Futa

"Looking eastward from the summit of Pacheco Pass one shining morning, a landscape was displayed that after all my wanderings still appears as the most beautiful I have ever beheld.  At my feet lay the Great Central Valley of California, level and flowery, like a lake of pure sunshine, forty or fifty miles wide, five hundred miles long, one rich furred garden of yellow compositae.  And from the eastern boundary of this vast golden flower-bed rose the mighty sierra, miles in height, and so gloriously colored and so radiant, it seemed not clothed with light, but wholly composed of it, like a wall of some celestial city....it seemed to me that the Sierra should be called, not the Nevada or Snowy Range, but the Range of Light."  John Muir

Look at Piedra del Aguila in the above photograph and see Valentin, the Belgian who will work until every single line in his fingerprint is removed.  We stood on the edge of an Eagle's rock and understood.  Futaleufu holds traits of John Muir's central California.  For the same sun illuminates the mountains sculpted by the Futaleufu River which carries the purest definition of the word aqua.  I watched the arm of the sun shoot deep into a valley over a sea of golden flowers moving just as the waters of Futaleufu's Rivers.  Everything moves fantastically here.  Fortunately Robert, a 22 year veteran of the massive movements of the Futaleufu River, guided us through the holes and 8 foot waves created by ancient and present rock slides.  There will be no conquering.  Maybe perhaps there will be a timid symbiotic relationship between raft and water.  Or maybe perhaps there will be a water punch to the gut with a polar swim.  My destiny was the latter.  It is ignorantly thrilling to have this short swim.

Twilight is the word miraculous in Futaleufu.  The range of the mountains encircled our campfire loaded with meat.  At 9:00pm the mountains seemingly grab and cloth themselves with asado embers.  In this moment our small community of traveling misfits drank the closest thing to an IPA existing in chilean patagonia.   And in this moment, over Futaleufu's warm mountain ranges, we watched the sun and moon brilliantly catch each other.