John Muir Part III: The Social Animal

Continued from Part II: Sleeping with Strangers...

Days 8-12: Muir Pass to Devil's Postpile

The hanging valleys of the Evolution Basin

Day 8: Evolution Basin

17.3 miles, 3655' elevation loss
Start/High Point: Muir Pass (11955')
End/Low Point: Aspen Meadow (8300')

It had been an unforgettable night in the Muir Hut, probably the most memorable of the entire hike, one of the most memorable of my life. After the endless hours hiking through the rain, arriving at that dark, dank little hut to the comfort of fellow humans who, despite being strangers on arrival, quickly became a loving family, taking care of each other, laughing with each other, trading stories and hot meals to turn the miserable damp and cold into a party in the mountains. It reminded me of my night on Cerro Tronador in Argentina seven months earlier, where after a long afternoon of hiking the volcano in the rain, Anneke and I arrived at the hut to a party of shivering New Year's Eve revelers and drank and danced the night away in a wildly fun night of shared, joyous humanity.

I slept remarkably well spooned by soggy inhabited sleeping bags in the dripping hut despite the snoring tired men, stumbling early risers, and the occasional splash in the face of water dripping from the leaky stone roof. If anything, being the middle spoon, surrounded by warm soft human bodies, was comforting after the cold, exhausting day.

I woke, tired but revived, to a beautiful misty morning in the stark castle-like peaks of the pass.

Morning at Muir Pass

We all took our time yard-saleing our gear in the cold but not-rainy morning in an attempt to get some of it at least a little dried out, making breakfast, brushing our teeth, and finding excuses not to leave as the clouds rolled in. We took group photos and exchanged contact info before hugging goodbye and parting ways, Khai and Kreg on their way south, Ash on his way north to try to catch up with Mike, who had left somewhere around 3 am because he's a crazy mofo. I stuck around a bit after everyone left, not in a hurry, enjoying the peace of the pink morning in the mountains.

Drying gear at Muir Hut

Soggy little visitor at Muir Hut

Drying my gear at Muir Pass. Photo by Kreg.

My boots, however, were hopeless.

I hiked the rest of the day alone...except for the 114 people heading south who I crossed paths with that day. It was misty and overcast the whole day with bouts of spitting drizzle, so I didn't really break pace the entire day except for a brief stop to filter water and have a snack in the morning at Sapphire Lake--a snack I then spent the rest of the day vomiting up for unknown reasons...too much, too fast? Body too stressed? It was a trend in not being able to keep food down during the day that I'd see for much of the rest of the hike. Thankfully, I had packed some pretty good dinners.

The trail took me through the Evolution Lakes area, which the Boy Scouts I had hiked a bit with in the days leading up to Muir Pass had said was the most beautiful part of the trail. But it was so grey from the clouds and the rain and the smoke from the forest fires to the north, and the visibility so poor, that although the gem-like lakes were lovely, they weren't lovely enough to want to sit in the cold and rain to enjoy.

Sapphire Lake

Evolution Lake

I took another snack break at the unoccupied McClure Ranger Station, hoping to get a weather update. Sure enough, the note tacked to the door warned of a "major tropical storm, heavy rain for the next several days". Great... While there, I was joined by a chatty German who was doing the Sierra High Route over Darwin's Bench for the second time and then by a sobbing solo hiker who had caught a nasty cold and was trying to decide whether to turn back and exit at Muir Trail Ranch or push on. "I don't want to quit!" she kept repeating between sniffles and tears. I didn't know what to tell her, but sure understood the sentiment. With the weather nasty and cold and a lot of difficult passes in bad conditions ahead, continuing on with a bad cold didn't seem wise. On the other hand, making it that far and being beat by a cold would be heartbreaking. I hoped she got some rest that night, recovered, and was able to continue.

One of the broody waterfalls of Evolution Creek.

I pushed on in the rain down the rest of the hanging valleys of the Evolution Creek basins, including the creek crossing I had been warned about. Several of the people hiking south had bought special tall waterproof boots just in order to survive the creek. Having not read the trail guide, I didn't know about the creek in advance, and was a little concerned. Until I saw it. And took my boots off and waded across through the in spots hip-deep water in my bare feet. Sure better than the chest-deep wades I'd done earlier that year!

Someone else wading across a shallow section of the creek.

I didn't stop until I made it to Aspen Meadows, at over 17 miles my longest day yet. I only stopped there because my feet were aching and covered in blisters from hiking all day in wet boots.

However, the one decent campsite I had seen for miles was occupied by a southbound group. I asked the inhabitants if they had seen any campsites farther down the trail, and they said not for a while, but invited me to join them. They were a fun group: a young couple who worked as physicists at Sandia National Labs, a friend of theirs, and a random and hilarious flamboyant Dutch guy they had picked up on the trail. Together we polished off the giant bag of kale my sister had left me with--fresh veggies being a real treat at that point--and then I curled up on the ground in my bivvy and fell into a deep sleep.

The tree I slept under.

Day 9: Muir Trail Ranch

9.4 miles, 2410' of climbing
Start: Aspen Meadow (8300')
Low Point: Muir Trail Ranch (7790')
End/High Point: Sallie Keyes Lake (10200')

Aspen Meadow was only a few miles from Muir Trail Ranch, which I had intended to skirt because I wasn't resupplying there, but the trail guide said there were hot springs and I assumed "Ranch" meant beer for sale and at that point nothing in the world sounded better than hot springs and beer. Just as I was stripping down to cross another creek to get to the hot springs, someone familiar emerged from the bushes--Ash from the hut! He had camped there with his brother the previous night and was spending a leisurely day washing clothes and recovering while his brother high-tailed it to the next resupply.

Bridge over Piute Creek marking the boundary of Kings Canyon National Park and the John Muir Wilderness.

We went together to the hot springs, which turned out to be a warm, deep mud hole that was already occupied by the world's creepiest mother-son duo. It felt like a scene out of Deliverance, and there was something really unsettling about their interactions, but I was desperate enough for something warm that I stripped down got in the mud pit anyhow. Half an hour of soaking in swirling dark mud with Oedipus and Jocasta was enough, though, and Ash agreed to meet me at the ranch to see if we couldn't scavenge some lunch there.

Trail Gnome

Muir Trail Ranch is the last easy resupply point for southbound hikers on the John Muir Trail until exiting the trail at Whitney Portal another 100 miles down the trail. As such, it was a scavenger hunt full of buckets of food, so many buckets of food, that resupplying hikers had decided was more than they wanted to carry on their trip South. I claimed to the gatekeepers that I was there to pick up some stuff from the resupply piles because my boyfriend had left too much food when he'd picked up our resupply the day before, giving Ash's name. Sneaky sneaky, and just like that buckets of ramen and freeze dried meals and peanut butter and jerky and sunscreen were my smorgasbord. Ash showed up, and we stuffed ourselves with two Trader Joe's Indian meals, a can of mackerel, and a novelty-sized pepperoni stick. Which I spent the rest of the day puking up. Yay.

The San Joaquin River Valley where Muir Trail Ranch sits

We stopped for the day at beautiful Sallie Keyes Lakes, wandering a good distance off-trail to find a spot to camp near the lake where we took turns fishing and making dinner. A woman who was camping on the other side of a knob we were camping behind came by to chat. She had climbed Whitney fifteen times, but was sad, lonely, and anxious because her hiking partners had bailed on her and she was worried about the weather forecast. Ash and I spent the evening talking, and our isolation from the outside world combined with that night in the hut probably contributed to the feeling that we'd been best friends for years, even though we'd just met two days prior.

Although the day had been nice, the forecast was for heavy rain, so Ash and I camped under his tarp. Although it didn't rain, the tarp was dripping with condensation from the soggy ground by morning and we both woke up soaked.

Day 10: Selden Pass and Bear Ridge

16.5 miles, 2410' of climbing
Start: Sallie Keyes Lake (10200')
High Point: Selden Pass (10880')
End/Low Point: Quail Meadows (7870')

Morning fishing.

I left Ash with my fishing rod to try his luck in Sallie Keyes while I got a head start on Selden Pass. As much fun as it was hiking and chatting with someone else, I reminded myself that I was on this trail for alone time, not to fall stupidly in love with some guy I'd just met and would never see again. Long hikes give plenty of time to spend having long conversations in your head, and that morning mine sounded something like,

"Really, Carie? Really?"
"But he's so fun! And cute! And he hikes!"
"After all the progress you've made, you're really going to fall for the first guy to talk to you out here just because he's cute and he's there?"
"But I like him!"
"Are you really that desperate for love?"
"Hey, brain, stop being a jerk."
"He's a stoner. He's totally not your type."
"I know, but..."
"Didn't he say something in the hut about a girlfriend? You're being dumb."

View back toward Sallie Keyes from Seldon Pass.

I needed a really hard hike to feel better, but Selden was disappointingly easy after all of the other burly passes I'd been over on the trail. Ash caught up with me on the other side of the pass at beautiful Marie Lake. It was gloriously sunny for what felt like the first time in years, and it was warm enough to jump in and swim, which felt amazing. We had lunch and took naps in the sun to dry out. Then he took off to go meet his brother at Vermillion Resort--a spot off the trail where hikers could stop and actually take real showers, go to a bar, and sleep at a bed--but promised to make it back out in time to meet me at the place where the trail to the resort met the main trail that evening.

Marie Lake

Which meant that I spent the entire day having that same conversation in my head, berating myself savagely for wanting to be loved, on repeat, with little to distract me because it was a slog through trees and meadows, versus the stunning high alpine rocky landscapes I'd gotten used to. I had a long day ahead if I was going to make it to the meeting point (but he had almost 6 more than I did), so I plodded along without stopping for the rest of the day.

I have no idea what this means, and I thought it was funny.

When I started to climb from the Bear Creek basin up Bear Ridge, the sky suddenly broke, with rain and then pelting hail as I climbed. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and seemed to be getting uncomfortably closer as I made it to the top of the ridge. Traversing along the ridge, the rain got harder and the thunder louder and faster, and I could see the sky flash with lightning. I was cold, wet, alone, exposed, and scared, hurrying along in hopes of making it back down the other side of the ridge before lightning struck.

Then it did. A brilliant pillar of white and a deafening crash and the overwhelming smell of ozone and burnt wood nearly knocked me over--lightning had struck a tree less than 200 meters in front of me. It scared the shit out of me, and I started to run with my pack on. I couldn't keep the running up long, but I was moving as fast as I could until the trail started descending steeply off the other side of the ridge. I was soaked, my heart pounding hard and fast like a terrified hamster's, and my blisters were screaming. I still had a few miles of switchbacks before I'd make it to camp, It was miserable.

The storm moving in.

So I sang. Me, alone in the pouring rain on a muddy trail with thunder crashing around me, singing as loud as I could in my exhaustion.

"Swing low, sweet chariot
coming for to carry me home
swing low, sweet chariot
coming for to carry me home"

"As I went down in the river to pray
studying about those good old way
and who should wear the starry crown
good Lord, show me the way!"

"One bright morning when this life is over
I will fly away..."

I was on round 15 of my hymn soundtrack when I finally got to the bottom, dumped my stuff in a beautiful secluded campsite by the river, and tacked a note to the trailhead sign telling Ash where to find me. I briefly tried to build a campfire, but the rain made it more work than keeping it going was worth, and I let it burn out while I cooked the biggest meal I could while huddling in the rain over my pot, dressed my blisters, crawled into my bivvy, and immediately fell asleep.

Thistle. Symbol of fierce, resilient beauty. Telling me to buck up and get my butt down the trail.

Day 11: Silver Pass and Duck Lake

19.0 miles, 2930' elevation gain, 3980' of total climbing
Start: Quail Meadows (7870')
High Point: Silver Pass (10895')
End: Duck Lake (10800')

I woke up cold, wet, and alone. To the ponds of insecurity that were still living in my heart, it was a symbol of a greater life condition, a message that said, "Get used to being alone. They will always make promises and leave. You are easily forgotten. Your days of living in the warmth and comfort of love are done." I packed, got on the trail in a grey mood, and as I passed the trailhead and unpinned my sign, I started to cry.

Asshole Brain recognized that now was not the time to be a jerk, and instead attempted to console the small, vulnerable person that lives inside me.

"Hey, it's okay. You're lonely. You've been alone for a long time. It's normal to feel lonely. You are allowed to cry. It's okay. But seriously, keep walking kiddo." 

And so I sob-walked for a few miles and change until it was out of my system.

"Hey kid, it's okay, check it out, you hiked almost 19 miles yesterday. You're over halfway there, two full days ahead of schedule already. You're tough, kid. You're doing great. We'll do great. Hang in there. We're going to hike the effing John Muir Trail. Alone. And that's awesome. Alone is okay. Alone we do awesome things, right? I know you feel lonely, but we have each other, and it's going to be okay." 

Sniffle.

Hey kid, cry all you want, but we've got mountains to climb.

And hauling a backpack full of melancholy, I made it up Silver Pass, with the stark grey talus fields that are the home my soul prefers. Grey, empty, hard, and howling with beauty. In those vistas, alone with the rock, the sky, the brooding clouds, and God, is where I feel whole. I stopped for lunch at the pass, basking in my solitude, and headed down, eyeing a turquoise lake below for some fishing and a swim if the weather held.

View from Silver Pass

I was paddling lazily on my back in the frigid lake when I heard a whoop and, "Carie! Carie!" Two spots I recognized as Mike and Ash (as the only northbounders for days in either direction) were snaking their way down the pass and had spotted me. I went to shore and put my clothes back on and they showed up, kicked their shoes off, and we had lunch. While his brother was off pump-filtering water, Ash apologized for not making it to camp that night. Between blisters, the thunderstorm, the six extra miles, and the draw of a warm bed, shower, and beer... I smiled and laughed and said with a lie that I had been too passed out to notice, and packed up my stuff to continue on. "You'll probably catch me, if not, have a great hike guys!"

And off I went.

Classic Sierra Nevada view from the trail.

They caught up with me six miles later on the climb from Tully Hole to Lake Virginia, where I planned to camp. They were continuing on to Duck Lake, another seven and a half miles up the trail, in order to take a shortcut into Mammoth, where they were ending their hike. I agreed to join them until the trail split.

Lake Virginia, where I had planned to camp...before hiking another 5.5 miles because I was craving human companionship.

The trail split, Ash was dragging, and Mike decided they could camp another night and wake up early and still make it out in time. So I found myself, despite being tired and foot-sore myself, joining them for an extra five and a half miles and one final night on the trail. We cooked a big group meal, or rather Mike and I cooked a big group meal and I tried unsuccessfully to fish while Ash napped, hurt and exhausted from their long day. We were treated to a jaw-dropping pink sunset before turning in for the night.

Duck Lake at sunset

Camp.

Day 12: Duck Lake to Devil's Postpile

15.4 miles, 2930' elevation gain, 3980' of total climbing
Start/High Point: Duck Lake (10800')
Low Point: Reds Meadow (7430')
End: Johnston Meadow (8120')

We woke up as the sun started to rise. I dallied at the lake after the guys plied me with coffee and then took off, resting in the quiet of the glowing morning, breathing in a mixed sense of sadness and relief that came with being alone again. With the guys gone, gone for good, I could settle into my solitude again, the solitude that had carried me through the past glorious year, the solitude that had made me mostly whole and mostly strong again. It was me and the mountains again, the mountains who had my whole life been my dearest loves, who although cold and dangerous, never left, never failed me, were always strong and beautiful. My literal rocks. My sanctuary.

Rejoining the John Muir Trail after the side trip to Duck Lake

I hiked back down the Duck Lake trail to re-join the John Muir Trail, and continued north. My goal for the day was Reds Meadow, my second resupply point. I was two full days ahead of schedule and there was no reason to rush, but I had earned my trail legs, and although every inch of me hurt, the hurt had lost its novelty. I walked, mind blank, boots kicking up mud and dust, in the steady rhythm I'd developed over the past two weeks of walking.

A few miles in, I spotted a hat. It was a grungy, camo ball cap with a black Birdman patch on the front. I thought it was pretty much the most awesome hat I'd ever seen, and clearly a sign.

"Hey Slayer, check it out, it's your hat."

The Hat

I picked up the hat. I set down my backpack. I pulled out my first aid kit and surgically removed the Birdman patch from the hat. Then took out my sewing kit and sewed the patch onto my own hat (didn't want cooties, after all...since someone who hasn't showered in two weeks should be worried about cooties).

And just like that I was transformed from the achingly lonely little person that lives inside my head into Slayer, Destroyer of Trails, Breaker of Hearts, Climber of Mountains, Certified Badass.

After that the going was easy. I coasted the twelveish miles through the pines, past the cinder cones marking the region as imminently explodey, through the scarred forest fire burn areas ugly except for the views they opened up and the flickers that flitted from burned snag to burned snag, and into Reds Meadow. I had arrived at my goal for the day by lunchtime. It was the first road I had seen in twelve days.

Looking down towards Devil's Postpile National Monument area from the trail.

Burnt snag in the burn zone.

Reds Meadow, first road and first vehicles I'd seen in 12 days.

I went straight into the convenience store and, after grabbing a beer from the refrigerated section, asked for my resupply box. I was hoping hard it was there, in part because it would mean that my sister had survived her hike out over Bishop Pass four days prior. Sure enough, there was my bear can box stuffed full with all of the things I had packed for the final leg of my hike, covered in pink duct tape and labeled with my name, courtesy of my hero of a little sister. I paid for my beer, bought a laundry and shower pass, a small shampoo and mini bar of soap, and then wandered across the street to get a giant burger. The burger wasn't actually giant, but it was a burger! Sweet baby Jesus, best burger ever! I sat on a stump outside the restaurant, drank my beer, and ate my burger while unpacking my resupply box.

Resupply box.

Out came a week's worth of breakfast bars and freeze-dried dinners, a roll of vitamin tablets, fresh underwear, fresh band-aids, fresh duct tape, fresh batteries, and, complements of my sister, two beers.

After two weeks on the trail, my one beer already had me seriously buzzed, so I threw all of my clothes in the laundry (leaving little to walk around in...I used my hair tube as an improvised tube top while my shirt washed) and took my first shower in two weeks. It took the entire shampoo bottle to get the grime out of my hair. The hot water felt amazing.

I ate pie and drank another beer as I sifted through my resupply and my laundry finished, and chatted with the other tourists and through-hikers. There was a cute couple working at the restaurant who were getting married and then doing an extended honeymoon backpacking Asia. A guy solo hiking southbound who told me about the tequila fest going on in town and offered to split a campsite with me. A group of friends hiking a section of the trail who also offered their campsite. A young couple with a newborn ("it's another type of adventure") who had done the entire Pacific Crest Trail a few years prior and were on a road trip around the U.S. "The John Muir Trail section was the most beautiful!" he reminisced. When my laundry was done, I went to pay for my pie, only to get a receipt on which was written "O.T.H. (on the house) :-)" complements of the soon-to-be weds. Awwwww.

Love you, too, Stud. (my sister is the best)

I put on my clean clothes--where clean was relative, as my shirt clearly had developed some permanent sweat stains--and shouldered by backpack which was now full again with a week's worth of food, and took off down the trail. As interesting as all of the gathered characters were, I was craving solitude and antsy to get back out of "civilization" (where civilization was a dusty back road with a few cabins and a little restaurant + convenience store).

I was already two full days ahead of schedule, and continuing on meant an even shorter time on the trail. I could in theory spend more time chilling at the side of a lake, but I hadn't spent a day chilling yet--I'm not good at chilling. And I was starting to miss my friends. And Slayer was having fun killing trail. (not that my distances really qualify as killing trail, but my average was a heck of a lot better than I had planned on). I called my sister to let her know I was alive and to thank her for the resupply box, and called Frank who was going to pick me up on the other end of the trail to let him know I'd be in a few days early. We arranged to meet at Yosemite in five days (vs. the planned nine), which would still give me time to take it easy and explore off-trail if I wanted to.

Devil's Postpile

After getting turned around in the confusing maze of roads and trails in the area (I was used to just having one trail and one direction to go...), I finally made it to Devil's Postpile as the sun was setting. After continuing and seeing it from a dozen different angles, I picked a spot to camp on a ridge overlooking the Postpile. Feeling overly-fed from the burger and pie and beers was gross after my two weeks of semi-starvation and mostly vegan backpacker diet, so I had a small handful of nuts for dinner and called it a night.

I laid in my bivvy for a while contemplating my self-imposed exile from humanity, committing to it, looking forward to it, and ready to start a new chapter of this hike.

My campsite away from the crowds.

Stay tuned for the final leg in Part IV: Seeking Solitude!

The Long Road North Part II: Buenos Aires

Arrival

My overnight trip from Bahía Blanca to Buenos Aires was uneventful. The bus showed up more or less on time at the central bus terminal, I wasted a bunch of time once again being thwarted by an unhelpful Argentine information booth occupant who fed me all sorts of misinformation, but eventually made it onto the bus (which I had looked up in advance with the help of Constanza and her mom) to my hostel. It was 8am, and apparently the male hostel staffers were still recovering from the night before because their eyes were bloodshot and they seemed very, very high.

It was too early to check in, but the female staffer ushered me upstairs for breakfast and coffee and I sat there and enjoyed the spotty wireless for a bit before claiming a locker once the dwellers in the room I was checking into woke up, and then going for a walk. A little on edge about being in a BIG CITY again for the first time since Santiago way back in October, I didn't bring much with me and was all paranoid, eyeing everyone suspiciously and peevishly glaring at every bit of graffiti and thinking, "Ugh, humans" every time the wall or sidewalk smelled of piss or feces.

Thank you Buenos Aires graffiti artist.
That pretty much sums it up.

But I eventually got to the spot that was my goal:

The U.S. Embassy.

Calm down, I wasn't in trouble. I was just out of room for stamps in my passport (uuuuuuugggggh firstworldproblems) and needed to get me more before I moved on from Argentina. I showed up at the giant gated complex, walked right around the long line, flashed my passport, and got VIP treatment. Ameeeerrriiicaaaa!! (it made me feel more than kind of bad). They did confiscate all of my stuff, though, not trusting me with whatever electronic devices and mystery liquids (Nalgene bottle of water) I was carrying with me. I took a number, waited 30 minutes, filled out a form, paid the fee and handed over my passport, and was told to come back in four hours.

So I walked across the street to the large green spot on my map which turned out to be a perfectly acceptable city park and curled up on the grass and read a book for a few hours, then getting stiff, got up and walked around, discovering an immense and beautiful rose garden where I stopped and, you guessed it, smelled them roses.

Rose garden. Okay, maybe this city stuff isn't all bad after all.

The four hours up, I wandered back over to the Embassy, skipped the line again, had my stuff confiscated again (although this time I was handed plastic retrieval number 69 with a wink and an obscene comment from the Argentinian guard who thought he was being awfully clever). I then waited 40 minutes behind a VERY ANGRY woman, cut straight out of a SNL-style mold for a middle-aged butch lesbian, who, impatient about her 40 minute wait time, kept turning to me and mumbling variations on "fucking cunt" under her breath anytime the mini-skirted and heavily made-up and bejeweled Porteña in epic platform heels currently being served at the desk loudly vented her difficulties in obtaining a fiancé visa.

Meanwhile, some great propaganda was playing on the televisions hanging in the waiting hall. Fascinating and successful ethnic-looking people talking about how the U.S. is the Land of Opportunity and how they've managed to Maintain their Cultural Identity while enjoying the Great Mixing Pot that is Ameeerrriicaaa and making lots of blonde friends. Features of Women and Muslims Conquering the Business World. A segment on Black History Month. The funny part: 90% of it was recognizably filmed on USC's campus, and of course the "Universities: The Nation's Jewels" was all about TROJAN PRIDE! Fight on!

Anyhow, I eventually got my passport back, now fat with lots of new pages that I'm going to have a hard time filling before the passport expires, especially at my rate of travel (2 countries in over 6 months? Come ON).

By then I was starving, so I rolled into the first not-sketchy looking sandwich shop I found and ordered their biggest sandwich, with fries and a beer, and sat on the street and ate my sandwich and drank my beer, all while attempting to not be angry about being in a city. I felt like crap. I was tired, exhausted. I felt unduly emotional and grumpy. I had weird cramps. I was dizzy a lot. I was bloated. I had been nauseated almost daily for a few hours in the morning for almost two months. It was like really bad PMS, except...I was still months overdue in the monthly bleeding department, so I was also worried, and I worried about that while I ate my sandwich.

I couldn't be pregnant, having not engaged in the requisite activities, apologies to Mary Mother of God. And I'm normally a bombproof regular bleeder: I've never missed a period despite long periods of heavy exercise, crazy travel, serious stress, major illness, and several of those combined. I worried that something serious was wrong, and wondered if I should see a doctor. Or could I be pregnant? That would have pretty disturbing implications involving being drugged and raped, something I assumed I would at least have had a clue about after the fact. I finished my sandwich, and skulked back to the hostel, now in a decidedly worse mood.

I was finally allowed to check in, and promptly claimed a top bunk as My Domain, and sat there catching up on emails and stuff for a few hours, avoiding conversation and avoiding smiling at people like an antisocial jerk. The others in my room were a group of sick Norwegians, which made me even grumpier. Fed up with my sulky self, I kicked myself out of bed, put on running clothes, and went for a run to my newly-discovered park. Which was full of kissing lovers. Which made me even grumpier. I returned back to the hostel in a supremely foul mood, showered, drank a huge happy hour beer by myself, still avoiding people, went out for a lonely and mediocre dinner, returned to the hostel, stuffed the earplugs in, and went to sleep.

Black Market Dealings and My Imaginary Fetus

I went running again the next morning, attempting to shake my funk that had started on the way back from Antarctica and that had been following me like a shouldered albatross. I ran and ran and ran, then did situps until I felt like I wanted to puke, then thought about maybe being rape-pregnant again. To distract myself, I decided to go have an Argentine Adventure and head downtown to do some black market money exchanging. I was wildly successful, shopping around for the best rates, hunting down the best traders, doing shady behind-dumpster deals, discreetly hiding my multiple stashes of cash money obtained from various sources so that nobody would know how much I was actually carrying, and coming away almost twice as rich as I had started the day. I bought myself some semi-stylish, inexpensive sandals to celebrate, my cute Chiloe shoes having been completely worn to sole-less. And I went to a pharmacy and bought a pregnancy test.

Downtown BA

Parktown BA

Then I decided to go explore another of the green spots on the city map, a big nature reserve nearby. It was surprising nature-y and I found a nice spot to sit on a bench and read more of my book, but I couldn't focus. I kept thinking about being pregnant. What if I was?

I thought about it. I've always wanted kids. I sure didn't ever want to have them under the circumstance of having been drugged-raped, but I still thought that if there was a child inside me, I wanted to be its mother. Then I remembered all of the drinking I had done in the past months and felt immediately terribly guilty, and apologized profusely to my imaginary fetus. I assumed everyone I knew would think I was crazy if I decided to have the baby, but an abortion was out of the question for me. I'm not the sort of person to picket abortion clinics because for me it's a personal and not a black and white moral issue (besides, it seems to me that picketing abortion clinics is an ineffective and jackass way of going about an extremely sensitive and personal issue). But for me, ever since seeing a collection of pickled fetuses at various developmental stages at a museum, it's been burned in my head that a fetus is little human, and humans have a right to live, and that right to live outweighs my right to anything except maybe my own physical safety (and in a battle of self-defense, sorry fetus...I've got a bit of an upper hand). I also never bought the "life worth living" argument because who am I to judge what sort of life is worth living? Someone I had the Abortion Conversation once asked me if I would feel the same way if I found out my fetus had Down's Syndrome. Of course! I know it would be difficult, but I would happily be the mother of a child (and adult) with Down's. Some of the nicest, happiest, and arguably wisest people I know have Down's. Anyhow, I knew that was a discussion, and a difficult one, that I would have to have with many of my best friends, most of whom are militantly pro-choice. Not to mention the "no, I don't want to give it up for adoption just because I would be a single mom," conversation with my family.

All that thinking made me need to pee, convenient, since that's what is needed for the pregnancy test, which in the middle of all that thinking, I had sat and read the Spanish instructions for (having never had the occasion to take a pregnancy test before). I needed a 10-second stream of 3-hour old pee. Whatever that meant, but I was pretty sure I had that. I looked around, crawled off into the apparently alligator infested (? really?) bushes, and peed on the end of a little white and purple plastic stick, which yes, was weird.

Modo de uso: How to find out if you've got a 2-month old proto-human incubating inside you in three easy steps. The fact that urine probably shouldn't be blue doesn't seem to bother these people.

Not in the pregnancy test directions but conveniently posted elsewhere: avoid getting eaten by alligators.

Then I capped it, and decided to not spend the next 5 minutes obsessively watching it to find out my fate for the next rest of my life, and went off to walk to the beach. I got to the beach, sat down, held my breath, pulled the stick out of my purse, and...

BAM

Not pregnant.

I was simultaneously relieved, a tad disappointed, and suddenly scared. Because if I wasn't pregnant, then I probably had Cancer Part 4 involving a tumor the size of a basketball that had taken over my overies, or had been infected by aliens, or was otherwise Seriously Messed Up.

The Recovery

Back at the hostel, I vented my concerns to the Former PhD Advisor Known as Frank, who asked me if I was maybe anemic. Anemic! Yes! That would explain everything! I had always had problems with mild anemia, and with the exception of the occasional asado, had been eating very little in the iron department. Excellent, I thought, I'm only in the best place in the whole world to fix this problem: Argentina, the land of Great Steak. So I immediately set out to eat ALL THE STEAK. (yes, I know there are other ways to get iron, but I love steak, and when in Argentina...)

So I asked for advice about where to go to get steak, and was told that if I hurried, there was a restaurant a 15 minute walk away that had a Steak Happy Hour that involved showing up at the door and getting in line 20 minutes before opening at 6:40, getting seated at 7:00 and quickly ordering, and snarfing down the food before the clock hit 8:00, when the classier customers would start showing up and the cheap backpackers would get booted from their tables. Perfect. So off I went, and I found the place, and in line I met Londoner Rob who was a Steak Happy Hour regular, and who suggested we share a table in a sort of blind speed date, "The best part is if we hate eachother, we know we get kicked out in an hour!" Except Rob was a super fun guy to talk to and also knew which steak to order, which meant that we ended up with this:

All that...for me?
(note the look of excitement mixed with terror on my face)
And yes, I ate it. For health purposes.

Needless to say, I immediately felt a whole world better. Seriously. And it was steak for every meal I could get from there on out. And it was like I was a whole new person.

The next day I went running again and didn't mind the lovers making out in the park so much. Good for them.

I braved new adventures, like the post office, which turned into a big freaking fiasco that took two hours and involved me using every trick in my feminine portfolio short of offering sexual favors (actually it was the getting all feisty and argumentative that finally did the job, the whole "I'm going to be such a pain in your ass that you're going to beg me to let you do what I want so that I'll shut up and leave you alone" trick) to get them to ship my damned box. I eventually won.

Just SEND THE DAMNED PACKAGE! uuuuggghhhh

Then I went to go track down a place to buy ferry tickets to Uruguay, since I had heard that Uruguay was the Magical Land of Dollars where I could get more money to smuggle back into Argentina. Except that after a solid hour of wandering around getting lost trying to find the place they would only let me pay in dollars. "If I had them, why would I be going to Uruguay?" I asked. I didn't have any more dollars, and the tickets were really expensive, which totally defeated the purpose. Grumpy again, I consoled myself with more steak. Or rather attempted to, but the place that promised they had what I wanted didn't after I sat down, so I had to settle for chicken smothered in cheese which is what they brought me as the replacement, which both sucks and I'm allergic to. Grumpiness level increased. Plus I had blisters. Damnit.

But then I went with my roommate--fellow transplanted Angelino Emily, a vivacious Hollywood costume designer--back to the steak restaurant and all was well again. Well enough that we decided to go out and get ourselves some tango lessons at a milonga. It was pouring rain when we finished our meal (promptly, of course, at 8:00), so we took a taxi to the dance hall. Lessons, it turned out, weren't going to start for another two hours. So we ordered a bottle of wine. Tango music was playing on the speakers and there was a dance floor, so some intrepid young gentlemen found their way to where we were sitting and spun us around a bit, patient with our lack of skill.

That's me in the green dress

When the lessons started, I was immediately grabbed by a dashing young man who turned out to be a pediatric surgeon doing his residency in Buenos Aires, and who loved to tango and danced very well. Why he picked me as a dance partner I will never know, but I didn't argue, because he was fun, and it meant that I got to go to the advanced class with him. While practicing, I chatted with my partner, Ariel, and half fell in love as he told me more and more about himself and his world-saving dreams, except he confessed that he didn't like snow so I knew there was no future for us. Class ended and we rejoined the rest of the group, but I danced with the surgeon until morning, arriving back at the hostel just in time to sleep three hours before the hostel owner woke me up with a gentle shake, telling me they needed me to check out.

He woke me from one of the most vivid, colorful dreams I can ever remember having, probably a result of all of the iron now flooding my system.

Buenos Aires Dream Sequence

In the dream, I was back in the tango club, except the club not a dance hall but a dingy and cavernous warehouse, dimly lit with a few lamps on the tables scattered by the bar and one hot spotlight on the unpolished wood dance floor. The bare concrete walls were decorated with a chaos of abstract paintings on unframed  canvasses, held together by red tones that were probably pulled straight from memories of La Luna Negra, my favorite Spanish tapas restaurant back in Pasadena. The giveaway that I was dreaming was the massive anatomic heart sculpture, the size of a room, hanging red and bloody looking from the ceiling above the bar, seemingly pulsating slowly to--or was it the source of?--the beat of the nostalgic tango music.

My pediatric surgeon was back, but he was a gaucho now, lost and out of place in this big city but at home among the bola performers and wistful old couples. He took my hand and we danced, not in the solid open frame I had learned, but the close embrace of lovers. He led me through the slow walks and twirls with the pressure of his cheekbones alone and my steps were long and elegant and sensual like how I always imagined tango being.

In the middle of tango-ing, we were treated to a bola show at the Milonga

We melted together in my dream.

"I have a secret." He whispered. "I am a gaucho."
"I know," I whispered back.
"I live on a secret Ranchito in the city."

Then he took me to his Ranchito, except he was driving my car, except my car was white. He parked at a pediatric hospital in the middle of an old neighborhood, and led me to a tall black gate. "Welcome to my Ranchito," he said, as he opened the gate.

Inside was a secret garden. There were bushes of rosemary, jasmine, and thyme. In pots he was nursing a dozen exotic flowers that looked like jewels. He picked one with long red petals, like one of the tubeworms from hydrothermal vents, a tube of red lipstick, and gave it to me with a kiss. I followed him through rows of squash and tomatoes and corn. It was my friend Vicky's backyard garden, except everything was oversized, including an avocado tree the size of a house with avocados like hard, green grapefruits. It was lit through the fruit trees by the full moon. The city had disappeared.

In the middle of the secret garden was a round, orange, one-room earthen hut, sculpted in Cobb, straight out of one of my sustainable building books. On the outside were reliefs of serpentine trees. On the inside, sculpted onto the wall, the word AMOR. Love. Wine bottles built into the earth walls let the moonlight shine through in glittering green. Gritty tango music from a hundred years ago played over a radio that seemed at least as old.

We danced. Kissed. Sat down on his small bed covered in a wispy canopy of mosquito netting. "Do you want a baby?" he asked, "Un pequeño gauchito?"

And that's when I woke up to the shaking of the hostel owner back in the dorm room with Emily, who was still passed out.

I wrote this down because that is how I want to remember Buenos Aires: romantic, surreal, haunted with nostalgia, and saturated with the sound of tango music. And also because when I woke up I found an inexplicable, hard, green, grapefruit-sized avocado and a flower in my purse.

Emily and I decided that the proper course of action
was to leave the avocado as a ritual welcome gift for
the next guest a the hostel, hoping that it would lead
them to their own Buenos Aires adventures.

Epilogue

In various states of hangover and exhaustion, Emily and I went out to brunch to soak up the fun of the night before and then went to check out the colorful neighborhood of La Boca, which turned out to be crazily, but sort of fun in a Disneyland-esque way, toursity. We were both exhausted so we didn't last long, but we had some fun before crawling back to the hostel to take naps: her in a comfortable bed, me on a couch in the computer room since I had been unceremoniously kicked out of my bed.

Me and Emily, reliving our crazy previous night

La Boca

Emily and I and a few others from our hostel room (including the Mexican guy who I had been sleeping on top of the whole week but who had such an opposite schedule to mine that I only knew he was there because every time he rolled over the bunk would threaten to shake me out of the top bed, but he turned out to be really cool) went out to a final dinner, and then I said goodbye to this lovely, bizarre, magical city and hopped on an overnight bus to Córdoba.

Check out the story from Emily's perspective told on her blog.

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