advanced beings and Juan knew better than to be cynical of the lack of preserved wilderness in a foreign land. The exoticism that he carried as well as the romanticism that Agapito carried was naïve and they could only blame themselves for being let down but they both still wanted that experience of the Wilderness – Juan a bit more so. So they continued south – zigging and zagging now and again into the forest wall and swamps of the Amazon, across the vast altiplano of Bolivia to which Agapito would later return, past the nitrate and guano fields of northern Chile, over and around the dotted volcanoes that speckled this landscape, through the vineyard of central Chile and Argentina to the lakes, fjords, glaciers and jungles of Patagonia, the end of the world.

In Patagonia they found the four elements to be as present as their four limbs, as the four stars of the Southern Cross – they were impossible to ignore. The fire of the volcanoes The water of the ocean, rain, rivers and glaciers The earth of the jagged peaks and ancient trees that cut into the sky The air that never stops moving.

They found giant Alerce trees that maybe existed at the same time that Egyptians were beginning to write. The stories in the trees’ rings record over 4,000 years of history. Juan likened them to the redwoods of California. And like the redwoods, they found logging cutting into this history with mighty saws, hauling them out of the once-vast Valdivian rainforests. Juan became disheartened and began to wonder if their search for the Wilderness had been made in vain. If not here then where? Continue to the South Pole? They both agreed that true Wilderness is not wilderness out of lack of options. Not wilderness in the way that icy mountaintops or polar icecaps are wilderness, not void of life. These wild places are wild out of necessity, out of impossibility. The Wilderness they sought was full of life but devoid of the rapid alterations of humans – the kind of place that gives us a glimpse of what lies beneath our dim-blanket of human awareness, hairless human skin and creative impulse, humans hands before we invented the hammer.


EL VALLE
Together they found the Valle Cochamo tucked in the mountains lining one-such rainforest in the northern fjords of Chilean Patagonia. In this region around 6 meters of rain falls each year. A Fog Goddess (yes, she’s obviously a she-goddess) perpetually plops on her soggy haunches for 350 days of the year, and the valley was shrouded in mist as they approached 20 kilometers from the coast. And even for the first week they camped at La Junta, the confluence of the valley’s two largest rivers, they saw no more than the trees around them, clouds and rain keeping any other sights mystifyingly veiled. And oh, this moved them into something more primordial, with visual stimulation around them being fuzzy and mystifyingly blurred, the landscape within them became increasingly intriguing – it was as if they moved in a time where substance existed but form had not yet been found, perhaps like the primordial soup as the first molecules were beginning to come together. With all the moisture it definitely felt like a soup, organic of course.

In their closed world they moved back to a sort of nascent beginning where all possibilities were still being considered, no rules put in place about what this world could look like. True, they were oblivios, hidden in a cloud and unable to see the massive 3,000-foot granite cliffs that bordered the valley on all sides, or the rancher’s house right across the river. It was a dream, really, stumbling with a frame of reference that extended no further than the billions of water molecules right in front of their eyes and for all they knew, this was the entire universe. Their search for Wilderness became a search of inches rather than one of thousands of miles. What this allowed was for the landscape to take on a formless existence, one where they could make up their own story, like children still putting the pieces together for this strange life. The bamboo they cut through and pulled in attempts to explore steep valleys and peaks became snakes, each one with wisdom about how to grow old with a youthful snap. They heard the water molecules so thick in the air bumping into one another and making music like the symphony of the spheres, and when they listened even closer it seemed that they could hear the symphony of the fundamental superstrings. As they crossed a river once, they truly felt that they were in the pulsing veins of Pachamama with the fog around them obviously adding to the feeling of being INSIDE her.


Even Juan was in rapture and at one point found Agapito in the fog after losing him for four days and said, “I art thou and I am inside thou! Hallelujah, hermano, THIS is what we were looking for!”

And it was during these intense meditations in the fog that they realized Wilderness to be ubiquitous, and the apparent loss of it in the physical world simply being manifest of the loss of it in the spiritual world. Humans would lash out into the wilderness of the natural world for fear of embracing the wilderness within themselves: the one that Jesus explored for 40 days or that aborigines explore in a rite of passage Walkabout – the vast irremovable Wilderness with strings that tie this physical place to the raw expanse of universal spirit. And it is true that these natural places open these doors, moving the outside in and the inside out.

EL RETORNO
Around day 18 of exploring the soggy underside of the Fog Goddess, she decided to stand up and wring out her damp underpants in a sunny spot for a while to allow Juan and Agapito a larger view of the wilderness they had been stumbling through. They rubbed their eyes – eternally thankful for the Fog Goddess and all the introspection she had allowed with her suffocating squat – and allowed them to scan this massive landscape unveiling. They could finally see the warped crown of the 4,000-year old Alerce trees and, sitting in the grassy meadow of La Junta, their view turned skyward and toward the horizon. A dozen granite domes emerged from under the Fog Goddess as she stood up and Juan spoke of his first time walking into Yosemite Valley. They could see distant glaciers at the head of the valley and both felt they were in one of the most beautiful places in the world. They also both agreed that this was not the Wilderness they thought they were looking for 5 months prior. Juan pointed to the wooden ranch house with Alerce shingles and said, “Nope, not it, see, the house there? Definitely not what we were looking for.”

They both laughed as they embraced both the macro and micro views of the world around them, giving thanks to each and feeling a bit naïve in expecting that their search for Wilderness need take them thousands of miles from home.

Agapito kneeled down and peered beneath a bush, giggling “Oye Don Juan el Viejo, have a look under here, I think I found it. I don’t see a single trace of the human fingerprint in here.” His nose was in the dirt and was talking about a square inch of earth.

As Agapito stood up, Juan put his hand against his chest and said, “You know ‘Pito, I feel the strong presence of Wilderness right here. And I’m ok with that cabin over there, just as I’m ok with leaving this place and the pursuit of wilderness. I’ve been around, mi hijo, and I learned something new when I’d thought I was done learning. And I’m ready to head back out of here. While we go, though, let’s do a k’intu with some of those leaves you have left from Peru. I’ve never been much into blessing and prayer but that soggy lady changed something in me. How do you do a k’intu?”

“Here, I’ll do it.”

“No, show me and I’ll do it. It’s time I learn something about blessing and prayer rather than just thought and action.” And Agapito fetched his bag of coca leaves, explaining how to pick the finest leaves for the offering and stack three of them in a fan. He explained the symbolic convergence of the four directions at Tawantinsuyu, with east as rebirth and insight, the west as death and wisdom, the north as clarity and cleansing and the south as the source of wisdom from plants as well as reproduction and regeneration. He showed him how to also recognize the convergence of these directions in here and now, in the place they stood as time and place were intricately woven together. And then finally the sacred breath that is blown on the offering and following these steps, Juan performed his first k’intu.

They allowed the breath to carry. They actually felt Juan’s breath turn to a breeze. As the breeze turned to wind it began to howl and a song took form in the trees and the high passes of the surrounding peaks. The three coca leaves were lifted from his hands and began to dance. One leaf spun to the ground and was covered by the earth. Another hovered around eye level and rose to the crown of a nearby Alerce before moving back to eye-level and quivering there. The final leaf fluttered up then swirled back down before a gust put it into flight far above and out of sight.

With three tiers of the universe auspiciously marked with the wind and leaves by this k’intu they decided it was time to move out of the valley. As they walked down the trail a wall of bamboo sprouted in their wake and the Fog Goddess squatted back down and began her cold-dank perspiration. Cochamo vanished behind them and they carried Wilderness with them.


The Cochamo Valley is one of the most spectacular and wild pieces of Patagonian wilderness that remains. The preserved Alerces, Valdivian Rainforest, wildlife and watersheds are among the last of their kind in Patagonia, a place where similar landscapes were abundant in the recent past. Add to this the ribboned waterfalls and gigantic granite mountains and you have one of the most beautiful valleys in the world, deserving of the comparisons drawn between it and Yosemite. The place is receiving increased visits from backpackers but plans are underway that could open a road through the valley to Argentina. This would be a disaster for the preservation of this one-of-a-kind gem of natural splendor and would open it up for logging, mining and development. Who will benefit? This story is obviously not unique, just worth sharing. And conversations about this being a developed vs. developing or first vs. third world issue must be kept for another page.

Rio La Junta Cascadas (natural waterslides)

5.11a crux of 22pitch, 3,000 foot Bienvenidos a mi Insomnia

The Soggy Fog Goddess

La Gorila framed on the 16km approach

Slacking at Refugio La Junta

Looking for Wilderness in the Americas (Wilderness Part I)

LA SALIDA

Agapito met Juan Espejo in Mexico in 2004. Espejo was walking from Yosemite to Patagonia looking for the “real wilderness” at the end of the world. It was as he was debating with the Park Service over the quality of American wilderness, specifically over the presence of dams and other “human atrocities against the ‘wild’ in ‘wild-erness’.” Agapito had heard of the great conservationist from a condor that had followed Sr. Espejo through the Sierras on one of his tireless journeys into the wilderness. The journey of Agapito de la Paz and Juan Espejo through the south of the Americas has been one of the greatest conservation stories ever forgotten.

By the time Juan left California Yosemite was full with traffic, road development and was about to see the construction of a new dam just to store water for Curry Village. He left The Valley to the landscape-architects, motor-homes, hungry bears, dirtbags, still-life photographers and smog clouds knowing which battles to leave and which he had a chance of wining. Setting out disgusted by the conservation movement in this country – one of urban intellectuals who may touch a piece of paper but never the bark of the tree from which it came – he sought a place where conservation was not an academic concept but a way of life.

He thought he would find this view of the world in the uncontacted tribes of the Amazon or the Maya of Central America, or at least find pristine lands in Patagonia, the end of the world; he was mistaken in each of these, for humans throughout were – above all – attempting to survive for as long as possible in the battle with mother earth and her struggle for her bountiful resources. At each step he found forests burning and fertile land eroding toward the sea. But he did find Agapito and in the far south what he also found Cochamo, a valley in Southern Chile that he came to love and despise just as much as Yosemite – a place where even he felt that he shouldn’t stay – where you will see that he put the blessing of preservation and lifted a veil that would hide the valley indefinitely from human interests.

EL ENCUENTRO
Juan was on horseback when Agapito met him in the Lacondon Rainforest of Chiapas. Through conversations and alignment of dreams, the two found their paths quite similar and Agapito was moved to be a part of this great pan-American adventure. After a few days exploring still “undiscovered” ruins along the Rio Usumacinta, Agapito bought a caballo and named her Ayni, attempting to sew together his rift with the earth through the Incan word for “reciprocity”, manifest in this case through his animal husbandry. He moved in stride with Espejo in his exploration south.

With their horses they intended to move overland, through the jungles of Central America to the Andes, which they would traverse from Colombia to Patagonia, bouncing from the eastern to western slope, into the Amazon and over to the ocean, to the pampas and to the Pacific fjords but always following the spine of the world’s most extensive mountain range.

As the two pilgrims traveled south along the Andes they found very little wilderness. At least not the Wilderness that Juan knew existed in places like the far north of Alaska or Canada. Sure, they knew that vast tracts of Amazon existed untouched, but what they found both in the forest and the mountains was anything but wild. And the forests they explored were not the open wilderness that elevated their being and sent their views to the horizon, knowing they could walk endlessly unimpeded. The forests were closed, limited in their ability to be explored – although obviously infinite in the possibilities for exploration. In the mountains they found agricultural terraces and towns that had existed for a thousand years or more, open pit mining being siphoned directly to the British Empire and then the North American Empire ever since the Spanish Empire’s decline and forest that had been slashed and burned by the local villagers since centuries before the conquistadors. They found a wilderness greatly altered and inhabited by humans.

EL DILEMA
Throughout the journey Juan and Agapito engaged incessantly in a philosophical dialogue about what they were looking for and where, if anywhere, they were finding it. They often held different views and different values. For example, they would stand on a ridge in the Central Andes where a glacier would be calving into a lake at 15,000 feet and Juan would comment, “Nope, this isn’t wilderness, see there, a stone wall. And the llamas right up there, see? No, definitely not the Wilderness we’re looking for.”

“Yeah, but where is this divided, I mean do you want it to be a chasm that separates “us from them”, “I from thou”? You’re such a cynical naturalist. I, at this moment am ecstatic with connection, the rapture of I fusing with thou, as Buber had it. In rapture both with these cloud forests and that rock wall, the Amazon down there and those llamas up there. Who cares if the llamas are only there because humans massaged their genes over thousands of years? Who cares that nature threw these stones one place and humans came collected them in another?” Agapito argued.


Agapito was ecstatic with what the places they were exploring, and it was somewhere in the Q’ero heartland near the Ausungate massif in Southern Peru that their dialog about the nature of wilderness really came to a head. Blissfully and, perhaps idealistically, Agapito commented, “Here they don’t even need to try for ayni, they are already in union – it’s inherent. I mean this is what I was talking about with the stones and the llamas, Juan. We are such a part of it . . .”

“And we’re so afraid of it so we fight against it. We’re afraid to sleep on the ground on hard rocks, or to actually let our feet touch the earth; we aren’t one with it and never will be. We’re silly beasts that don’t even have hair, we let plants and animals grow our hair for us. We manipulate them for our survival because of how hopelessly we’re designed. We’ve even been made to walk upright to further remove our sense from the earth.”

“But that’s how it is and there’s a reason for it. Now we can talk about it at least; we can think about it. We are upright to free up our brains to use our opposable thumbs and make music and write in celebration of what we’re sensing in this world. The more we try to box in “Nature”, with a capital ‘N’ the less harmonized our awareness is and the more schizophrenic and unhappy we become,” Agapito was rolling now.

“And the more we try to be a part of it the more we ruin it. Like an infant grizzly bear playing with a mouse, wanting to be friends but clumsily bludgeoning it for it’s own enjoyment. And our presence is just that, too much for a fragile earth to handle,” Juan said pessimistically.

And Agapito thought for a minute, agreeing in so many ways with Juan but remaining eternally optimistic. “Don’t you think our Pachamama deserves more respect that that? I mean, she’s strong, she can handle us and she will most definitely shake us off when she’s had enough. I agree that we’re at that point, actually that we’ve passed a point and she’s about to shake us. But pure preservation won’t help. It won’t help to try to put these things in glass cages. It’s like the whole Leave no Trace farce. Leaving a trace is inevitable and if we pack white gas and synthetic tents and such out here we’re leaving a far greater trace in the mining and industrial waste going into these products around the world. The world is far too inter-connected, and I’d rather gather some sticks, make a lean-to, make a fire or make one of those rock walls; I’d rather leave a small trace locally and be eternally grateful for providence in the world’s design than to displace my trace on other parts of the world. That’s the idea of ayni, compadre. It’s give and take and . . .”

“You think I’m that naïve?” Juan interrupted impatiently. He fingered the tip of his beard no less than one foot from his chin, “I spent two decades living in lean-to’s, trapping pocket gophers in the alpine of the Sierras. I know this earth is strong, I know she provides and I know about give and take.”

“Oh Juan, much respect, I know you could whoop me in an ayni battle. I’m just a curious young kid, eager to share these thoughts. I didn’t mean for it to get personal. Here brother, let’s do a k’intu with some coca to give some positivity back to this space we just projected some conflicting words into,” Agapito reconciled.

Juan was grizzly, wary and jaded, jabbing back at Agapito, perhaps to get a rouse, “You do it, I’m going to knock down these rock walls and scatter the stones. They haven’t been used in at least five-hundred years . . .”

“And now they’re such a part of this landscape. Don’t knock those down. Shit, I’ll have to do another k’intu just for your disrespect. I bet they have been used too, same as they have for the past thousand years, I’ll bet they’re still used each day,” Agapito argued as he gathered coca leaves for his two k’intus. He closed his eyes and recognized the four directions and then the space in the middle where they found themselves, blew the sacred breath across the layer of three coca leaves and opened his eyes to Juan hurling stones down the hill. Agapito sat down and picked up his quena. Blowing on his traditional Andean flute he thought about the way that at the very least breath was something shared throughout the natural world. And humans gained a unique ability to even alter breath into something such as music. But birds do the same, just without tools; and the wind does the same through high passes or a forest canopy, making its own music in its own time and . . .

“Hey, plug that thing, ‘Pito,” Juan shouted from down below, “Let the Andean wind make its own music, it’s a much better composer than you and it’s been doing it for far longer.” And so another dialog about humans and nature came to a halt.