By Caroline Carter, Bowdoin College
“Make yourselves at home.” Throughout these past two weeks, home has been our tents, all meticulously set up to maximize flat ground and minimize the chance of rainwater permeating the seams of the floor, creeping its way up into our sleeping bags. Home has been crawling into our sleeping bags to study for finals and to work on our species accounts – detailed observations of specific plant and bird species we’ve seen in the field. Home has been cramming four people into a traditional two-person tent, snuggling and chatting past midnight. Home has been the next morning groggily waking up at 6 AM to make pancakes as a sendoff for Team Puma’s research expedition to the Sphagnum bogs. Home is where the heart is. Yes, it’s cheesy, but sitting around our thanksgiving meal, toasting to a fantastic semester, I found myself reflecting on this statement. More specifically, thinking about the abstraction of home and how my relationship to this place has been a culmination of the friendships I have built and memories we have all shared.
Having finished our Pascua thru-hike expedition, our team enjoyed some well-deserved relaxation time in Villa O’Higgins. We spent the first couple days with Team Puma exchanging tales of our adventures while trying to extract the remaining splinters from bushwacking through Magellanic Temperate Rainforest. Soccer games with local students and fireside talks interrupted data-logging sessions compiling a master document of the bird sightings, plant composition, and endangered Huemul deer evidence we recorded on our trips. We also assisted two bog scientists in a planned activity with the school in Villa O’Higgins. Given that bogs comprise 30% of the world’s stored carbon and 10% of the freshwater on Earth, we gladly joined forces with these scientists to give the students a taste of their very own backyard bogs. While many of us failed to ward off the water from topping our boots, we all happily bounced around in the bog, picking up Patagonian Toads and catching a glimpse of the ecosystem’s magic.
We spent thanksgiving eve scrambling down scree rock and avoiding cows on our overnight backpacking trip along Rio El Mosco. Despite the hail and snow from that night, my fingers thawed out the next morning as we hiked back down to Villa O’Higgins encircled by snowcapped mountains with the sun shining down on us. After enjoying some steamy showers and filling up our grocery bags, we all made ourselves at home in a warm and cozy cabin at El Mosco hostel. We spent the day cooking as well as connecting with our loved ones, feeling grateful to have families and friends that support us on our travels and adventures this semester. We then squeezed around a table with a surplus of stuffing, mashed potatoes, pork, green beans with corn, deviled eggs, fruit salad with whipped cream, and a tasty relish made from freshly picked Chaura berries, a staple of the iconic and endangered Huemul deer’s diet. After giving our stomachs a break, we curled up on the couches by the woodstove and strung up a towel to project “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.” Home thanksgiving night was my feet dangling off the end of a small couch, my makeshift bed, next to the soft, orange glow of a tired fire.
