Don't Have a Plan. Don't Be Prepared

It's not entirely accurate, you know. The whole thing about when you decide something, you have to stick to it. I think I need to elaborate on that a bit. Of course you can't go through with every.single.thing. you at some point decided to do.

When I was 9 I decided I was going to build an airplane, be a professional ice skater and also an artist. Maybe I had a shot at all of those things, but here I am a good 20 years later in a cafe with two academic degrees- neither of which are in aerophysics or art, and the last time I had ice skated was about two years ago, and the guy who was holding my hand kept yelling at me to stop being so stiff. And he was definitely right.

So as you can see, plans change.

Obviously, the dreams we have in 4th grade don't really qualify later on in the game, but my friends and family will be the first to tell you that I changed direction more often than a school of fish in the presence of predators. I credit most of my identity to my "shifting". Others would call it being flakey, fickle, unsettled.

i decided to call it being an Opportunist.

When I started my bachelor's degree I wanted to be a travel journalist. The job market was bleak to begin with. Then my friends' parents began passing away one by one, my dad had a stroke, the recession knocked the wind out of the economy, and I realized someone with my background didn't have the luxury to go into a field of work that would cost more than it would pay. I bailed on my decision. I applied to law school. A few years later, realizing that everyone my age had had the same idea. The legal market was flooded. My friends had passed the bar and were working in bars to pay their 200k loans. I realized that once again, someone of my background didn't have the luxury of taking on a mortgage worth of debt. My dad was diagnosed with cancer not long after.

I rerouted my plans. I thought long and hard about what mattered to me.

The world. The world mattered to me.

It's cliche as hell, but it was true. I wanted to meet the people who hadn't been tarnished by corruption, to travel to remote villages, to communicate by charades, to see the glaciers of Patagonia, the Savannahs of Africa that I'd dreamt of as a kid, to visit archeological sites in the Aleutians, trail my finger along the water of the Mariana islands and stare across the plains of Mongolia. So I wasn't going to be a lead writer for National Geographic, that much was clear, but one thing was for sure, if I didn't have the means to see these things now I would have to do something to secure them a place in the future, so that they would still exist, pure as ever, by the time my bank account was sufficiently full to fund my dreams.

It never became sufficiently full.

But that didn't stop me.

What I mean to say is, when you bail on your decision, it should be governed by reason and logic. If you don't have truly valid, objective, reason for changing your mind, don't. Backing down is a rocky road to regrets. I'm assuming. I wouldn't know. To date, I'm proud to say I don't really have any. And that's got more to do with my state of mind than the decisions of made, to be clear, but we'll have to come back to that, because I'm trying to tell you about my travels here. For godssake.

Writing isn't designed to be chronological, and the best stories are the ones that veer left and right, and lead into one another so that you live inside them, rather than read along them. With me so far? Good.

Then I'll tell you about Patagonia.

I'm unlikely to name every trail and trek we took, because some are less memorable than others. In a separate post (Accomodations and Travel) you'll find all the logistics and path of my travels.

My hands were frozen. I was trying to pull the tent cover over the pin I had pushed into the dirt. It was dark. We weren't sure if we were in an actual campsite or just a patch of grass at the side of a dirt road. We had left town after dark. There was no reason to camp, other than that we had to test our gear before heading off to any undetermined multi-day trek. The sound of the river nearby was unsettling. Running water blocks out sounds of anything else. If there was someone here, we'd never know. Two girls with as much camping experience as you could count on one hand. A hand that had been through a work accident. Maybe dropped a few fingers in a meat slicer.

We hadn't so much as unrolled our sleeping bags. I had absolutely no strength in my fingers. I wondered how this would all end up. Camping in the bitter cold, going several-day long treks. I had been sick since we departed Santiago over a week prior. In the days since we had insufficient sleep, a serious lack of nutritional meals that consisted mainly of crackers and oreo cookies, and constant exposure to rain, wind, no heating or hot water and night temperatures in the range of 0 degrees celsius. Everything, I'll be fine with everything; broken bones, sprains, whatever. I didn't want to get pneumonia at the start of my trip. That's so fucking uncool.

I cursed under my breath, adjusting my head lamp. Eventually we got the tent set up, it took about 10 minutes in total. Not bad for two city slickers, we said, high-fiving each other.

Camping in the snow weeks later

It was about 22:00, we got into the tent and changed into our sleep layers. This would later be known as the worst goddamn part of camping in the cold, by far. Those 5 minutes of "bathing" with baby wipes while shivering, removing layer by layer, we'd gradually learn to do more efficiently (the baby wipe shower, it turns out, works best from top to bottom. Start with the face and neck, and work your way down to the feet, removing layers and replacing them with sleep clothes as you go). I had two base layers on at the end of the horrid ordeal. I was ice cold, so I layered my hoodie over and put my neck warmer and knit hat back on. See the post on "what to pack for fall in Patagonia" for more on these and other essential items. My sleeping bag was rated for up to -7c or -20F. No bigger lie has ever been printed on to fabric. Sleeping bags usually have a comfort versus an extreme temperature rating, and the difference between the two is hardly ever more than 10C. It must have been -10c that night because I couldn't stop shivering. I coughed incessantly, burrying my face in my neckwarmer. Suddenly we heard noises which carried even over the sound of the river.

You hear that, I said to Tal Yeah, she said, tension in her voice.

A man's voice.

I grabbed my knife out of the front pocket of my backpack. I recalled all the people who raised an eyebrow when I said I almost always carry a small knife when I travel. It had already been useful a number of times, but I hoped I'd never have to use it against someone. I threw on my boots and tucked the laces inside. Turning my head lamp I cautiously climbed out of the tent. I saw no one. Standing up, I recognized movement in the tree house just a few meters away. Tal was now standing at my side. A man suddenly appeared at the entrance to the house. We both yelled. I regretted how absolutely and pathetical girly we sounded. The knife handle firmly grasped in my fist, our voices didn't match our appearance. The man apologized, then went back inside.

Hola permisso we yelled out no answer we repeated several times. What the fuck was this supposed to be. A scare the shit out of random girls and hide game? If so they were doing a fantastic job, but I wasnt keen on playing. Don't get too close, Tal said, as I took a few steps towards the structure. We called out again. Finally the man came out. He seemed in his thirties, an odd age to be hanging out in a tree house. We then recognized a female voice. He asked us to turn our headlamps away. We did, a little hesitantly. Is this a campsite, we asked. No, he said. but we can camp here? is it ok? Yeah sure. It's fine. Confused, and uncertain of how safe we were, we laughed and returned to our tent- not like we could do anything else. I tried to sleep. I really did. I did breathing exercises to warm my body and raise my pulse, but the counter effect is that they energize you as well. I curled up into a ball. I was already as close to Tal in her mummy sack, as we could be. My hips hurt, pressed against the ground. It reminded me of sleeping on tatami mats in Japan, only worse.

That was when I thought of waves.

It had become a habit, when I couldnt sleep. I'd think of waves, nice glassy waves. I'd imagine every motion and movement on them until I could feel it. Rising up with ease as the sound of the water rushing surrounded me, the pressure on my knee as I crouch for the drop. I took a deep breaths before I twisted my body, digging the rail of the board, and a rush of adrenaline when I lost my balance. I felt the sudden cold as the water enveloped me and sinking down into it weightlessly, I stared up watching the wave roll above me. Completely at peace, I waited as though I'd never need to surface. I'd forgotten the need to breathe. For a person terrified of deep water, these were my oddest moments of pure content. Pure therapy, nothing less. If nothing else, the elements will always humble you yet simultaneously fill you with undaunted power. If you can't find your place in the world by being in nature, you won't find it anywhere else either. I watched the lines of the foam rise and disapper, my board tugged at my leg. I exhaled slowly for the rise, prepared to meet another crushing wave as soon as I did.

Reality above was waiting. You can pretend that you can live under water, but eventually you have to surface, and when you do you're always surprised anew to find that life has been tumbling on with or without you.

Sometimes, thinking of waves wasn't enough. In my daydrem, my muscles remained tense, and I curled my body inwards for warmth. And sometimes, at least back then, I could feel him lying next to me. He always radiated heat.

I'm taking you with me to Patagonia, I joked. To keep me warm. Nah, he said, youll definitely find some guy to keep you warm. A tinge of sadness in his tone. I could never tell him he was wrong. And maybe he wasn't. but at least in that moment, I could use the memory of him, and he'd never have to know. It couldn't hurt him anyway. What difference does it make, to either of us, if I use a memory for my own good. It was the same like the waves, they couldn't possibly know or care that I dreamed them up to drag my thoughts away from present situation. Anyway, just like that, before they could be real, somewhere out there, they would have ended much faster than I needed to fall asleep. The ride is always so much shorter than it seems.

#patagonia #trekking #backpacking #femaletravel #solotravel #life