Pessoa: “I make landscapes out of what I feel.”

Yesterday I took the nena up to Cerro Perito Moreno. I’d woken her up early and she was tired. There was knee-deep snow and almost no wind, no clouds.

It was our first day as papi/hija without mami. You stayed back at home resting (or actually ‘nesting,’ getting doormats and baskets and clothespins).

After playing in the snow for a while the nena said “refugio,” and we went up to the shelter. We sat by the fire and ate chocolate. She kept talking about a girl we’d seen before who had a penguin doll. She remembered the name of the doll. She thought they’d still be there.

Later she called for the juajita. She wanted to sleep.  I took her out on my back and she was asleep in a few minutes. Out in the forest, snow was falling from tree branches. Each fall make a little glittering curtain. I hiked up several switchbacks and stopped at a vista looking across the valley. The precordillera was more snowed-over than I’ve ever seen before. There were thick avalanche trails in the notches.

I kept ascending. I thought about different things like how the people below were all sledding and crashing into each other in the same place, following the same lines.

From the way the snow was piled against the Cohiue trunks I could see from what direction the storm came.

I stopped again where an arm-sized stream of melt-water was pouring through an open place in the hillside, then disappearing in the snow below my feet. I could feel the nena’s belly moving against my back with each inhalation and exhalation. I wrote in my journal:

keep
breathing
words

It seemed like a good combination of sounds and ideas.

Keep breathing words.
Breathing words keep.
Breathing keep words.
Words breathing keep.
Keep words breathing.
Words keep breathing.

There was the water sound, the nena breathing, the huge ridges in every direction, my boots in knee-deep snow.

Sometimes you can feel yourself as a tiny animal breathing for a few seconds on earth.

Later I went back down and could feel her waking up, squirming.

Whenever she wakes up I always whisper to her.

“Hey baby, we’re in the forest,” I whispered. “How are you?”

“Good,” she whispered back.

“Do you want to get down?”

“No,” she whispered.

I looked back and could see her looking at snow falling from branches, the glittering.

I think this is all we’ll ever have.

And it’s enough.

I ask Abuela Colque if she knows whose tierra negra¹ is piled in the street in front of our houses.

Can I take some?

And can I borrow their wheelbarrow also?

(I just assume they have a wheelbarrow because they work the fields.)

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I had on my hunting boots.

Layla had on a dress that was too small for her, panties, and her Dorothy shoes.¹

She was playing with rocks in the driveway.

I’d just handwashed and hung out to dry two loads of clothes.

There was an hour left of sun.

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