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.
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.
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