Glimmers

It’s not difficult to feel grumpy, irritated and downright depressed in this city of ours, what with grey winter days, carjacking, house and mall robberies, traffic gridlocks and hooded vandals destroying and looting during weekly student demonstrations. These scenes have become our daily bread. Days ago a water main broke on a principal artery of the city. A deluge of escaping water flowed down towards the center of town. Surface traffic and a major metro line were cut. The news showed streams of city folk walking long distances to work.

But, all is not gloom. I laughed out loud at the sight of a young, well-dressed woman, desperate to cross the street, clambering aboard a grocery cart pushed by an ingenious Chileno. For a few pesos he delivered her across the river to the opposite corner. Oh, those enterprising Chileans. At the first drop of rain, they’re selling umbrellas at metro stations, or cellophane wrapped roses for Mother’s Day, or ready-made salads and sandwiches at lunchtime.

I see glimmers of hope and humor as I go about my city.  One night a friend and I decided to go to a concert of the Santiago Symphonic Orchestra downtown, which meant boarding the metro at peak commuter hour. We are not the pushy type but, when it came to a packed metro car, we had no choice but to squeeze and elbow our way in, that is, if we wanted to go anywhere.

The live performance of Tchaikowsky’s glorious Fourth Symphony swept me away on a wave of wonder to the steppes of Russia and the glittering halls of the Hermitage. Unbelievable, the magic created by those violins, violas, cellos and bass.

Returning home on the metro, passengers eyed us as we broke into giggles, lifting our feet to avoid contact with two large balls of hair rolling down the aisle and back again, not an unusual sight in the otherwise clean metro cars.

A sharp clear blue sky greeted me this morning and, in the distance, the snow-covered ridges gleamed. A gaggle (at least a dozen) of rowdy green parrots invaded the liquidambar tree next door, gorging on the seeds of the prickly pods. On the ground turtle doves grazed on the fallen leftovers.

Like the seeds of the liquidambar, abundant reasons for joy and laughter are here for the taking in this urban landscape. It’s a matter of paying attention.

Liquid Contentment

 My redwood tree looks perky and content. The neighborhood robins are out breakfasting on an abundance of juicy worms. Hummingbirds squeal and careen in delight. Wet leaves cover the pavement. Even I feel light and energized after the refreshing rain yesterday. After years of drought, rain is reason for celebration. I also am grateful for the clear skies after days of smothering smog, and for the white ring of snow on the Andes surrounding the city.

            Our current rainfall is three times greater than last year at this time, and winter doesn’t start for three more weeks. I wonder what the rain gods have in store for the next few months.

The rainfall in the usually wet southern Chile has diminished. The city of Coyhaique, set in a bowl of verdant hills, is rated as one of the most contaminated cities in the world. Besides the scarcity of rainfall, its problem lies in a longtime tradition in the damp, cold south – wood burning stoves. They are the heart of all southern homes, providing warmth, heat for baking bread and heating water and a gathering place for the family and friends. Because of the increasing pollution as the city grows, authorities are mandating a change to gas stoves. A loss for the inhabitants of the city, but wood stoves will continue to burn in countryside and small town kitchens.

            Days later we are blessed with two more days of solid rain. This morning the sun makes an appearance in a true blue sky with patches of luminous puffy clouds. A great morning for a walk. Many others have the same idea. The sun draws us out of our dens: runners, some with dogs, cyclists, flocks of showy, squawking parrots, wild canaries and house wrens. The yellow leaves on the ground glow in the sunlight. The air is brisk and hopeful. And the mountains…they have revealed to us their gift of white splendor.

Meet My Cousin Bob Mushroom

 Since I lean increasingly towards nature writing, I find myself ordering Kindle books on the topic. I’m delighted with my latest purchase: The Tree: A Natural History of What Trees Are, How They Live, and Why They Matter by Colin Trudge. In very accessible prose, he provides a truly refreshing “refresher” course in basic biology.

 In high school, as I was on the college track, I was instructed to take chemistry and physics, rather than biology. Maybe biology was considered a lesser science then. In college Biology 1A and B, I barely scraped by. I was a liberal arts gal.

 Fast forward fifty years: Now I realize that I want to deepen my understanding of the scientific foundations of the natural world – the evolution of scientific names for things and Carolus Linaeus’ system of classification: species, genus, orders, classes and kingdoms (later phylum was inserted between class and kingdom and domain added after kingdom). Add to that the later use of phylogeny, the family tree of the natural world demonstrating the relationship between the different groups of creatures. I’m learning (or maybe relearning?) biological concepts like analogous and homologous, convergence and divergence, and most confusing to me, haploid, diploid, polyploid and tetraploid (which has to do with genetics, hybrids, chromosomes and all that stuff that gave me so much trouble in college biology). Fortunately, I don’t have to take a test on this material, but just grasping the broad concepts is enhancing my wonder for the complexities, order and vastness of nature.

I totally share Mr. Trudge’s love for the idea that we humans are literally related to all things. He plays with the notions that ‘apes are our sisters, and mushrooms our cousins, and oak trees and monkey puzzle are our distant uncles and aunts.’ (Uh - I’d like you to meet my cousin Bob Mushroom.) Like when involved in a good novel, I can’t wait to get back to Mr. Trudge and his trees. On to chapter three: How Trees Became.

Today, as I walked down the street, I looked at the city trees with new eyes and wondered what they were saying to each other. If only I knew their language.

Baobob Tree  Adansonia grandidieri

Acceptance

Acceptance

In my memoir “Marrying Santiago” (2015) I wonder where my two sons would choose to put down roots. I ask: “Would I lose them someday to the place I left behind?” My parents’ only child, I left my California home forty-five years ago to marry and live in Chile. The great distance that separated us was the source of tremendous sorrow for them.  

            While my oldest son married and settled in Chile, the younger one has been living and working in New York for four years. I miss him terribly. Living in this hyper-connected era does ease the pain somewhat – we chat online, talk by Whatsapp and Skype and send photos taken instants before.

 Today a Chilean friend who passed through New York brings me a present from my son. An enchanting little book entitled “Owls: Our Most Charming Bird” by Matt Sewell. A rich text accompanies the delightful drawings. I am so pleased with this gift that I immediately call my son. We don’t talk long as he is at work, but just hearing his voice brings me pleasure. I recently ordered Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods” for him. Since he’s a hiker, I thought he’d like it. He did.

With these small exchanges – books, photos, and online chats – the distance seems less. Last month he sent me a photo to show he’d just voted in the New York primary. I’m happy he takes seriously his American citizenship. I recently voted in the California primary by absentee ballot – signed, sealed and delivered (well, actually faxed). My son and I agree on the presidential candidate.

 This not just the expatriate’s or the immigrant’s dilemma. Several of my California high school and university classmates have children living on the east coast (many in Brooklyn, like my son.) But Brooklyn is a lot further from Chile than California. Here I’m at the bottom of the world.

Will he return to Chile someday? That is a question that must wait for an answer, and I must accept whatever choices he makes.

Recipe for Disaster

Mud. And more mud. That’s the scenario that the city’s inhabitants will wake to tomorrow. Though it’s stopped raining for the moment – after 48 hours of relentless downpour, the meteorologists and Yahoo Weather predict the rain will continue through the night and tomorrow.

The Mapocho River wanted to follow its true course, its ancient familiar bed of rock and gravel and sediment. But major works of engineering placed obstacles in its way – tunnels, holes, temporary retaining walls, subterranean underpasses – to facilitate the movement of masses of motorists rushing to destinations throughout the city. After all, we all fume when stuck in the ever-increasing traffic jams, grouching why don’t they do something?

 Roaring down the slopes of the Andes, gathering force and speed, the river waters suddenly confronted foreign obstacles in their path. Rivers are not patient with obstructions. They stubbornly forge onward. With its natural flow blocked, what does the river do?  Detour through the paths of least resistance: underground parking garages, subterranean malls, underpasses, basements, cracks, crevasses, mouse holes, potholes, perforations and fissures. Because forward it will go, downhill, seaward, obeying the laws of physics.

As the water surges down drought-ridden slopes, it sucks up loose soil, rocks, and assorted plastic bottles, depositing them in the flatter areas. A recipe for a muddy mess. Though the water moves on, like an undisciplined child, it doesn’t clean up what it dropped along its wild way.

Thus, out roar man’s machines: pumps, bulldozers, hoses and trucks to undo what nature has done. With furious urgency, they’ll reestablish the obstacles and barriers, move earth, pump water, drill holes, erect stronger retention walls, widen the river bed.

Not for the first time. Repeated interventions have paralleled the growth of the city of Santiago, immediate gain being the top priority. Walls, buildings, houses, stores and highways line the banks of the man-handled River.

There’s no one around now who remembers the river when it flowed freely along its natural course through fields and valleys. Contemplating today’s mud soup, I grieve for the River and its valley, once a bucolic landscape as portrayed by artists in the early days of settlement.

  

A Bookworm’s Dilemma

I never thought I’d be saying this but I have to admit it now – Kindle is a great invention.  A plethora of books in English are accessible with the tap of a finger to this eager reader living in a non-English-speaking country. Of course, I’d prefer the real thing – the book in my hands, my fingers turning the pages, underlining brilliant thoughts or beautifully expressed ideas. Then, when I finish the book, if I decide it’s a “keeper,” I’ll squeeze it onto a bulging bookshelf, or else pass it on to another eager English reader. Besides its accessibility, Kindle has the marvelous option that with another tap, the definition of an unwieldy word pops up.

            I’m reading more than ever: fiction and nonfiction, exploring authors new to me, recommended books, Pulitzer Prize winners, well-known authors I hadn’t read. I read not only for pleasure, but to learn more of the writing craft. I read more critically. Some authors disappoint me, but if they enjoy wide acclaim, I don’t give up on them. I may encounter within the pages an illumination that renders the effort worthwhile.

            When I discover an author whose writing I love, I want to read more. This happened after reading Geraldine Brooks’ book “March,” a novel about Mr. March, the father of the girls in “Little Women.” What a clever idea to imagine the life of a secondary character in a famous novel. I then realized that I remembered very little of “Little Women” and would like to read it again. I no longer have the blue hard-cover copy that belonged to my mother.

 This started me thinking of other books I’d like to reread: “Ann of Green Gables,” Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charlie,” Marilynne Robinson’s “Gilead.” Then a doubt haunts me. Should I spend time to reread when there is so much out there I have never read?

It was time well spent rereading “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” “Ishi in Two Worlds,” and William Least-Heat Moon’s “Blue Highways,” but, more than all others, I return again and again to Amy Leach’s “Things That Are.” I make lists of her goofy, wonderful word combinations, as well as invented words (jewel-babblers, botherations), reading them over in the hope that some of her magic will rub off on me. I’d be desolate without my hard copy.

I particularly love books with a strong sense of place, like Ivan Doig’s “The Sea Runners.” If the place is one I have visited or plan to visit, my journey is all the richer. I’d read Lawrence Bergreen’s “Over the Edge of the World” before my trip through the Straits of Magellan. Knowing details of Magellan’s voyage, I felt such wonder viewing the same glaciers and walking the same shores that the explorer and his sailors once trod.

In a few months, I’ll be cruising the Baltic and visiting St. Petersburg. I’m already in a Russian state of mind after reading Rosemary Sullivan’s “Stalin’s Daughter.” Years ago I found Edward Rutherfurd’s “Russka” fascinating. Perhaps a reread to brush up on my history?  Or a Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky that I haven’t read. My options are endless. Before downloading on Kindle, I’ll ask my friends if anyone has something Russian.

In Patagonia

Small Things:

Bountiful bumble bees busily harvesting on sunflowers.

 Delicate golden grasses bending in the wind

Plethora of rose hips blushing in ripeness

The Colors of Water:

Can the written word capture the true color of water?

General Carrerra Lake (Chelenko) on a cloudy day – steel, pewter, slate

Catalina Bay in bright sunshine – bright teal, cerulean, azure

Lago Negro – indigo, ultramarine

Baker River – turquoise, aquamarine

                                    

The rhythmic sounds of indigenous place names:

Pichi Mahuida – little mountain

Chelenko – lake of storms

Coyhaique – lagoon-camp

Chacabuco – slopes of chacay trees

The Trail of Torture:

The sign indicates 9.3 kilometers to Lago Leones. One way. The guide tells us it’s relatively flat most of the way. What he didn’t say that the flat was over a rocky glacial moraine. Loose rock. Boulders, pebbles. Angular, round, flat. He didn’t mention that we’d be balancing on branches and wobbly wooden slat bridges to cross rivulets of glacial melt water. Or that the flat rises into steep slopes bedeviled with protruding tree roots and narrow rocky ledges. I cling to a rope to clamber along a slanted wide rock face. A precarious wooden ladder facilitates a tricky vertical descent. Most appreciated are the hands of Sebastian the young guide designated to keep to the end of our line of hikers. I’m the end. I feel like an aging mountain goat, left by the herd to die. What are the others trying to prove anyway? The head guide checks with Sebastian often by radio: How am I doing? Keep in mind the return trek.

            “How much further?” I ask Sebastian. I don’t want to give up, but worry I’ll slow the others down.

            “About 3 more kilometers.”

            That’s it. Sebastian and I have our lunch under some trees and begin the return, a return that seems interminable. I’ve developed a blister on my foot and my progress slows to a crawl, one-foot- in-front-of- the- other, skirting rocks, fording streamlets.

Is it worth it? What can I take from this experience?

The majesty of the towering ridges on the sides of the valley.

The glowing glaciers looming from the edge of the southern ice cap.

The milky green of the roaring river.

Determination to get into better shape.

Acceptance of my limitations.

Knowing when it’s time to call it quits and being alright with my decision.