Peter Hartmann, activist leader, standing above massive rapids on the Rio Baker. “The biggest problem is that [the HidroAysén hydroelectric project] implies destroying everything, taking everything out of the region without leaving much behind…These projects are immense, on a scale that is absolutely unmanageable for this region. They’re unmanageable because this region is very fragile, ecologically, geologically as well as culturally. For example, in the area where they want to build the HidroAysén mega-project, there are as many people living there as the company is going to need to build the dams. So imagine what that means – practically doubling the area’s population.”
Photo by : Bridget Besaw, courtesy of of iLCP, taken for their RAVE campaign.
Please see more information on how this project basically shits on Chilean Patagonia.
And please also see more photos of what will be lost if the dams are constructed.
Kelly and Shea were at the terminal de bus.
We greeted each other Argentine style¹, a reflex.
I thought later how we were American men kissing each other, but that we’d all been down here so long it was like none of us was fully ‘American’ anymore.
Is anybody ‘fully’ anything?
There was a somber onda there standing by the buses.
The season was over.
Kelly and I had led kids down the river a couple days earlier.
Now he and Shea would be heading back to North America to guide rafts.
Layla couldn’t get comfortable on the bus.
I tried making up a story about a fish called ‘gaman.’
Halfway to Foyel the gears started slipping, then worked again.
In the bus terminal in Bariloche I held Layla above the toilet.
An old man ripped off a paper towel for us while we were washing our hands.
Outside the terminal were two American kids about to fly-fish the Limay rivermouth.
I had the biggest bags of anyone on the local 72 to the aeorpuerto.
When we got to the airport I appreciated the automatic bathroom sinks.
Inside an office marked “swissport,” two middleaged men and one woman were processing our boarding passes without, apparently, a computer.
Mami bought Layla a white lamb doll from the gift shop.
In the cafeteria we ate french fries 2-3 at a time.
I help Mica with one hand while drinking coffee.
After lunch he was fussy, needed walking.
Two Argentine ladies complimented him on his peinado. ²
The monitors showed “Delayed / Demorrado,” then switched to 5:20, more than two hours away.
Back at the table, Lau and Layla were drawing creatures.
On the other side of the glass it looked windy.
We bought an alfajor to go, went for a walk.
Three American men wearing camo were checking their shotguns as baggage.
Outside, a taxi driver and airport clerk kicked a soccer ball on new-looking pavement.
One wore a sweater vest and button down shirt, didn’t seem to worry about getting dirty.
In the wind and sun I felt less tired.
I looked at the ridgelines above the steppe, wondered what names people used to call them.
A windbreak of ponderosas made white noise.
I saw an oddly camouflaged color entangled in the fenceline trash, realized it was a hawk feather.
A policeman walked down the embankment where we sat and asked for my identification, what I was doing, what I was writing.
I held up these notes and said ‘poemas mias.’
____________
¹ a single kiss on the right cheek, more just leaning in cheek to cheek than actually pressing lips against person’s cheek.
² haircut
Josh knew the opening chords to Ave Maria. Earlier we’d eaten choripánes, cones of french fries, drank El Bolsón and Auracana beers. There were maybe 5,000 people. We’d walked in from the barrio along the airstrip. I kept pointing out elementary school age kids running around in packs at 12:45 am unsupervised. Jung talks about the need to see elements of your unconscious manifested in reality. The sound system was cranked so loud that Ave Maria was distorting. Jairo (the singer) had a smile we discussed as ‘skeletal’. I told Josh what Lau had told me about him: he’d been a popular folk singer during the 80s but had to go into exile (Paris) during the military dictatorship. We were on our second liters of beer now. A TV monitor showed a loop of hops being cultivated. Packs of police wearing chest plates and carrying outdated automatics stood in circles texting and talking on cellphones. Smoke from the food vendors’ carts blew horizontally southward. We all had on heavy coats. I pointed to the cordillera and told Josh we’d have good weather for going up there tomorrow. Pedrito, the 5 year old from across the street,, was trying to ollie his brother’s skateboard. Josh said something about it not feeling like he was traveling. I thought about him recognizing Ave Maria and remembered he’d told me once that as a kid he was a youth pastor. This was the first time a friend had come to visit in the 18 months since we’d moved to Patagonia. I sort of waved my arms around to indicate everything: the kids, the smoke, the wind, the runway, Ave Maria coming through all distorted. I told Josh, “if you could only write like a tiny bit of how this actually feels.”