mas south mas south mas south

"I steered though the big city by compass without speaking a word to anyone.  Beyond the city I found a road running southward, and after passing a scatterment of suburban cabins and cottages I reached the green woods and spread out my pocket map to rough-hew a plan for my journey.  My plan was simply to push on in a general southward direction by the wildest, leafiest, and least trodden way I could find, promising the greatest extent of virgin forest.  Folding my map I shouldered my little bag and plant press and strode away, not however without a few cold shadows of loneliness, although the great Oaks seemed to spread their arms in welcome."   John Muir

Maybe a bed is needed or maybe a seat or maybe a row of seats on a ferry. These things will suffice for my veins' farthest south wanderings.  I took an exceptionally nice bus overnight from Santiago to Puerto Montt and watched John Carter in Spanish.  Santiago pushes and drains into meadows which drain into cottages and cabins and finally campos.  And this is when modestly, the northern most part of Patagonia proposes breath medicating the awkwardness of lungs carrying a city.  The ocean again is familiar. The trees here are assuredly communicating with those above Seattle.  My map is this sentence.  "I need to take a ferry to Chaiten."  Upon taking this map out of my pocket I understand there is no ferry, there isn't one until 3 days, there is a bus tomorrow at 7am to carry you closer to your destination, there is a ferry, I don't know, so on and so on and so on...so exists shadows of loneliness.  God intercedes with limbs in motion and so begins designless motion through a slow Sunday port. I ring a beautiful empty hostel door.  I walk down an ally and see the name Ruth's B and B stenciled in wood. A women titled "turquoise beautiful smiling Ruth" auspiciously parts the second story's lace curtains to see my designless standing across the street.  Turquoise Ruth prepares muscle soup and artistically refines my map.  She and her husband join my 11 hour motion through the fish market and shops and harbor and night walk to the ferry leaving at 12:00am.

The more I follow this map the more the wilderness adheres to its name offering impossibly wild valleys, volcanoes, and glaciers...and resting in this impossibility is Palena, my wild home for the next 5 weeks.