Rejected

In the course of my life, I have not often had the opportunity to give flowers to random boys. But I always thought that if I wanted to, I would be successful.

Turns out that's not true. In an effort to learn Spanish, my school took to the streets of Pichilemu and embarked in a hilarious scavenger hunt. I was teamed up with the other staff. One of the challenges was to hand a flower off to stranger. And although Tino really, really wanted to do it...c'mon. That would have been way too easy for him:Things like this are significantly more difficulto for me: note: this is not my hand.

When I saw these two Mormon missionaries coming my way, I knew my moment had arrived. Thinking that they would not only be polite and english speaking, but delighted to receive a little bouquet from a Rubia, I ran up to the boys and asked in Spanish if one of them would like a beautiful flower.

Turns out....he didn't:


This is not like when me and Tyler Bradt gave a pair of missionaries in Salt Lake City a vivid and detailed description of the type of activities Mormons frown upon as an example of why we did not choose ourselves to follow their religion. (For the record, they asked for it, they were harrassing us.) This time, I really just wanted to give the nice American boys a flower so my team could score 20 points and move on to ordering Churros. Wow, was I rejected! Missionary karma?

Piles of glass and light


The waves today were huge piles of glass. The day was bright and clear, but cold, with a hard wind whipping up whitecaps and blowing the sand in curtains across the beach.

I geared up, hiked my boat out to the far end of the beach near the point break, and pushed my way into the surf. The water was choppy and bottle green. The wind blew a hard mist off the waves, sending a hail of stinging droplets fiercely into my face. The waves were piles of shattered glass and the wind was blowing tiny splinters off into the sky, sending a spray of rainbow into the air.

I cannot even describe what it's like to be battling your way through the waves, passing through the slender opening in the gloss and foam, heading farther out towards the horizon where the big waves shudder and bend. The waves were big today, and tubing. I managed to stay out of the crush of the pile, the force of which is easily enough to blow you out of your kayak and leave you out at sea with the sharks, with your paddle and kayak and own meager self to look out for.

I am getting better. Today I caught the green of the wave, the smooth underside that glints like jelly in the sun. I rode it until it dissolved into fat marbles of water and air and became a gigantic aerated pile. I bounced and carved on this pile all the way in to shore, until the wave finally bubbled to nothing on the sand with a defeated hiss.

More than once after being picked up by one gigantic aqua curler, I shot towards shore at full speed and was delivered sometime later onto the beach. I was thrust up on the sand and left there like a piece of mail, sending a flock of tourists running. There's nothing like being far out to sea and riding one single wave all the way in. It feels like the planet's wildest public transportation system.

Riding out waves and bouncing on foam piles out there in the sun glints, cold gale, shark fins and rainbow sprays was some of the most fun I've ever had.

The short story of the deathcamp waterfall


Again we went searching for the waterfall, hoping the recent sunshine would trigger the snow melt we needed. Below the cliff where the Yeso creek cut through the gray scree, water was pumping between its banks and roostertailing off the rocks. When we arrived at the end of the road, the sun was high and the temperature was mild. Besides the crumbling barrack's of the camp, below the old pits where the bodies had long ago turned to dust, we found the waterfall flushed out and good to go.

It turned out to be an extremely trick drop, about 35 feet with a narrow entrance only two feet wide. All the water pushed through the channel, and drove sharply into the sharp basalt wall, then bounced off and flung itself down to the pool below. The entrance looked just a toilet bowl, and I knew at once that I did not to be the contents that it flushed down.

David, Tino and Stephen committed to the drop. Haakon and Clay jumped off the lip with their throwbags and swam through the icy pool to the banks to set safety. I sat above the entrance with my fish-eye lens and waited. My hands were shaking. A cross between anxiety, high altitude and thirst made the barometer in my head plummet every time I stood up and I was afraid I'd pass out there on my precarious perch. Stephen circled in the eddy a few times and then looked up at me. He mouthed the words, "I'm. So. Scared." I made some meaningless gesture with my fist against my heart that was meant to inspire confidence. And then he paddled out and dropped through. He sunk into the entrance, completely subbed out and disappeared.

A few moments passed of my heart thumping like a rabbit's hind food and then someone called out that he was alright although the line had not been pretty. As you can see I got an entirely uninspired photo of Stephen, partly because it was out of focus, partly because I couldn't get close enough with the wide-angle and partly because he totally subbed out. I climbed out of the crater and went around bottom to photo Tino's first attempt:Tino went down stern over teakettle, landed on his head and was ejected upon impact. I wondered if Dave would still run it after bearing witness, but he was already marching up towards the top eddy. Not sure how he did it, but Dave sort of styled it, plugged deep and bounced up intact:Watching the successful run, Tino hiked up and ran it again. This time he went smashing into the basalt wall upon entrance, and this happened:
When bad things happen to good people....yeesh! Meanwhile, Eric and I yanked Stephen's boat out of the pool with a rope, and Stephen was gunning to run it again. His line was better but he landed with a resounding snap. His AT paddle snapped cleanly in two.: But Stephen's $450.00 accident didn't stop Tino from climbing out and going for a third run. And thank goodness because I got this sweet shot:Thanks to Tino, Dave and Stephen for running the sketchy new falls in the cold altitude so I could take some pictures.

A most unrelaxing turn of events

It is my last night in Pangal and Lorenzo's house, and so I decided to take a bath. I was covered in salt and sulfur from the day's adventure. Miles and miles of cliffside roads with a rickety trailer had frayed my nerves and the air high up in the Andes was dry and bitterly cold. The students would not stop making noises the whole day. I mean, when they weren't talking, they'd just make noises. I needed a hot soak.

The kids were all asleep and far away and the house was quiet and shut down for the night. I brought in The Wind Up Bird Chronicles and The Best American Poetry 2002 and a few episodes of arrested development on my Ipod just in case I was in there for hours and finished the two books, or lost interest. The bathtub was deep and just my size, and a pale blue color, like toothpaste. I set my books down and my shampoo and filled the tub up with hot water, then slipped in.

I barely had a moment to release my breath when I noticed the tarantula. It was hunkered on the wooden doorframe, preventing my escape from the bathroom. It was facing the other direction, pretending not to notice me. But it knew I was there. And it knew, just as I knew, that it held all the power in this moment.

I decided to adress it directly. After all, I couldn't just leap naked out of the bath and go running down the hall, which was my first impulse. Besides which, this was the only bath tub I would see until Christmas. And for some reason I'm never truly relaxed unless I'm in the bath or I'm wearing a clean pair of socks, and I'd very nearly run out of those as well. And so I spoke to the beast.

"You enjoy your spot on that doorframe, and I'll enjoy my bath, and we'll both live to see another day." And then I turned to my book and read three pages. Then I looked back at the wall. The spider had not moved. I read another half a page. I wasn't relaxed at all. Suddenly the burden of bath-time duties such as soaping and shampooing seemed exhausting. Whenever something touched me, like the shower curtain or the little beaded string on the drain, I would jump and flinch.

And then the unthinkable occured. I gave a check on the wall to see if the tarantula was still posted there. He wasn't. He had broken our little truce and taken off, no doubt inching his terrible body, remarkably reminiscent of a big hand of a hairy man, across the floor and into my bath. I shot out of the tub but then realized I had no where to go. When there is a tarantula in the room but you can't see it and you don't know where it is, it might as well be everywhere. Suddenly the pile of clothes I had left so carelessly on the floor was a potential spider nest. Even the books stacked on the shelf had created an unintentional fortress. Tarantulas, like all frightening things like ghosts or bats, can scuttle up a wall or across a ceiling just as easily as they can scuttle across the floor. No place was safe from this big guy.

So what can I say? That I 'sacked up' (a new term I learned from the kids) and remained in my bath and read from my book and washed my hair like a true soldier? Forget about it. I was out of there quicker than my head-first tumble down the stairs the other day in front of Lorenzo. I took only what I needed and I fled. I hope that the tarantula is in there foaming up with Aveda shampure and enjoying the Haruki Murakami novel, because one of us really ought to.

Desolation, continued


The days that followed our excursion to the death camp were very dark. The moon was completely hidden in the sky and as I waited until 10:30 when I could put the kids to bed, I felt like I was floating in the middle of a vast ocean. I was sitting alone down near the closed up restaurant. A siren screamed into the night from somewhere, I still don't know where, and the cats were howling so loudly I thought surely it must be one of the students trying to scare me. Occasionally someone would appear out of the night, the pale patch of their face illuminated by a headlamp, but no body spoke to me. It was a relief to finish my work and climb back to the camp, where the kids were loud and running around. I could feel the life start to drain back into the night. At 10:30 I put them to sleep, unlocked the swinging bridge and climbed high into the mountains.

I fell asleep but did not wake up the next day for class. Instead I slept the whole day. I did not leave the house, which is a dark cave built into the mountain, in fact I did not even put my head out the window for a breath of fresh air. I dreamed I was standing on the mountainside watching a meteor erupt in the sky, and a ball of fire consume the entire world. I woke up with a desperate need to walk down to the camp and be around the students, sit at the restaurant and drink a cup of coffee. But it was too late, it was 8:30 in the evening when I woke up. The house was dark cold, my eyes did not adjust well, and there were tarantulas crouching in the shadows.

I had dinner with David and Tino and Lorenzo and Pangal and their mother, Gordita. But I could not shake the feeling of isolation that had curled around me in my sleep. Even the tarantulas did not stir me, because I felt like I was not really even there. I sank back into sleep at midnight, covering my face so the spiders would not camp out above my mouth as they tend to do, attracted to the warmth. Again my mind shatters into splinters and each piece crawled off and had a wild dream. The mosaic of those wild dreams was like a twice-exposed reel of film spinning through my sleeping.

When I woke up the next morning it was sunny, and I ran down the mountain soaking in the light and the air, desperate for a day with less weight.


Cave, Spider

We are sleeping in a house that is very much like a cave. Tonight it is very cold out, and the tarantulas are marching through the cracks and from the dark corners, seeking out the heat. I first spotted one above Tino's head as he lay down to sleep, and then in the bathroom as I was brushing my teeth. I worry about falling asleep, that one will climb onto my face and I will wake up to it hovering over my mouth, taking a steam bath in my breath.


I slept for most of the day and had a long, elaborate dream that the whole world caught fire; tomorrow I think I need to come down from this mountain.

A place for ghosts and terror


Today we took the truck up to the desolate mountain scape that runs along the Yesough creek. The road snaked for an hour along the cliff side as we climbed higher and higher into the scree. When finally the road dissolved, we resolved to go looking for the waterfall on foot. We were far away from everything and extremely isolated.

What we saw when got out of the car was a long stretch of shale and gravel that led to the foot of the highest peaks. The mountains had blue glaciers high up on their slopes like mouths full of broken teeth. There were barracks all around us of crumbling cinder block and metal rebar. Through the holes in the walls we could see graffiti scrawled in white paints- names followed by a a year in the 1970's.

"This is one of Pinochet's death camps," Said Lorenzo, one of the two Chilean brothers in the truck with us. He pointed to the craters in the earth that 25 years ago served as mass graved. Thousands of people were held here, he told us. Concentration camp. And then there were murdered. "Bad spirits here. Do not pick anything up, if you see a bone or something- do not pick it up. This is a bad place."

We poked around a little. We felt like little chickens in a huge pile of ash. There was one little building obviously set apart from the others; it still bore remnants of color on its walls and the metal fence around it was in tact. It was the church, and on its walls inside bore the last scratchings of Pinochet's victims. "This is the last time I will come to you," read one. "I'm leaving all my money here. Please. Por Favor."

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better above it than beneath it, or, my first time walking off a river


(notice the bags under my eyes....yeah...)

My first run in Chile was the lower section of the Maipo river. I've ran it last March with no problem at all, in fact it was a delightful run with big waves and a canyon section where the river channels into a geological gap of slick stone walls.

Now that it is spring in Chile and the snowpack is melting off and feeding the Maipo every time the sun comes out, the river is a different story. It is a few meters higher and a whole lot faster. In fact, it was the fastest, most continuous, and brownest river I've ever been on. The eddy where we put in was pocket sized and we all had to hold on to eachother's hands and grab loops to keep from being swept downstream.

The rapids started immediately and just didn't stop. Now, it is important to note that the river is safe. There are some manky pourovers and holes to avoid, but I went over one of those pourovers upside down and was able to roll up immediately. Intimidating yes, but consequences, not so much. Still, I wasn't used to such a strong, fast current and I could not seem to get my balance. I wobbled left, wobbled right, wobbled left, and when David led me to the left around the pourover, I couldn't get there in time so I steered right to avoid going right over the rock and flipped. I whipped up and caught an eddy a littleways downriver, but I was shaking like a sewing machine and felt something rising up in my throat like I was going to burst into tears. I kept thinking about the canyon coming up, the place where the river narrows and pushes through the narrow, high stone walls. I was so incredibly frustrated with myself.

I had the skills, but I did not have the confidence. After running the first mile of river, which were the most difficult rapids on the run, I didn't want to be on the river anymore. So I walked out.

Except for we didn't exactly walk out, more like we crawled, hauled, climbed and scrambled. We were relatively deep into the gorge, and between us and the road there was a hill so steep it surpassed hill and became cliff. It was made of sticks, thorns and was studded with rebar. Tracy came with us, and together we had ourselves our first taste of what it actually means to walk off a run with two kayaks in tow.

Kids with boats + immagration +customs = are we there yet?

It was a 10 1/2 hour flight from Dallas to Santiago. Andy and I each had three seats to ourselves, so we stretched out, fell asleep right after take out and woke up right before landing. I hear it wasn't this lux for everyone....

Immigration was a flurry of lines and forms and visas, but the real fun began at customs when we all had to balance our boats, bags, gear bags, and paddle bags on rickety little carts. Here we are, almost done with our journey but not quite:

NOT IT!

Dear Matt and Andy,

In Boston. It's 3:46 and the flight is delayed. It's sunny here. The weather is bad in Texas and everything is an hour delayed going in AND out of Dallas Airport. This mean someone is going to miss the flight to Santiago, which means ONE out of the three of us is going to have to spend the night down there and I'm officially calling NOT IT!

Much Love,
Melina

the end of vacation

The mist hung heavy and low today over the world as I drove North on highway 89. Figures would appear from it suddenly and out of nowhere, the way you'd expect a stranger to show up at your doorstep in the middle of the night.

When I reached home, there were lights on at the farmer's house at the end of the road, but as always, the light lacked the warm quality that fills old houses with life.

I drove up the hill and the house disappeared behind me back into the fog like a curtain being drawn quietly shut.