The park itself has a variety of areas of outstanding natural beauty and levels of tourist infiltration, from more upscale country-hotel lodgings to free camping. The general trek is called 'W' which takes you up to see Glacier Grey then around one small mountain range and up Valle del Frances, back down to the immense lake and up again to see the famous torres.
Though the 'W' trek is highly walked, around the back of the mountain range you can go at it alone with the wind, waterfalls and puma tracks as company. Taking all my provisions with me, it took a few days before the noise in my head died down. No company, no phone, no music just my 12k pack stuffed with a good tent and sleeping bag and my walking shoes.
There is a poetry in walking and traversing space consciously. Becoming aware of the gradations of landscape, of the changes in temperature to altitude, of your body's own weight and posture. There's that moment that you stand still only moving your legs while the earth magically revolves under you. I think about Richard Long's work, where we get to glimpse a single moment of a journey. But when that journey goes on a week it becomes a pilgrimage, like the Camino de Santiado de Compostella.
And silence... This is key. It was days before I had to speak to anyone and then it was 'hola' in passing. There is a lucidity in quietness, in taking the time to listen and hear. Each bird call transforms from a musical note to a language, the trickle of the upcoming river beckons a rest and a drink, the thunder of crashing snow and glaciar ice a power that fills with awe and dread.
I can't remember feeling so alive and full of hope before. You feel the wind come off the millennial ice caps, formed from the cracking and popping of millions of little air bubbles trapped since before the dinosaurs and breathed into your lungs, whirling in your brain. The cold, crisp water that tastes so pure you just become certain its somehow linking you with the planet from before man ever even walked this land.
And so much water... clean, fresh, aqua-blue, sweet water flowing non-stop.... The dreams of 2012 armageddon are very far away in these remote places...
Moving your body through a landscape allows a sense of focus and freedom, of accomplishment and dedication and of humbling pain and uncertainty. A time-out from the urban experiences I study and love. But it also gives me the tools to understand better how we may walk in the concrete forests of London, New York or Santiago by being connected to the more subtle currents that revolve around us.
I may have arrived but I've left part of me in those mountains while part of them remain in me....
Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
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