By Seth Price of Binghamton University
Patagonia Student Program – Spring 2020 Semester
The tires of the van roll into basecamp. 14 days out in the Chacabuco Valley behind us. 14 days of up-at-sunrise mornings, out-in-the-field afternoons, and in-the-tent evenings, and a whole lot of smiling in between. Judging by my current state, it seems like the only thing we didn’t manage to fit in those past 14 days was sleep. I slug out of the truck, resent my decision to grab my bags, and make my way over to the patch of dirt we have been calling home for the past month. I pitch my tent with such ease; it’s almost like I have been doing this every day for the past month. As I walk away from my now pitched 43 cubic foot house of nylon and mesh-inside it my makeshift bed that I know will deflate on me an hour or two into my sleep- all I can feel is comfort. In a situation that some may pose is the exact opposite of comfort, returning to base camp was the solace the group had sought for so long.
The experience of living in a tent for a whole semester can most easily be analogized to holding a conversation with a native Spanish speaker, in Spanish, and you yourself don’t have a lot of experience with the language. It’s going to be awkward, it’s going to be uncomfortable, you’re going to have to be patient, but at the end of the day you come out of it a better person than when you went in. This thought becomes particularly amplified when I think of our time at basecamp. As our squatting ground between expeditions, basecamp was our oasis of modern amenities in a desert of primitive living. A hot shower! Overhead lighting! A grocery store? Yep, even that too. Yet, our imaginative release brought on by the access to hot water, electricity, and fresh food would soon be balanced by the walk back to our respective nylon abodes every night. “Back to the dirt patch” one of use would say as our headlamps navigated our bodies through the clear Patagonian night from the quincho door to the zippers of our tents. To the dirt patch we went; to the dirt patch we loved.
At basecamp, learning is to academics as life is to work: one does not necessarily mean the other. Sandwiched between our educational time in the field and the harrowing struggles of writing natural history journals, the minutiae of everyday life in a small, rural town in a foreign country delivered to us a heavy dosage of learning that can’t be copied by reading a textbook. The town base camp is located in, Cochrane, is as dynamic as the music that fills its streets, but also as static as the mountains that tower around it. If one were to sit in the town square, they could see into the past by observing two gauchos rekindle through conversation while also seeing multiple years into the future as the two walk away from one another. Nestled along a primitive dirt road so secluded that its design tells the story of its travelers, the presence of Cochrane locals may be ephemeral, but its culture is there to stay.
Much of which can be seen through a microcosm of an asado, or Chilean barbecue. To prepare for the festive Patagonian event, we find ourselves traversing the aisles of Rojitas and Melero searching rabidly for our desired ingredients (Figure 3). In a pursuit so rapid it feels like there is no tomorrow, it seems as if the grocery stores of Cochrane is the only place where the concept of time actually exists. We search and search for no purpose largely out of a failed remembrance that Patagonians keep their menus simple. What is on the menu for an asado? Cordero, sopapillas, ensalada y, por supuesto, vino. We grab the loose end ingredients that we did manage to find, and head back to basecamp just to greet the small village that has already congregated around the fire. A lamb roasting on a spit (Figure 4), feet dancing on our dirt patch, and laughs filling the air between words; asados are a time where the distance between individuals shrinks to almost nothing. Despite the rushed pace in preparation for the event, we still manage to eat only after the sun has gone down. In Patagonia, schedules are irrelevant, as life moves at the pace determined by its holders. After the food has been served, all that is left in its place is a pile of lamb bones and one greasy table. What does remain is full glasses of wine and the smiles on the faces of those that are near. Eventually, a daring someone spits out the signature “back to the dirt patch,” and away we all go to our footprint-ridden bed.
I’m grateful for our time spent in Cochrane not only because of the experiences we were fortunate to have there, but also because of its contradiction to the experiences we had in other places. Basecamp served as our place to rest, our place to remove, and our place to reflect. Walking back to the dirt patch every night had no difference in routine from our nights spent out in the field, but the simple change in environment exemplified the reason behind our routine. It allowed us the opportunity to step back and fully understand the “why” behind all of our efforts. Lastly, and maybe most importantly, it showed to us that there is always time for a little fun.
