sábado, 13 de marzo de 2010

Aqui estoy en Bariloche...

Hmmm, I don´t really even want to write anything right now.

But...


Hiking half a day from "lago sin nombre" (which somehow we named, "Pirate Lake"), to Lago Vidal after finals was a nice easy and beautiful hike for us all, and arrival at the lake was very bitter sweet for we all knew that it was our second to last night together in the backcountry, though we had an asado to look forward to, the sweetest part of the bitter-sweet feeling...

Brett, Benji and I walked over to the casita of the "old man of the sea," who has the most amazing ears of any human that has ever existed. You know how ears are one part of our bodies that never cease to enlarge? His have folded over at the top like dried apricots and accentuate his timelessness in such a way that can only occur along with a life of tending modest herds of cows and sheep in one of the most pristine pieces of the Valdivian Rainforest. He and his wife arrived at Lago Vidal over 40 years ago, and it is there that they have passed their lives clearing the rainforest per government mandate (the Chilean govt used to have incentives in place to simply clear vast areas of land of forests), tending their herds and living off of the land in a way that is the lifestyle of the land and culture here; though ecotourism, the creation of new roads and highways through Patagonia, and the inevitable encroachment of modernization are very lucid realities to those living in this way. Yet another re-creation and form of a world wide homogenization.

The old man´s son had already killed the borrega (female lamb) and was just setting it up for skinning and gutting when we arrived. The skill with which this man prepared the lamb was incredible, it vey much can be likened to - as Brett likes to say - how we go into a refrigerator for a bowl of leftovers. It took him all of 20 minutes to carnear (kill and prepare). Mangy mutts voraciosly licking their hungry chops never taking their eyes off of the lamb, knowing very well that as long as they hung around they would have a chance to fight for a piece of the tasty conglomeration of guts that would soon spill forth from the chest cavity pranced under foot expectantly. Following the normal violence that ensues amongst a pack of semi-wild dogs litterally fighting for their food, and the smiles from the old man and his son as they continued to carnear (sorry for any spanglish previous and from here on out) I found myself smiling very widely with them - as the old man´s son actually headbutted the chest cavity from the back to open it wider so as to be able to cut it in half right down the spine - and there was something about that moment as the cirrus and strato-cumulus clouds rolled in from the northeast, as the dogs fought eachother and the frantic hens for the last scraps of innards that made me feel very much at home and content to know and feel the "rightness" of their lifestyle - no matter the slash and burn forestry that was practiced 40 years ago...

We raised the very much naked lamb high up into the tree to cool down and went inside to talk about weather, herds, fish, wind, and helicopters. The old man´s wife had baked us three kilos of bread for our asado, and also provided us with a small bag of potatoes that the oxen had gotten into and they had to pull. After laughter and confusion on my part (the whole castellno thing), we went back out to cut the lamb in half, weigh it, and make our way back to camp to sharpen the asador, build up our fire, salt the meat and begin the endless rounds of mate as we spent the next 3-4 slowly and perfectly roasting the meat.

There is simply nothing like an asado, nothing compares.



1 comentario:

  1. I was going to ask you if you could get me a poncho made from the ear hair of the Old Man And The Sea, but I forgot. I miss Patagonia and I miss you and it's stupid that we allowed a year to separate us from hanging out in all of those amazing places...and kinda cool. Did you know that Patagonia means Land of the Big Foot? I guess you probably do. So the title of your blog is: Big Foot in Land of Big Foot, which now that I have written it really does confirm that I am not giving you any new information. I love you, also not new information.

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