Northward: Chile’s Tierra del Fuego

June 28, 2020 Diana Juarez

Mirador de los Condores, Parque Nacional Torres del Paine. Photo by Nathan Sharp.

We had traversed Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina without seeing a single one, as I had gone without the dark, shaggy anteater; as had Nathan without the python, except in a dream. For the most part, though, we had made our peace with the shadowy places in our imaginations where it seemed they would stay, lumbering, slinking, coiling and uncoiling, just out of sight.

Patagonia, Argentina

December 11, 2019 Diana Juarez

The next day, we beheld the bubblegum blue of the glacier. We felt numinous and expansive in its presence—had we encountered any other blues in nature which could match its intensity? We counted off the resplendent quetzal, the blue morphos butterflies of Central America, and the papagayo feathers we found in Yasuní, the protected territory of Ecuador’s Amazon forest. Yes, there were a few solid contenders. But what a marvelous mental rolodex to carry around!