Adrift in Chepu

I broke down and sobbed in the middle of my work day at the Ecolodge today following a solid week of having to hold back tears. Started crying so hard I had to excuse myself to the bathroom, then sat there for half an hour while I cried and cried and cried. I am in Chile, on an island in Patagonia, in a stunningly beautiful and peaceful place with really nice people. Nothing has changed since I said that this has been the happiest year of my life, there has been no bad news, have been no heartbreaks or disappointments.

If anything, the opposite. I've met wonderful and inspiring people who quickly became like a second set of parents. I've worked on fun projects and am learning a lot. I've had amazing experiences here, like the morning I watched the sun break through clouds as it rose and turn the river pink around my kayak. Or the morning I went for a swim and was joined by an endangered river otter, who came up to within a meter of me and circled me, ducking in and out of the water while “grrrrrr”ing at me for a solid 10 minutes before swimming off. It’s been magical.

Misty dawn over Río Punta and the Sunken Forest in Chepu

But being here in this beautiful place, working at this innovative sustainability project that my wonderful hosts—Amory and Fernando—built with love and passion with their own hands, working with this couple who has the sort of relationship that restores my faith in love and marriage, makes my heart ache.

My dream

Almost exactly two years ago I spotted the image below on Facebook and was charmed. The hobbit house was built by a man named Simon Dale in Wales to house himself, his wife, and his sons on the cheap. It is beautiful. I wanted to live in it. So did my boyfriend.

Simon Dale's Eco Hobbit House

My boyfriend was German and living in Braunschweig, Germany as he finished his PhD in Immunology. I had met him while in Braunschweig working with the esteemed director of the German Culture Collection on a project involving photosynthesis at the lower limits of light that was frustrating, difficult, and probably hopeless, but that I loved. I met my boyfriend at a Christmas party where he was bartending, and by three hours into our first date I was certain I had found my soulmate. He was handsome, a creative thinker, passionate about biology, adventurous, sexy, kind, funny, and it seemed like we shared all of the same dreams.  On our third date he informed me that he wanted to marry me someday. It took me a few dates longer to overcome my realistic doubts, but I soon agreed. We were meant for each other.

So when I returned to the U.S. to finish my PhD work, we started a cross-ocean, cross-continent long-long distance relationship that involved almost daily long Skype chats. When we saw the hobbit house, we talked about it. What it was we liked about it, what that said about us, how we both wanted to build our own house today, what it would look like, how our future children would help, how it would be difficult to build a house while both of us worked full-time, how we’d need to get it finished before we had kids so maybe we should build on weekends, where would we get the money and how long would it take?…etc.

Feral kittens hanging out on the Ecolodge stairs

That night an idea struck me—what if we did the same thing that Simon Dale had done? His house had been inexpensive, since he supplied the labor, borrowed equipment, and took most of the materials he used from the land. Both my boyfriend and I loved building things, and he was particularly skilled at it, a creative and artistic hobby carpenter who had built huge sunken beds, massive wrap-around full-wall sofas, and who later carved me an engagement ring. He was passionate about science, but not about research, and it seemed clear to me that he would be happiest doing something else. Maybe building? What if I got the full-time job while he built our house?

The next day when we talked, I mentioned the idea and after a very brief pause he replied that that that was perfect. He was reluctant to leave me to do the breadwinning, but I reasoned with him that the money he’d save us by doing the building would more than make up for any income either of us was likely to earn. He got excited, and over the coming months he drew up design plans while I dreamed up the practical aspects.

“Build our house” turned into “Build an eco lodge / education center” where both of us could earn a basic living—enough to provide for our basic needs and support the tribe of children we planned to have. We would start by buying a large tract of land somewhere beautiful with generous building codes. Then would build ourselves a hobbit house while I brought in money to support the building and helped out on weekends building and preparing a small garden/farm for growing our own food. Then we would build up other “dwellings” using other sustainable building techniques and install different types of energy systems to make a small demonstration village for sustainable living. The houses would be adorable, charming, and romantic, and we would appeal to tourists and vacationers wanting to live in a treehouse or hobbit hole all while their inner hippies felt good about the eco-experience they were having. We would grow it into a business that could support both of us to work there full-time on new projects. Ultimately I wanted to build a dorm, teaching center, and small lab for running educational camps and for tinkering with methods of energy production, waste treatment, and water recycling.

Wind turbine that supplies energy in winter at Chepu Adventures

While my boyfriend drew sketches of buildings and dreamed, I drew up a business plan, calculated how many solar panels we’d need and approximately how much that would cost to support us in the beginning, priced out composting toilets, estimated loan amounts and rates we’d need to get started, contacted property managers in the Pacific Northwest who specialized in areas that I thought would be perfect for what we wanted to do, and tried to work out all the details. It should have been a warning that while I was reading books on how to write a business plan and sustainable building technologies, he was still in dreaming mode. I thought it was just that I am a detail person and he is not (my friends and family will laugh at this because “detail person” usually wouldn’t be their first word to describe me), that once we got to building was when he’d take over.

In February of that year, I flew to visit him for a month. We dreamed more, worked on our PhD writing, went snowboarding, visited his family, and got engaged. He took me out on a repeat of our romantic first date, then, on top of a tower where we had a stunning view over frozen Braunschweig, got down on one knee, read me a poem he had written, presented me with two rings that he had carved: one for him, and one for me, and asked me to marry him. I said yes, with all my heart, and spent the next month blissfully happy.

My future was secure and it was beautiful. I was going to build a life with my soulmate, and it was going to be the life we wanted. I would have a job that was creative and challenging and that I could feel good about all while being home where I could be with my family and raise the children I wanted to have. I would work closely with my best friend, the man I loved, and we would grow closer in our teamwork toward the dream we shared. For the first time in my life, I knew what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, and felt a peace that I hadn’t felt before. This was right, it was what I was born to do, and I was with who I was born to do it with.

Dawn over the Río Punta from my kayak

Falling to pieces

It was a high place to fall from.

Just over a month following our engagement, after the visa application had been sent in and paid for, a wedding date in September tentatively set and the campground we wanted to do it in booked, the wedding dress shopped for, the wedding website made and sent around to friends and family, I got a call from my doctor. The test results had come back positive (where “positive” means bad). I needed to go in for more biopsies. The bad news hit both of us hard and led to a fight. The fight led to a worse fight.

And then he said, “I can’t do this, I can’t do this life, I want to be able to go out and party until 6am, smoke when I want to, be myself, I’m sorry, but I can’t do this.”

And that was it. He would hear no protests, no suggestions for how we could work things out, no attempts to understand him and how I could support him, he threw our relationship, our dreams, and me as far away from himself as he could, and we never spoke again.

Mist rising from the forest's edge on the Río Punta

I was devastated, crushed, destroyed. I felt that I had lost everything: I had lost my soulmate, my future, my chance at the life I had always wanted. And I had something ugly growing inside me, rotting me from the inside. I felt disgusting, damaged, unlovable, underserving of love, and broken.

Eventually, with a lot of help from the outside, I got through it. The way the relationship ended made it easier for me to get past him. It took me a long time to forgive him; I spent a good year and a half seething with anger about how he had misled and deceived me (and, I realized, himself), and how he had left me when I was at my most frightened and vulnerable before I could come to terms with why he had to do what he did. But although forgiveness came slowly, after the breakup I didn't spend much time wanting him back. Long before I stopped crying daily I was at least able to feel rationally grateful that the stress had shown the real nature of the relationship and exposed my fiancé for the person he really was—not the person he said he wanted to be. I could be grateful that I had been saved from the same thing happening at a much worse stage in life: after marriage, after giving up everything else to support him and build a business with him, after starting the tribe of children we wanted to have.

What hurt the most and has proved much harder to get over was the loss of the dream, a life and a future that seemed, at the time and still seems in my heart, perfect. It’s been two years, and I’m still not over the dream. It’s been two years and I still haven’t come close to feeling the excitement and sense of “yes, this is my path” that I had with that dream. I keep waiting for the light that fired me to reignite, scraping the bitterness and pain bit by bit from the windows of my heart hoping that will bring it back. It hasn’t come back.

The Río Punta from the Ecolodge

Chepu

Flash forward to here on the soggy green island of Chiloé. I landed here for peace, stayed to work. It’s beautiful here, with 200° views of the Río Punta and a huge sunken forest that formed when the 1960 earthquake dropped the forest by ~2 meters (!) and the subsequent tsunami drowned the trees. Today the dead trees punctuate the odd and stunning resulting landscape. The wetlands are home to more bird species than my jellyfish memory could ever hope to recount, as well as pudu—the world’s smallest deer (I saw one drinking from the river while out kayaking), and huilin—an endangered species of river otter (one swam up to me while I was swimming the other day).

The ecolodge itself was built up over time out of a dream of Amory and Fernando’s to live in a simpler, more sustainable way. Their whole story was beautifully captured in this article, but began with doubts about their future in Santiago and culminated in the construction of eco-friendly buildings run off of solar and wind power, using only water captured on their land from rainfall. They have won awards for sustainability, green living, and ecotourism, and are featured in Lonely Planet of one of the best places to stay in Chile. Having been here for two weeks now, I can attest to the magic of the place. They are also good people, and happy people. I am so grateful for the warmth they have shown me in "adopting" me into their family, and have learned a lot from them. Most inspiring: the two of them have grown together through their work on this project, and I have only rarely seen a mature couple so obviously in love.

Theirs is a story so romantic, so powerful, so special, so eerily similar to what I had pictured, that at the same time that it is beautiful and inspiring, it is painful to see live.

Moon over the Chepu Adventures Ecolodge

A ship adrift

The pain, I suppose, means that this is good for me. Being here, inside a living version of the dream I had, is drawing out that final bit of stuffed-down pain that I have been carrying with me all this time. Forcing me to face it, stand up with it, and choose to either carry it in a positive new way or let it go.

Building a place like this is not something I could do alone. That is not something I say easily, but building and running a place like this one is an incredible burden of work for two people working together as a solid team. It is too much for one person alone. But also evident is that it is, as I thought it would be, a good life, a life I feel sure I would be very happy with. It is interesting to see what I overlooked in my plans, and what I got right. This has given me incredible insight and the best possible contacts and mentors if I decide to reignite and carry that old dream. I would do it in a heartbeat if I found a place and a partner.

But alone?

Dead, bleached out, half-eaten crab on a log in the river. Not a metaphor for my life.

I have often felt my aloneness on this trip, but it’s usually been a powerful feeling, like during my Navarino trek when, looking around me and realizing that I was the only human in all that vista, I was filled with such joy I felt like I could fly. Now, for the first time since leaving on this trip, I feel lonely. Deeply, painfully alone. The freedom and lack of ties and responsibilities and solitude that I have so enjoyed on this trip suddenly feel heavy. I feel that old emptiness.

I am also nervous, preoccupied and weighed down by not knowing what’s next. I was enjoying this trip by living and loving every moment in the moment, but in a few months I return home, and then what? I have learned and re-learned a lot of things about myself on this trip, but am no closer to choosing a path. I had a north star by which to orient myself once, for that brief blissful period of knowing where my life was going, but it blinked out. I feel adrift.

I am adrift.

Alone and adrift in a big, dark —albeit beautiful— ocean. 

Sunrise over the Río Punta

Navarino Part V: Bahia Windhond, or the day I stood naked at the end of the world

Part V in the story of my 7-day solo trek on Isla Navarino, continued from Part IV: Refugio Charles and Lago Windhond. To start at the beginning or to see the full list of Navarino episodes, click here.

I am the queen of late starts. Despite waking at around 7 am I didn’t leave camp until around 10. I first spent around two hours trying to mend the giant holes I had burned in my socks at the fire at the previous camp—an attempt that later proved futile, at least in part because of my terrible sewing skills. I didn’t bother with breakfast and just ate some cookies and one of the sandwiches I had packed instead. I put on my damp socks and boots and took off with a little fanny pack with food and a poncho, leaving my tent up in case of bad weather, and thinking I’d be back from the bay—which was right there—by lunch. Ha!

Frankensocks

First, less than two minutes in to the trek my bowels made the sort of gurgle that means “DO NOT IGNORE ME” and I barely had time to drop my pants before I suddenly became a full two pounds lighter.

Not long after that, I was stopped again, this time by a large river that was not on the cheesy whole-island map that I now had to rely on (this part of the island falling well off the edge of my halfway decent topo maps). It was, I realized, on my GPS map which if I had seen before should have warned me (my excuse: my phone screen is nearly impossible to read in the glare of the light of day, and with all the rain over the past few days I didn’t often want to take it out of my pocket). None of the creeks that had been very difficult to impossible to cross that I had been hopping and wading through and skirting before had been on the GPS map, so the fact that this map showed up should have clued me into the fact that this would be a large obstacle. Indeed, this was no creek. It was a legitimate river. I walked along its banks for over a mile, trying to see if there was any chance of a shallow spot I could wade across or a series of logs or something, but there was nothing, no way to cross without swimming, which I might have considered if not for my cold (I had woken up with a sore throat, headache, and full sinuses), it being very cold, and not wanting to dunk my camera for a second time in 30 hours.

My campsite. Camera was still a little soggy (hence the fog)... didn't want to get it any wetter.

The river did not go straight to the bay, which as the crow flies was less than 4 km away. It went instead another 12 km to the east, increasing the distance I needed to walk by at least 3x (or 16 more km out and back). I mentally came to terms with the reality of my not making it back by lunch, needing to camp another night in my little hilltop room with a view, and it being now extremely unlikely that I’d be able to make it back to the Dientes circuit in time to make a quick go at it.

But damnit, I was going to make it to that bay! Over the next four hours I marched through forest, peat bog, spiny death bushes, and beaver swamps that in some cases I was only able to get through by tightroping across their dams—in two cases breaking them (sorry beavers, but you did make the route impassable, plus, you are a non-native species…so I didn’t feel too bad).

But this guy was a native species. He can stay.

Most exhausting of all were the chest-deep mounds of beachgrass on the dunes when I finally approached the bay. Where hiking through the peat bogs was like walking for hours on a mattress, the beachgrass involved lifting my leg to my chest, scrambling up, sinking back down, repeat. When I arrived at the beach I was exhausted and my tendons hurt.

More bog.

But I made it.

To the end of the world.

The beach at Bahia Windhond

At least as close to the end of the world I could get without passage on a yacht or a trip to Antarctica, as close to the end of the world as I could get without a whole lot of money I don’t have. The farthest south anyone I know has been who hasn’t been to Antarctica.

Yay!!

I had a glorious ten minutes in the sun when I finally arrived. I ate my sandwich, stripped naked and had just started to wade into the water when I saw the giant dark storm cloud heading straight for me. I thought the better of going for a frigid swim with a storm coming and a four hour walk back to warmth before me. So I waved goodbye to the end of the world, threw my clothes and poncho back on, and hit the chest-deep grass again just as the hail hit.

Where on the hike there I had had many moments where I’d grin and laugh when I’d see some vista and remember where I was and what I was doing, on the way back my brain switched off and I just marched, too tired and cold and wet to enjoy the scenery. I marched back through the mounds of beachgrass, back through the beaver swamps, back through the peat bogs, through forest and plains, through meadows and over hills, poncho on, face set, trying to keep up a good clip to stay reasonably warm in the cold rain.

A sampling of the scenery I marched through.

I marched for hours like that until suddenly, at the top of a ridge forested with tall, slender trees, a gentle wind made the trees sing at the same time that a cloud opened up, sending soft green light dancing around me. I was dazzled.

The moment hit me like a shock, a reminder of where I was, of all that had brought me there, and I was floored with gratitude and happiness. It was like the God I had loved as a young person had appeared in front of me, held out his arms, and said, “See? It was all okay in the end.” I looked around me, bathed in the dancing light and singing trees, filled with the feeling of everything being okay.

In that moment I realized that all of the struggle and torment and tedium and heartache (and good times as well) that had eaten me the past decade and especially the past few years had, as a culmination of forks in the road that my life had taken, brought me there, to this magical grove of trees on an island on the cold, sweaty, southern toe of the Americas. There, to a place and on an adventure of which my self a decade ago would never have dreamed. That it had been okay in the end. More than okay: Incredible. And there I was, standing outrageously happy at the end of the world.

Forest

I was moved to do something I hadn’t done in over a decade: I prayed. Dropped to my knees, face to the sky, surrendered myself to the universe, and prayed. I prayed to no deity in particular, having long ago become disillusioned by and walked away from the religion of my childhood, so I was simply talking to the air. But the feeling was the same as when I used to pray in my youth; I felt connected to the universe, felt my soul bursting inside me. It was a prayer of thanks, and a prayer for forgiveness: forgiveness for my lack of understanding and appreciation of all these years, and forgiveness for the anger and bitterness that I had been refusing to give up for so long.

And finally I forgave, in words out loud to the wind, those people against whom I had held the anger that had been eating me alive.

I forgave my German ex-fiancé who, I was finally able to accept, did what he had to do to protect his own happiness and sense of self. In that moment I realized truly that I am happier now than I could have been with the real version of him that I had refused to see and refused to accept. That his leaving was, even though the circumstances were terrible, in the end a gift. That my heart was broken but was returned to me, and that it was in my power to heal it, because my heart is a big heart, a strong heart, and a good heart. In that moment I was finally able to let him, and the rage and disgust and fury that had been rotting me from the inside these past few years, go.

I forgave my beloved sister who, also in making decisions to protect her own happiness, had burned to the ground her own relationship—a relationship that I had held onto as a lighthouse of hope in the wake of my own falling apart as proof that true love was possible. If true love like hers was possible, I felt some hope that I might also find it someday. When her marriage ended I was devastated, because I saw it as proof that I would never find a lasting relationship because real and lasting love does not exist. In that moment in the trees I realized that my happiness does not depend on my finding a soulmate, if such a thing even exists. I realized that I am the happiest I have ever been right now, and I am alone!—and my happiness certainly doesn’t depend on the relationship status of my sister, who I adore and wish every joy in the world.

I forgave the friend who had been my buddy during much of the time I was struggling through the former two hurts who, without word or explanation, threw me off in a way that ripped open the wounds that were just starting to scab over. I realized that although I may never understand why he did it, that I was okay now, that I could be grateful for the happiness he brought me in a very dark time, and that I hoped that whatever he is up to now, that he is happy.

Stream

And finally, I forgave myself for my shortcomings and the hell I put other people through during these dark years. I forgave myself for taking so long to get over the other things—for the hell I put my own self through. For being small and bitter and jealous and angry and needy and an imperfect human. I had been furious with people for ruining my life. I needed to see that my life wasn’t ruined, that it was, in fact, better than it otherwise would have been, before I was able to let go and forgive. That was not big of me, but it was human of me, and sometimes we have to forgive ourselves for being humans, not saints. Whatever the path, in the end I had fought through the darkness and clawed my way up from the deep well I had fallen into. I had been brave enough to throw a middle finger to expectations and go on a quest to find where my soul had run off to and to try to heal my heart. I hadn’t done perfect, but I had done good. “It’s okay, Carie,” I thought. “It’s okay now.”

The wind and light wrapped me around me as though the universe was also saying, “It’s okay, Carie, it’s okay now,” and giving me a hug. I stood, feeling if not fully healed at least a whole lot closer. And I felt at peace in my heart for what very well may have been the first time of my 20’s.

The rain started again and the magical huggy wind spirit wasn’t going to take me back to camp, my feet would have to do that, so off I went again. My GPS was acting screwy but I was pretty sure I could find my way back to camp without it. Sure enough, an hour and a half or so later, I laughed out loud when I rounded a corner and almost stepped in my giant, now half-melted turd from the morning (bad pootiquette, I know, but I figured nobody would be around this area until long after the weather had taken care of it, and I didn’t have a trowel on me). I was home!

Home sweet home.

For dinner I cooked a noodle soup and then promptly knocked over the pot and spilled it all over the ground, so I ate dirt-coated noodles picked off the ground and cookies for dinner, enjoying the view for about twenty rain-free minutes before the rain returned. It was a cold night, not only because I had a cold but because it was a cold storm, and I curled up inside my tent bundled up in several layers including a down jacket inside my down sleeping bag and still felt cold. Cold, but content and happy, and whole.


Spoiler video from the trek:

I woke up to patches of snow around my tent, a preview of the weather to come. Continued in Part VI: Bushwhacking North

Una chica muy fuerte: feminist realizations on Volcanoes Lonquimay & Sierra Nevada

Prelude

The past month of mountain adventuring has won me a lot of confidence. I didn't bring my crampons and ice axe on this trip because when I was leaving I thought, “Little me, all alone? I'm not going to do anything where I would need them.” I underestimated myself.

In the two weeks between leaving Concepción and arriving in Bariloche, I spent six days on my splitboard, climbed 3.9 volcanoes (Llaima, Villarica, Lonquimay, and Sierra Nevada), hiked some 50 miles in the snow. I survived a bout of explosive traveler’s diarrhea, nursed a bad cold and over 30 blisters, as well as open sores on my hips and a body black, purple, and red from welts and bruises.

I spent most of these two weeks in borrowed mountaineering boots and crampons, and yes, I still know how to use an ice axe. I don't need a boyfriend by my side to do big things; I'm doing more and bigger things alone.

Mountain therapy. Succeeding where years of couch-therapy just had me doing somersaults inside my head.

Me on Sierra Nevada. (Photo by Melitta)

In these two weeks, I've been called “Una chica muy fuerte,” “Eine kleine kämpferin”, and “tough”. And I am. I've always been physically strong, but right now I’m in maybe the best shape of my life, certainly of the past 10+ years; a solid ball of muscle, runner-up-of-mountains, a pack-carrying climbing machine.

And this pack-carrying climbing machine got her ass kicked by a woman who, if I needed more proof that my ovaries don't make me less of a human, provided it. Meet Melitta: in her deceptive cute blonde package probably the strongest, toughest person I've ever been in the mountains with. Period.

Volcán Lonquimay

The heartache felt on the road from Pucón to Malacahuello dissolved the minute I walked into the dining hall at Suizandina (which Frank aptly nicknamed the “happy hut” because I was so happy there), which felt like coming home, complete with dropped bags and warm hugs from my “family” there. The evening was made sweeter by my introduction to Melitta, an Austrian mountain guide on a solo ski touring adventure around Chile. The Suizandina family had decided that, as two nice young woman mountain-lovers traveling alone, we needed to meet, and it surprised nobody when we became instafriends.

Malacahuello, home of ridiculously cute llamas, among other mountain-loving, friendly creatures. HDR.

The next morning, the two of us caught a ride to Corralco to climb Lonquimay (my volcano #3). Our ride was an older mountain pair with the same plan: Chilean U. Conception Materials Science Professor Michel Ignat and his French wife, a retired x-ray technician. The two were in their late 60’s, having moved to Chile after having met in a mountaineering club (a common thread of many couples I met at Suizandina and something I’m going to have to give a try when I finally settle somewhere for a while) and spent most of their careers in France. This was his 4^th attempt at Lonquimay having had bad luck in the past with weather, equipment, etc.

Lonquimay as seen from the top of an Aurucaria forest at the foot of neighboring volcano Sierra Nevada.

Melitta: knocking off another mountain like it was no big deal.

Melitta and I chatted on the way up about mountains, life, and love while rocketing up the flank of the mountain. We were well-matched until the going got steep and I started to struggle with the traversing and slippery snow on my essentially edgeless splitboard. At one point where slush met ice, I slipped and slid headfirst a heartstopping 50 meters down the side of the mountain, grinding up my hands and bare arms on the slushie-like ice crystals that made up the upper layer of snowpack as I clawed at the snow trying to halt my slide—yet another reminder that holyshitIneedskis. While Melitta rocketed ahead, I took a half hour break to eat a sandwich while I slowly stopped terror-shaking. Then I strapped the board onto my backpack, put on my crampons, and headed back up. Not long later, Melitta came skiing back down, having already summitted (me thinking: “damn, girl!”), checked on me, then skied down to take the Ignats' backpack in order to help them make the top, too. When I made the top, I was barely into my second sandwich when she arrived—essentially her second ascent of the volcano for the day.

I had a girl crush.

Me + Melitta on the Lonquimay Summit (animated gif...hopefully worth the load wait)

We decided to rent a car together and spend both of our final free weeks knocking off as many remaining volcanoes as we could. Problem was, both of us having started at opposite ends of Chile, there wasn't much left that one of us hadn't already done, and as two independent women used to our solitude and independence, it became clear that as much as we liked each other and were well matched (or rather, she's a professional badass and I can sort of keep up), it would probably work better if she headed north to hit Chillán and a few other spots on the way and I continued my southward journey.

Sierra Nevada (the one in Chile)

But not before climbing another volcano: Sierra Nevada.

Sierra Nevada as viewed from the flanks of Volcán Llaima.

Sierra Nevada from the Suizandina breakfast room.

Sierra Nevada sits between Llaima and Lonquimay and had been giving me funny looks all week as the mountain visible from the Suizandina breakfast room. Unlike the perfectly-formed conical whiteheaded stratovolcanoes Llaima, Villarica, and Lonquimay, Sierra Nevada sits like a sleeping beast, all points and shoulders and cliffs.  It was something I didn't want to leave Malacahuello without getting closer to. When I returned to Suizandina from Pucón, I was greeted by Sergio, the owner from whom I had borrowed crampons, mountaineering boots, and ice axe for my trip up Villarica with a "Carie! I have a present for you." That present was that he was going to escort me to Sierra Nevada.

So after spending a rain day getting some work done and videos processed at Suizandina, a very antsy Melitta and I jumped in Sergio's truck for the bumpy ride to the foot of Sierra Nevada.

Melitta greets a friend met on the road to Sierra Nevada.

Sergio's truck made it as far as it could on the muddy mountain road. The rest we'd have to walk ourselves. (Photo by Melitta)

Melitta ready to hit the trail...the first several hours of which were wading through mud with our ski equipment on our backs.

The friend of Sergio's who was going to guide us through the forests that surround Sierra Nevada was "probably too drunk to move" (Sergio's words) when we stopped by his house to pick him up, so we were on our own. And we got lost, each of us taking turns choosing the wrong path until we finally hit the right one. By the time we popped out of the forest (which at the end turned into an Araucaria forest--the monkey puzzle trees again, which was absolutely surreal) and caught our first view of Sierra Nevada at 2pm, I had long given up on actually summitting and was just enjoying the being outside. So I took my sweet-ass time enjoying a nice relaxed lunch while taking in the spectacular scenery.

(Chile, I can think of some places on this planet that could stand to take a few of your volcanoes. You have enough, you wouldn't miss them, right?)

Sierra Nevada from our lunch spot at the top of the Araucaria forest.

Sergio takes a blister break on the shoulder of Sierra Nevada, Lonquimay and Tolhuaca looming in the background.

But I had underestimated Melitta. The woman had a hunger. So, while Sergio waited for us, the two of us kicked on the booster rockets and made a sprint along the ridge, racing to make the 5pm turnaround time we had promised Sergio.

There was a cold, biting wind, but I was sweating hard, pushing myself because, yeah, I also wanted that summit. And sweet lord was it worth it. Because the best part was when I dropped the backpack and board (= sail in the high winds), pulled out the ice axe, and ping crunch crunch ping crunch crunched the final ~100 meters to the top.

Hiking to the summit, board on my back and crampons on for the final climb. But check out those volcanoes! (Photo by Melitta)

And we made it. Close to 7 hours of hiking, climbing, and skiing later, we had made it. And it was real effing cold, so we took a few quick glory shots before our hands started to ice over, skated down from the summit as quickly as we could with our axes and crampons, strapped on the skis (Melitta) and board (me) and enjoyed a brief but epic powder run on our way back to Sergio.

And then we hiked down as the sun set over Chile, turning the volcanoes and clouds into piles of pastel sugar around us.

Spectacular.

By the time we returned to Suizandina I was done (in a happy way). Exhausted, blood sugar level redlined, absolutely satisfied with the day and with life in general. My ass had officially, thoroughly, delightfully been kicked. I ate everything. Drank everything. You'd think I'd just run a marathon. Melitta looked like she could do it again at least another three times, then stop for a snack, and then climb Everest...without oxygen or sherpas. A heroine for the mountain books!

Summit!! Hellz yeah! (Photo by Melitta)

Postscript

This trip has officially made a feminist out of me, a feminist in the sense of the classic Cheris Kramarae quote:

“Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings.” 

Women are born strong, and we are strong. Women like Melitta are proof of that. But we spend our lives being told we are smaller, weaker, fairer, more fragile, more vulnerable, less competent, less capable, that our dreams are less valid, our horizons restricted, our needs and desires and roles doled out to us by the environments in which we are raised. Where I grew up, women played sports and were expected to be strong and tough in addition to beautiful and smart and kind and savvy. I was raised to carry my own weight, make my own path, dream my own dreams.

But then something happened, and it wasn't just puberty.

Aaand this little bit made all of the board-schlepping worth it. (Photo by Melitta)

I think the first time I recognized the cultural influence of gender role expectations was during a high school exchange in Germany. I was bored to tears by the segregated gym classes where the girls did stretching exercises and light gymnastics and watched with envy as the boys played soccer. Compared to the girls there, I was an oaf: my biceps the size of the average girl's leg. This was particularly ironic, since my stereotype of German woman was that of East German 'roided-out powerlifters, so I had spent the months before my exchange doubling my workout routine so that I wouldn't get my ass totally handed to me in the weightlifting competitions that I was sure would be a regular occurrence. When I told people that back home I was on my high school's soccer team, I was written off as "probably lesbian" (so, fine, I went and played soccer with a bunch of new, lesbian soccer-playing friends). What was normal for the girls I grew up with (playing soccer) was considered the exclusive domain of men in an otherwise progressive, Western country.

While sexism is somewhat more subtle in the U.S., it got to me and wore me down without me realizing it. Subtexts even from family members that, as a woman, ultimately the only purpose to my education was to find a suitably educated spouse to father my children and provide for my livelihood. Boyfriends who told me that the only reason I got X fellowship or was accepted to Y university or Z competitive program was because I was a woman, not because I had put together a good application. Boyfriends who told me that I was not smart enough to make in the world on my own. And most subversive of all, my ceding certain tasks and responsibilities to the men in my life rather than doing them myself.

Me + Melitta on the summit of Lonquimay.

It takes a while to unlearn all of that, but bit by bit I've been doing it. A few years ago I taught myself how to change the oil on my car (fun!) and then, part by part, rolled up my sleeves to learn how to test and take care of my things so that now I can go to the mechanic and not take any bullshit about my battery needing to be replaced. A year ago, I took off on my first solo backpacking trip and it was liberating to prove to myself that I still knew how to read a map, and to realize that when I plan a trip I don't wind up in -20°C weather with no lighter with which to cook the dinner I just schlepped up a mountain. In August, I defended my Ph.D. thesis, something little voices in my head had said for years I would never do/didn't deserve/wasn't smart enough for; much to my surprise it went well and was fun, and now I'm a doctor of science, which is pretty badass.

Although it wasn't my intention when I set out, so far this trip has been all about staring down the fears I have about my own limitations, most of which, I'm realizing, are in my head. As it turns out, I'm a woman, which means that I'm a human, member of a race of strong, clever, resilient, and brave primates, and I can make my own fire, bang out my own tools, hunt down my own buffalo (someday...).

I've climbed back into the driver's seat of my own life, making my major decisions not based on what someone else wants to do, or thinks I should do, or thinks I can do, but what I want to do.

It's pretty awesome.

And what I want to do right now is be in the mountains. All the mountains.

Me + splitboard on Sierra Nevada, beautiful Llaima in the background.

On week 4 of being a solo woman traveler

Two weeks ago I wrote about the downsides of traveling alone as a woman, about unsettling experiences with ill-intentioned strangers, and the darker side of people.

For my travel monthiversary I want to write about the joys and advantages of solo travel, about the wonderful people I've met along the way, and about how good this whole adventure has been for me.

A quiet, solitary moment on the road to Shangri-La

A few highlights

As I write this, I’m sitting in the back of a rental car with Ursula and Janine, a Swiss mother and daughter I met at a mountain lodge and who generously offered to let me join them on a side trip to Pucón, a volcanic region on my “want to go, but maybe too out of the way to be practical” list.

In my snowboard bag crammed in the back is mountaineering equipment—mountaineering boots, ice axe, and crampons—that belong to Sergio, the owner of the lodge I just left. When I told him my plans to climb Vulcán Villarcia, the volcano that guards Pucón, and asked for advice for where to rent equipment, he spent the next several hours with me setting me up with everything I needed (including his own personal pair of crampons), giving me advice, swapping stories, and making sure I would be careful (but also have fun).

Earlier that day I enjoyed a few hours of conversation and a trip to the local thermal baths with David, a recent grad from Munich spending a year traveling, skiing, and working in Chile.

The day before, I climbed Vulcán Llaima, which would not have been possible except for the group of Argentinians (Stephen, Pablo, Hubert, Karina, and Julián) who let me and David bum a ride to the volcano with them and with whom I spent two raucous evenings drinking wine.

The several days before that were spent in Conceptión visiting geobiology contact and very respected oceanographer Prof. Osvaldo Ulloa, who welcomed me like an old friend and made me feel at home in a city I had never been before. When I left, he made me promise to call him if I needed any help with anything and before I did made sure that his friendly lab group hooked me up with mountain contacts.

And last week was spent in a magical place called Shangri-La out of Las Trancas, near the Nevados de Chillán ski resort with Pipe, the brother of a colleague and his group of mountain guides and friends (Manu, Panchi, Ignacio, Maria, and others). From the moment I arrived at their cabin I was treated like one of the crew, part of the family.

The BackChillan family preparing for a tour in Shangri-La

Part of the family

Nearly everyone here has been incredibly generous, warm, open, and friendly. From the locals—all but a few of whom were strangers before I arrived—who have adopted, fed, housed, directed, and equipped me, given me travel tips and advice on everything from where to go to how to say “leave me alone, creepface”, and who have made me feel so at home here (Ignacio, Macarena, Fer, Coti, Ramón, nameless busdriver, the BackChillan crew, Osvaldo, Sergio, and others), to the fellow nomads with whom I have shared adventures, wine, and meals (Tom & Ellen, the good folks of the Princessa Insolente, the Argentines, and Ursula and others at Suizandina), I have been reminded every single day how lucky I am to be human. How wonderful it is to be part of a big family of organisms that, with very few exceptions, are good to each other, look out for each other, are kind to each other, who genuinely want to connect and share with each other.

Over and over again I think of this piece by comedian Patton Oswalt in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing reminding all of us that, while there are creeps, assholes, and dickfaces, rapists, cannibals, and violent kidnappers, humans are defined not by our darkness but by our remarkable sense of “we’re in this togetherness”:

“We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We'd have eaten ourselves alive long ago.”  -Patton Oswalt 

Traveling alone as a woman is special...in a good way

Here I am, alone in the world, the solo woman traveler. Yet I am not alone. Even when I’m alone in the mountains I am surrounded by my human family. I was absolutely right to take the leap of faith that I did and jump into this adventure, alone, trusting in the basic goodness of the people I would meet along the way to make this experience a good, rich, and largely safe one.

In fact, I have come to appreciate what so many other solo woman travelers have said before me: it is a great way to travel.

First, I am free! Free to let the wind blow me where I want to go. Free to join people on adventures or free to go my way alone. Free to go out at midnight and sing karaoke duets with the bartender in downtown Conceptión, or free to sit alone in my hostel room reading a book or editing photos. It is a deeply different experience than traveling with a companion. I have found that I honestly don’t miss conversation—I get plenty with the strangers along the way and those conversations are at least as interesting and less tired.

I have felt moments of loneliness. But the people here have been so warm that those moments have been brief. And I am sharing my experiences, both with people I meet here and via contact with the people I love back home through emails, Facebook, and this blog. I feel just as connected as I ever did living as an anonymous face in the megalopolis that is Los Angeles.

I remember debating Chris McCandless's dying assertion that “happiness is only real when shared” once with an ex-boyfriend. I disagree with it: some of my deepest moments of joy have been when I've been completely, utterly alone, left to experience some bit of life's magic as the sole witness. There is something rich about standing alone on a mountain, feeling both small in the big beautiful world and deeply connected to it. Without needing to talk about it, argue the next steps, discuss dinner plans, hear what’s racing through the brain of a person standing with me, I am able to quietly soak in my experiences, and somehow more fully live them.

Sunset in Shangri-La, a quiet, breathtaking moment shared between me and the mountains

Advantages of traveling as a solo woman

Enjoying famous Chilean asado
with new friends in Shangri-La

Also, while a solo woman traveler may be, as Shannon at A Little Adrift puts it, the “lowest on the totem pole in terms of the types of travelers”, there are definite and valuable advantages. The exact traits that I described making me a target for creeps and harassment—my being a petite, friendly, clearly foreign woman—also make me a “target” for good people. I am absolutely non-threatening, so people—families, other women, strangers—trust me when they might not trust a man. My aloneness and young femaleness and foreignness makes people protective of me; people go out of their way to make sure I’m okay and taken care of. A bus driver might dump a guy off on the side of a deserted road at night without a second thought, but might wait around and make sure I have a safe ride to where I’m going. People are generous with me where they might not be as generous with a man. People take me under their wing because I seem small enough to fit there, even when they are fully aware that I can take care of myself.

Being alone also forces me and makes it easier to meet new people. While traveling as a couple, I’d end up in a private double room vs. in a shared dorm with potential new friends. I’d have dinner at a table for two, not ask a group of strangers if I could join them (or at least as often, get adopted into the “family” by a group of strangers). When traveling as a couple there were some very special and memorable times where my companion and I were invited in for dinner or drinks or a place to stay by strangers who took an interest in us, but where that happened maybe once for every month of travel as a couple. It happens to me almost every day here. It’s really cool.

How the experience has been shaping me

I am still cautious. Still deeply aware that even the well-intentioned can behave badly, still careful to avoid putting myself in situations that could turn dangerous, or even just uncomfortable and icky (e.g., no thank you, paunchy disco king on the bus, I appreciate the offer to cook me a very special dinner and drive me places but I think I’ll pass…and I’m going to go sit somewhere else, thanks). But the fear that defined me two weeks ago when I was crying in my locked hostel room is gone. I am still a sweet and petite gringa traveling the world all alone. But I am also a strong and competent adult knows who she is, what she wants, where she’s going, who has no patience for inappropriate attention, and who knows how to stand her ground and firmly say, “Dejamé en paz!” That fear has been replaced by a sense that I may be a stranger here but this is still my world. I feel able to face the unknown with confidence and with my heart open to the shining souls and walking treasure chests of experience and stories and humor of the good people that I have met along every step of this trip...and a willingness to deliver a swift kick to the nuts when warranted.

I am sure I will have more moments on this trip where I don’t feel so strong. But I am certain that those moments will become fewer and farther between now. I am loving, loving, this adventure. And, for the first time in years—maybe the first time since I first crawled down from the beloved mountains of my childhood—I feel like myself again: heart, body, and soul reunited again in Mountain Carie who, in reality, is Whole Carie.

The great big universe, as viewed from my home for the week spent with BackChillan in Shangri-La