® Benjamín Juárez

---

2018-12-30

Did you just put your hands into a plug? said my wife looking at my sparky untangled hair.

We can't hear a thing while talking and walking down the street. I can't even hear myself. But we enjoy to realize that some weathers are so marked that they don't wait to give you the welcome greeting, however violent one may perceive it to be. Actually, it is not that the wind is strong, as much as we are week.

I do not mean to underplay our desire to be outdoors, on the contrary, we came all the way down here to Chaltén, in Patagonia Argentina out of curiosity about what it means to be in nature, in the wilderness. I live in the city, and it should be quite fair to state that I am more or less not an outdoors person, I do most of my activities indoor, but on the other hand a bit of going out is always a nice refreshing. So neither I see people as week nor weathers as strong or mild, but rather all variables un-intendedly coercing and adapting to spaces and spectrums of interests. So we try and enjoy mingling with this valley in the mountain.

We are surrounded by rocky bare mountains which show more of vertical shape, rather than the stereotypical mountain valley which is a different degrees of diagonal slants. This friendly view, in a aesthetic sense, also reminds us of the contrasts upon the last 5 centuries. From the 1500s up to the present, these mountains have been perceived as generally hostile: the winds are fierce, it is all very far away from big populations, and the main visitors have always been explorers, be it 500 years ago, or today. But the exploration today is much more limited, controlled, and taken cared of by settled state institutions and some people that work in outdoors tourism: still explorers but somewhat settled in this place.

We ask for directions to get some paperwork done, and they tell us that we have to cross town to the other side, but since the place is small, and even if they tell us that we have little time, we can still get over there before closing time. There are at least two reasons to feel lucky:

1. wind is coming from behind, which makes our steps so much easy and quick. I say that we should extend our arms and we could make our timing even faster, to which my companion replies in a much more imaginative way than I had figured: "Extend your wings!" I was simply thinking about becoming a little more kite-like and take the optimal shape under our arms with clothes, my Argentinean acclimated jacket and his bare Canadian shirt, and take the air beneath our armpits, to slide like open sails on water.
2. the rangers attending Parques Nacionales are unlike some state functionary that may leave several hours earlier from their job post, these helpful workers greet us and claim that we are still on time, because "they are like the bank", they let everyone in until closing time, and whoever is inside will still be welcomed.

That same day earlier, I realize that when I left home and kissed my family goodbye, my wife kept her gaze on our leaving and took an outstanding amateur picture of two small persons on a gravel street, and an enormous amount of rock standing on the background as a sky.

The following day I would also realize that a little by chance, a little by calculation, I am using a sweater, and a heavier jacket that my brother gave me, it is both good for the temperature as well as the rain. I feel rightly attuned to the weather and social climate coming ahead. It rains a little bit more and gets colder while I walk starting the day. I realize I even have a black cloth hat that fits just fine for the occasion. I have pretty much the appropriate clothes, and all seems to be rolling well. I admit to be feeling lucky.