How am I to find the naturalness, artlessness, utter self-abandonment of nature in the utmost artificiality of human works? This is the great problem set before us these days.
— D. T. SUZUKI
MARCH 31, 2002, EASTER SUNDAY, PUERTO NATALES
I heard a siren a while ago and it surprised me. I’d forgotten sirens. Here in town, I’m surrounded by sound: horns honking, motors roaring, dogs barking, and the hum of human voices — laughing and talking — grounding and punctuating all else. Human-generated noise is so different from the wind and water music of the island. Only the creative meowing of Cat is absent. I miss the pup. He ’s in Texas with Patti and her family — lounging like a prince inside their house.
It’s cold and grey outside. Winter is closing in and I’m sitting in the cozy kitchen of this small pension because my $4 a day room has no heat. I’m the only guest now that tourist season is over, and it’s peaceful here. I don’t know how long I’ll stay, but I’m in no hurry to leave this quiet corner of the world to head up to the hurly-burly of Santiago. Still, it’s cold and grey outside and the warmth of the North is calling.
I’m fasting for the first time since leaving the island more than two weeks ago and my head aches. I’ve neglected exercising and my shoulders are tight and sore. But little by little I’m reestablishing the daily practice of meditation, thanksgiving, and exercise. I’ve also been reading the frivolous stuff I found in the lobby, left I suppose by previous guests; GQ magazine, of all things. I was deep into an analysis of the social significance of Britney Spears’s religious orientation when the church bells started to ring. I walked over to hear Easter Mass.
Today is the resurrection, the heart of Christianity and a truly joyful day, yet I feel awash in loneliness and sorrow. Strange that in solitude I was often lost in imagined social belonging, and now among people I sit alone and long for solitude again. Even though I’ve made warm acquaintances here in town, I often still feel cut off and disconnected. I miss Patti. I also miss Susan. She’s decided to not continue our relationship, and I feel hurt and angry even though we made no promises. Ah shit, life does go on.
It’s been weeks since my last journal entry, and a lot has happened since then. In the days before Patti arrived on the island, I was both eager to see her and sorry that my time in solitude was ending. I kept counting the days, and time flew. I worried — with good reason — that once no longer alone I would slip off center, become entangled in distractions, and forget to open and reopen my heart to Spirit. Wham! Now I must learn to integrate solitude with social life.
LAST MONTH ON THE ISLAND
On the day arranged via satellite phone, the Chilean Navy arrived with Patti in a semiwild sea, and I ran out in the inflatable to pick her up. The navy left and we toured some to give Patti a quick sense of the place. Then we went ashore where Cat was waiting. “Whoa, what’s this? Another human being? I thought there was only one.” It took him a few days to get used to her, but then they became good friends. Hearing voices in the cabin, he stopped yowling on the porch. What a relief.
On the second day of Patti’s visit we took the boat for an afternoon cruise along Staines Peninsula and watched a gorgeous sunset. Next day we crossed the eastern channel and up an inlet to the foot of the Andes. Far from camp, the motor started to seriously misfire. I didn’t dare shut it down to tinker, so we limped along and hoped to make it home. Luckily, the weather held and we managed to crawl to our beach before the motor died completely. It never ran again, even though I worked on it quite a bit during the following days.
I was disappointed that Patti wouldn’t have a chance to see more of the area, but what a blessing that the motor hadn’t died during the previous months when I was far from camp. I took it to a mechanic here in Puerto Natales and it turned out to have a blown head gasket. Amazing that it lasted the year.
Patti brought a video camera with her to the island. In Punta Arenas she ’d met a crew of documentary filmmakers, and when she told them about my project, they encouraged her to buy a camera, and also showed her how to use it. I’d never thought about videoing during the year, but now it seemed the perfect thing to do. It was another way to depict life on the island, and would also serve as a mirror in which I could see myself from a different perspective.
We began to shoot . . . or rather Patti began to shoot and I began to talk. In fact, I seldom shut up — whether the camera was recording or not. This startled Patti since she was prepared to find me a semimute recluse and had expected little conversation for the first week or so. Instead, she found a raving jabber box. Patti was a natural behind the camera: good eye for framing and angle; delicate perception; smooth transitions and zooming. I pretty much directed the project, even though I tried to not be too demanding. Happily, we agreed on what needed to be recorded. Cat turned into a ham. He wanted to be in every shot, or perhaps, to be wherever I was. As he had all along, he continued to assert his presence.
For the first days Patti was there, the weather was amazingly warm and sunny. This would never do. For a year I’d been journaling about how tough the climate is, and now the video footage would show only warm sunny days. The lull lasted less than a week, and then the wind and rain raged in again.
Being in front of the camera was interesting. At first it felt perfectly natural. I was simply telling my story without concern for effect or appearance. But as the days went by, a subtle shift took place. I started to feel like an actor concerned with my image — my external appearance. In conjunction with this change, I started to lose my sense of steady centeredness, began to feel a bit hollow and less real. And this was after just a few hours of playing an actor portraying my own life.
Two questions: The first, of course, is the obvious one about how professional actors and actresses manage — or perhaps don’t manage — to maintain a sense of their own inner reality when they’re constantly in the limelight both on and off the set. The second may be just as obvious, but we’re so constantly “on stage” in our lives — always projecting an image for those around us, often at the cost of our own sense of self — that it seldom gets asked. How can we live in the social whirl and not become so caught in the dance that we lose track of our own inner rhythms?
One answer is to make do with less in almost all aspects of our lives: less money, less excitement, less peer respect, less....This creates space to explore who or what craves more of everything and why. It is, in part, this exploration that keeps the home fire burning.
We finished most of the shooting by March 1 and received word that the navy would pick us up on the fifteenth. Ouch. That day life would change in a big way. We relaxed for a few days and then started to pack.
But first I harvested my lettuce crop. It was pretty meager, even though I had tried everything I could think of to encourage the plants to grow. I’d mixed kelp into the soil and peed onto it; put the plants into direct sunlight and brought them inside on chilly nights. Nothing worked. The largest leaf on the dozen scraggly plants that still survived was about the size of my smallest fingernail. But I harvested it with a flourish and ate it with tweezers, glad I hadn’t spent a lot of time and energy planting a garden.
I was tempted to leave the cabin in place; much easier physically and emotionally to just pack the gear and go. German had suggested I leave it as a refuge for others since it was the only shelter in the whole region. It was painful to destroy the home I’d worked so hard to build, but I didn’t want to make it easy for someone else to come there. It had been difficult for me and I felt it should remain that way. Mostly, though, I didn’t want to extend our human hegemony. I’d come as a visitor and stayed as a guest. I wanted to leave the island as much as possible as it had been when I arrived. I wanted to give the sea and sky and mountains back to themselves and to the beings who live there. I wanted the island to remain unnamed.
One day at the point, I asked Patti if she could see faces in the rock walls of Staines Peninsula. She could, and they were the same faces I’d been bowing to for the past months. I told her how viscerally real those beings seemed to me, even though I knew they were projections of my mind. She smiled and asked, “How do you know that?” Her question stopped me in my tracks. How indeed did I know that? In many animistic cultures those faces would simply be accepted as real beings. It’s the scientific rational mind that denies such possibilities.
Preparing to leave the island was a lot of work. We waterproofed everything we didn’t need, moved onto the porch, evicting Cat in the process, and tore down the cabin. Then we set up the tent on a temporary platform, covered the whole area with a tarp, and demolished the porch. The weather was foul the whole time and it rarely stopped raining. I worried that the lumber would be too wet to burn and we wouldn’t be ready to leave when the navy arrived, but we were lucky and had two almost rain-free days just when we needed them.
Patti kept the fire stoked while I carried the cabin and outhouse floors, roofs, and framing. She stripped to sports bra and shorts, and, drenched in sweat and semicooked by the heat of the roaring flames, looked like a stolid peasant woman or a minion of hell. Only coals remained when the tide came in and washed the beach clean.
Once everything burnable was burned, we scoured the site for screws and nails. We were left with ten large nylon bags of trash that was mostly plastic I’d picked up from beaches during the year and tarp that had covered the shelter. What a muddy grueling job it all was. I pushed both of us pretty hard to get it done, but Patti never complained. There were a few prickly moments between us, but considering the circumstance and the fact that I’d had the island to myself for a year, we did well together. Patti always cares for me, and I tried hard to be kind to her in turn.
As a going-away present, the wind shifted and day after day howled in from the south to pound our exposed shelter. It wiped us out, but we had to keep working to be ready for the navy.
LAST DAY ON THE ISLAND
CONAF emailed that the navy would arrive at noon. We would be ready. All we had left to do that morning was take down the tarp, unhook the propane tank, pack up the tent, and dismantle the temporary platform. We got started about 8 AM and thought we had plenty of time. But at 9 the navy ship hove into view. Another storm was brewing and they wanted to reach Puerto Natales before it hit. The officer in charge of the landing party told me that we had only an hour and twenty minutes to leave the island. He said their orders were to take Patti, me, and our important gear, and to leave the rest behind. I told him I wouldn’t leave until we had cleared everything from the beach, and if we hurried, we could make it.
The enlisted men were fantastic. We were all rushing to tear down the tarp and temporary platform, and haul everything out to the ship a quarter mile off shore. Meanwhile the officer kept saying that we ’d have to leave the trash and that they would come back another time to pick it up. I kept saying no. The discussion grew more intense and confrontational until I flat out told him that unless we took everything, I wasn’t going either. He repeated that he had to obey his orders to take Patti, me, and our important gear.
Patti was great. She told me to do what I needed to do, and if they left me there, she would find a way to come back and pick me up. I knew that if they did leave me, I’d be in serious trouble because all the food and camping gear was already on the ship. The officer said his commander had told him via radio to bring me to the ship so he could talk with me in person and that they would finish bringing the stuff from the beach. He gave me his word that they would bring absolutely everything, but at the last minute I decided that leaving before the beach was completely clean would be a major mistake.
That’s when things got nasty. I finally held out my hands and said that with respect for him and his point of view, I had to honor my commitment to God, to nature, to myself, and to CONAF to clean up before I left. Otherwise my whole project would be meaningless. The only way I’d go before the beach was clean was in handcuffs. He backed down. It was time for me to compromise, too, so we could all feel ok about the situation. I agreed to leave the 2×4s from the tent platform since they’re raw wood. I hid them under the trees where they’ll quickly rot.
Once on board the commander greeted us politely, and I apologized for the corner I’d put him in. Everyone cooled down and we got underway. Patti smiled and said, “Welcome back to the world.” I’d built a traveling box for Cat, and the crew said I should put him in the hold with our gear. I didn’t argue even though it was dark and noisy down there, and I think he was sort of freaked by what was happening. At least it was warmer and drier there than on the deck.
The confrontation on the beach was, I think, mostly a misunderstanding and a minor part of all my interactions with the Chilean Navy. It would have been much more difficult and expensive to travel to and from the island without their support. Shortly before we reached Puerto Natales the crew apologized and said it was a national law that they had to charge us $16 USD per person per day on the ship: a total of $64 for taking me and my gear, bringing Patti, and picking both of us and all our gear up again. Imagine that. The storm never materialized and the trip back to Puerto Natales was flat calm. We arrived after dark and the crew unloaded the gear onto the dock and covered it in case of rain. We were exhausted.
DEATH OF A MENTOR AND 9/11
When Patti arrived at the island in February, she brought the first news of the outside world I’d had in over a year. Deneal Amos, the leader of the spiritual community where we ’d met, had died the previous spring. He ’d been a strong presence in our lives as a mentor and source of strength and comfort. We’d both felt close to him for a long time, and we’d known that if things ever got really rough, we could always go to Deneal. Now he was gone, and it seemed like there was a hole in the world where he ’d been.
It felt strange not knowing about his death for so long, especially since I’d sent him loving-kindness meditation each day during the year. It also felt like the torch had been passed. As long as Deneal was alive we could lay the main responsibility for maintaining spiritual practice in the world on him and on others like him. Now it was time for us to assume that responsibility ourselves; time for each of us to do our part in keeping awareness of Spirit alive in our lives. If I’ve learned anything of importance in solitude, it’s how empty and futile life is without spiritual grounding — however Spirit manifests itself to each of us.
Patti also brought news of September 11, 2001. Hearing about it didn’t affect me very deeply, because by then all the activities of humanity seemed no more than a vague smudge on the far horizon. From the city, and even from this small town where I now sit writing, the island — and other remote corners of the Earth where we humans have not yet left our mark — seems distant and somehow unreal; a fading remnant of what once was. But on the island, especially during the last months, that far-off region of nature was the ancient center of my world. All the frantic activity of human society — cities, highways, pollution, and endless frothing news reports — were an ethereal dream.
So hearing that two of those phantom buildings, among so many, had been destroyed didn’t mean much in the huge endless pulse of the universe.
Since my return to the electronically interconnected social world, I’ve been asked if being one of the few literate people on Earth unaware of the events of 9/11 until five months later, and being spared the incessant media barrage, gives me a unique perspective. I don’t know. But much of the U.S. political commentary I’ve read online these past two weeks feels alien to me. Spending a year in solitude seems to have changed my perception of many things, including politics. I now have a more spacious view than I did. This doesn’t mean my view is the only right one, but some things do seem clearer than before. This apparent clarity is a bit odd since the universe is also deeply mysterious to me.
We sometimes lose sight of the basic facts of our existence: Life will continue — maybe not just the way we would like it to, but continue nonetheless. Everyone dies. There always has been and apparently always will be pain and darkness in our lives. Killing other people, except in immediate self-defense, is rarely, possibly never, justified.
Many more than three thousand people die in the world each day from unnecessary starvation and preventable disease. Probably more people die in the United States each month from gunshots, smoking, drug and alcohol abuse, and the lack of affordable medical care. These deaths usually go unremarked and often seem as unreal to most people as 9/11 does to me. The news media are largely responsible for unnecessarily and overdramatically whipping up public alarm after 9/11.
In learning about the attack five months later, I couldn’t understand why so many people had felt such panic until I realized that at the time no one knew what was happening or where events might lead: perhaps to nuclear holocaust! But the actual physical threat of nuclear war was negligible.
I think it more likely that the level of public anxiety rose so sharply because people began to doubt one of their fundamental assumptions: Modern social structures are more real than, and can control, the inevitable and endlessly changing cycles of life . . . and death. Suddenly, everything felt much riskier than before. I felt that same anxiety as I struggled to accept my vulnerability alone in the wilderness.
From across the political spectrum here in southern Chile, the opinion I’ve most often heard expressed is that while all acts of terrorism are abhorrent, the United States is not blameless. People from all social classes point out that for many years the U.S. has interfered with the internal politics of sovereign nations throughout the Third World in the service of its own economic interests — sometimes benevolently, but often by supporting murderous dictators. This doesn’t mean U.S. foreign policy is worse than that of many other countries, but in spite of rhetoric to the contrary, it’s frequently no better. The major difference, one that makes the U.S. unique in our time, is its unprecedented power to impose its will.
Craving physical, emotional, and psychological security can lead us to project our fear, hatred, and cruelty onto those we label Evil. In the often violent relations between adversarial cultures, each may honestly believe it is peace-loving and innocent — even holy — and is defending itself against others intent on its destruction.
In the collective projections of the cultural groups involved in 9/11, I believe I recognize the process by which I projected my own dark shadow onto the wind, and so experienced it as malevolent. I began to see through this unconscious process only when I relaxed my psychological defenses and allowed myself to become vulnerable. Doing so was terrifying, precisely because I believed the wind was intent on my destruction.
There is, though, a difference between my personal shift in perception of the wind and the collective shifts required if different cultures are to live together in peace. Even when I viscerally felt the wind was out to get me, I knew cognitively that it was unlikely to be so. This is not necessarily the case among humans. We are at times viciously aggressive, and we do sometimes seek revenge for past wrongs.
It is difficult and also useful to take a large step back and attempt to disidentify with our “own side” in the current conflict and try to imagine how we would view the situation if positions were reversed and we were the Saudi or Afghan (or Iraqi) people and they were we. We might remember that in spite of everything, we are all in the soup of Life together, and that each of us is a manifestation of underlying Spirit. But sadly, and perhaps suicidally, we appear to be choosing a different path.
Did the world radically change with the events of 9/11? Psychologically, it probably did for a lot of people. Like it or not — though many are still in denial — it’s now clear that the United States can no longer dominate the globe with impunity. The question is whether we will join the dance of the international community gracefully as a willing partner, or be dragged onto the floor kicking and screaming. My perspective may seem hopelessly naive to those who believe there will always be some nations above and others below. Better that we should stay on top. Perhaps, but the price of dominion is high. Blinded by projected fear and assumptions of their own righteousness, and certain that their personal beliefs are True, secular and religious fanatics on all sides insist that global cooperation is impossible, but I think it worth a try.
There are so many ways to think about and describe our encounter with the Sacred. What enormous suffering and destruction we have wrought by mistaking our descriptions for what they describe and by becoming slaves to the dogma we ourselves have created. Instead of seeking common ground, we often demand compliance and condemn apparent difference.
As far as I can tell, life in southern Chile seems much the same as it did when I went into solitude. If I hadn’t been told about 9/11, I doubt I would notice any difference between the world as it is now and as it was before. And, of course, the world has not changed for the sea, the sky, and the wind, or for the Orange Bill Butter-Belly Diving Ducks.
BACK IN PUERTO NATALES
From the dock where the navy left us, Patti, Cat, and I caught a ride to the pension where she had stayed before coming to the island. We settled in and stayed for the next ten days. Cat had no experience with town or traffic, and I thought he might get either lost or killed, so we kept him confined indoors. He was very good considering that he ’d previously had total freedom to roam the island hunting and fishing. But jeez, switching him to canned catfood sure caused him to shit a lot. Truly amazing amounts for an animal his size. The smell was also pretty amazing.
I went round and round about whether to give Cat to the national parks people, who wanted to take him to a field station in a remote location with no roads, or to ask Patti to take him to Texas. Since he didn’t understand Spanish or the local customs, I finally decided to send him north and hoped he would be ok in the change to a new environment. I purchased an official traveling cage and arranged for shots and the necessary permits.
Town wasn’t difficult only for Cat; it was for me, too. I had a lot of work to do, and even though Puerto Natales is a small place, I felt battered by the noise and the swirl of people and traffic. But there were also the delicious pleasures of hot showers and ice cream.
Last Tuesday, we caught the bus to Punta Arenas and checked into a fairly nice hotel. They would accept Cat only if we promised to keep him shut up in the bathroom. As soon he was alone, he started to cry. To comfort him, I laid my coat on the floor so he would have something to lie on and to smell. I’m not sure if he had a seizure in the night, or if he was expressing his general displeasure with the arrangement, but as a going-away gift he peed on my coat. On Thursday morning I said goodbye to Patti and Cat at the airport, and spent the day talking to the owner of a transport company about shipping my gear to Santiago, visiting acquaintances from last year, and wandering the city streets.
Patti calls the island Soledad since it has no written on the map name. It lies just south of Owen Island, so I sometimes think of it as Son of Owen. Mostly, though, I like to remember it through its own language rather than through mine. It is its own place and better left without a human name.
MAY 11, 2002, LA ÚLTIMA ESPERANZA
I’m a silent loner here on board, without much urge to mingle. In the midst of all these people, just being who I am feels not good enough. On the Puerto Natales beach, sitting alone with the sea, the mountains, and the sky, peace and self-acceptance flowed back so easily. But Puerto Natales is gone now, a day and a half to the south. I’m on the NAVIMAG ferry heading north through the channels of La Última Esperanza toward the town of Puerto Montt, still two days away. An hour ago we passed the passage that leads to the island where I spent a year of my life, but I was sleeping and missed it. Still, it’s wonderful to be among the wild islands and waterways again.
It was easy to be in Natales, hard to leave. During the last two weeks there I met several people I really liked and became closer to Ruben and Jovina, the owners of the pension where I stayed after taking Patti to the airport. My lessons — over and over — are to accept and forgive my own flaws and those of other people. Will I ever learn?
During the last days in Puerto Natales I finally built and packed two crates with all my gear. I gave my leftover food supplies to the Red Cross, and didn’t have much luck selling the stuff I didn’t want to ship. One of the batteries went for $30 and I traded the other for this ferry passage. I gave the pick and shovel to Ruben in trade for eggs and phone calls, and also left him the fishing float I found last year, so I’ll have something to come back for. The transport company is charging very little to ship the crates to Santiago, and it should cost only $500–600 USD from there to Vancouver.
I went fishing twice with the Puerto Natales Fishing Club. The first time we waded out over slippery rocks to cast for salmon in the ocean. Everyone caught fish but me. I didn’t have even a strike and suspected I was ruining Canada’s sporting reputation. The next time we fished for trout from the shore of a lake with a cold wind blowing straight in at us. Eighteen of us were closely scattered along the water’s edge casting out and reeling in. The guy to my left caught a nice one; the guy to my right caught a nice one, too. Me, not even a strike.
Semiwet and chilled from half falling in, I was muttering to myself how much I dislike this kind of communal fishing when, wham, a fish on the line. My very lightweight rod and reel ensured a fierce fight. An hour later another strike and another nice fish. Something called me to let this one go, which I did — to the amusement of the other guys for whom fishing is a competitive social activity. They always keep and weigh everything they catch to see who has caught the most and the biggest fish. But nothing goes to waste. They either eat the fish themselves, or give it to their neighbors.
They quit fishing before sunset, but I stayed on with the lake and sky to myself. As the sun fell behind the hills, I told myself, “Just one more cast, then I’ll quit, too.” Wham! This one fought much harder than the other two, and each time I had it nearly to the beach, it stripped out line again. I finally landed and kept it, too. Each fish weighed more than six pounds and was bigger than any trout I’d caught before. There was still light when I made it to camp, so I picked up a bunch of trash left strewn by previous campers. What a joyful day.
I became a mini-celebrity in the South — interviewed for newspapers and on radio and television. The first interview was with a reporter from the Punta Arenas daily newspaper who was waiting for me when I returned to Natales. He ’d heard about my retreat the previous spring, and during the year had checked with CONAF from time to time to see if I was still out there and still alive. His article captured the spirit and some sense of what the year had been about. The local television and radio stations invited me on for long interviews, and a reporter from the national newspaper, El Mercurio, wrote a front-page story.
That same day I received an email from the magazine Revista Caras in Santiago asking for an exclusive. Friends say that if I want to be known in Chile, Caras is the way to go; everyone reads it. But the article will likely be shallow and trite. The journalist wants to title it “Tale of a Shipwrecked Man,” which is dumb since being forced to survive in solitude after a shipwreck has little to do with choosing it freely.
I had a brain wave, though. Rather than trust them to write an accurate story, I could write it myself in Spanish and give it to them. Last night I started to write and soon realized I didn’t know what I could say that would give a glimpse of what I’ve been doing for the past year. With the recent attention, I’ve sort of lost sight of the fact that I really don’t have any polished gems of wisdom to offer. I’m still just ambling along myself. Up and down.
I can’t tell if the public recognition is swelling my ego or not. It’s nice, but under the surface glitter my life is still just what it is. I can feel myself building a shell around my heart, and even with people I still feel lonely and alone. I tell myself it’s because I’m not involved sexually with anyone, but in the past this hollow longing has arisen even in relationship.
I think Cat is dead. He disappeared from Patti’s house over a week ago. I miss him. Given my lifestyle, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever take him back from Patti, but I miss him nonetheless. I wonder if he was hit by a car, killed by a seizure or a coyote, or got tired of waiting and set out to search for me. North America seems to have gobbled him up. I wonder if it will devour me, too.
I also wonder what the year would have been like without him. He was such an integral part of my life in solitude, and I learned so much in my interactions with him. In some ways, our relationship was as intense as any I’ve shared with another human.
My heart hurts when I think of Cat; I can feel myself shutting down with the unwillingness to go through the pain again. Over and over I invest so much emotional energy in relationships just to lose my partner. Still, I’m glad for what I shared with the pup.
MAY 13, 2002, PUERTO MONTT
The ferry docked last night, but we were allowed to sleep on board. I could have gone on to Santiago with the truck carrying my crates, but decided not to. Yesterday I cast an I Ching asking if I should go straight to Santiago, and received hexagram 12: Stand Still. (Ascent of dark, inferior people. Withdraw into inner calm and accept no remuneration.) Important advice. I can see that I’m becoming caught in my desire for recognition. If I do, I’ll lose the peace and joy of simply living in the moment.
For now, I’m anonymous again; just another tourist sitting on a bench writing in a notebook. No more glum than I often felt on the island, but here it’s harder to accept as part of life ’s ebb and flow. This morning I went to Calvary Hill in a nearby town and followed the Stations of the Cross. I felt stronger empathy, respect, and gratitude for Christ than ever before. He had such courage to follow his spiritual path to the end/beginning. Do I? Is my path also etched in suffering and loss? Is everyone’s?
I also visited a small cathedral built by the Germans who settled here a hundred years ago. It replicates one in the Black Forest near where my mom grew up. The cathedral was closed, and an old woman passing by said it opens only for morning mass. No matter. Just looking into her kind black eyes gave me the peace I was seeking. We can so easily, and often unknowingly, give such gifts to each other.
MAY 15, 2002, PUERTO MONTT
Puerto Montt is a friendly old seaport of maybe a hundred thousand or so. I’d thought to stay only one night, but another cold is trying to get a grip on me, the weather is rainy, and I haven’t felt the urge to move on. Maybe tomorrow.
Yesterday on the way to check for buses to the town of Pucón (where there are hot springs!) I passed a construction site during siesta break. All the guys were playing soccer. Lots of laughter, but they were running hard and playing skillfully, even though many wore rubber boots. One guy had on bib-style rain pants, and another removed his baseball cap with a flourish each time he headed the ball.
Last night I ate shellfish chowder at the fish market by the docks. It cost $3 for a big bowl of clams, mussels, abalone, and barnacles. I was the only customer there and chatted with the lovely fourteen-year-old girl who was cooking and serving. She works eight hours a day every day for $150 a month and goes to school full time, too. She said she gives it all to her family since her dad can’t find work.
MAY 21, 2002, SANTIAGO DE CHILE
How strange to be here again. I’m staying in the same pension and the same room I stayed in nearly a year and a half ago. The cycle has completed itself, and it’s almost as though nothing has changed. That, of course, is frightening. The dread of backsliding, of things never really changing. Already the insights and transformations on the island seem far away.
I caught the bus from Puerto Montt to Pucón, and spent several days soaking for hours in the glorious hot springs not far from town. It was a delight to float in the steaming water under a clear sky and feel warm and relaxed for the first time in many months. I remembered looking forward to such bliss when chilled and hurting on the island.
The bus ride from Pucón to Santiago was a long twelve hours, and during the trip I finally felt I was leaving the wonder of the South behind. The last three hundred miles were especially dull, the highway often lined with billboards and industry. The bus broke down along the route, and while I was waiting beside the road for another one, a man started a conversation and quickly recognized me from the newspaper article. I must admit it’s kind of fun to be famous for a little while.
The Santiago bus station and streets were packed with people. I felt nervous and crowded; watchful for thieves. I’m intimidated here in the city, yet it isn’t much different from needing to be cautious on slippery rocks or in a rough sea. It’s about survival skills and staying alert to the world around me.
JULY 18, 2002, MIAMI, USA
By now I’m used to the new airport security procedures and have learned to not wear socks with holes in them.
My month and a half in Santiago was often socially busy and sometimes quietly lonely. I met and made friends with several people at the Canadian embassy. The woman in charge of public relations arranged a television interview on a program called La Belleza de Pensar (The Beauty of Thinking). The host, Cristián Warnken, is a well-known intellectual, and famous philosophers, authors, scientists, and artists are guests on the show. I felt honored and somewhat out of place to be invited. During the interview I suggested that from my perspective a better name might be The Beauty of Not Thinking. At one point Cristián asked what I’d learned from my study of the limpets. I said, “Not much. Limpets, like humans, just sort of do what they do.” That got a laugh. The interview was fun and interesting, and afterward both Cristián and studio crew said they’d really enjoyed it. I hope so because I sure did. I’m glad I’m fluent in Spanish. It’s a beautiful language.
I gave talks at the CONAF headquarters, the Canadian embassy, and a university. I also described my year in solitude to many people over meals in their homes. But I spent much of the time alone in my room watching English movies on cable TV, wandering the streets, or sending and receiving emails in an internet café.
The Caras magazine story came out, and it was reflective, comprehensive, and accurate. In part because I reached an agreement with the journalist that she would write the article and show it to me before publication. I requested some fairly extensive changes, and since I still had the photos they wanted to use, it all worked out.
I also met a wonderful lunatic who is making a full-length animated movie about unemployment in Chile — while he and all the people working on the film are themselves unemployed. He invited me to use his editing equipment, and I put together a twenty-five-minute video from the six hours of tape Patti sent back down from Texas after extracting it from the thirty hours we shot on the island.
During my last two weeks in Santiago I moved out of the pension and stayed with a beautiful woman I met. She was kind and thoughtful, and sharing intimacy gave us both pleasure. I enjoyed not being alone so much of the time and hope we ’ll see each other again in Canada. Although painful to leave, it was time, and I flew north to Miami. On the way I stopped for two weeks in the Dominican Republic to scuba dive and visit friends I hadn’t seen in ten years. Ah, to finally feel warm again!
Tomorrow I fly to Texas to spend time with Patti and meet her kids. Then it’s on to Vancouver and whatever awaits me there. I’ll need to find a place to live, see if I can get my car running, and begin to pick up the threads of my life. There ’s also the small matter of a dissertation to write.