noches valdivianas

A change of scene!! I am entering week two in Valdivia, Chile, a bustling little city close to the coast, which I haven´t actually gotten to visit yet but hear it´s lovely. I´m here at a hostel with a garden and different permaculture projects called Aires Buenos. It´s run by a sassy older lady from California, working along with a nice, mild-mannered french couple and none other than my homeboy Steve!! The story is like this- I knew he was travelling in Patagonia, but didn´t expect to be able to meet up. Then my very last day at Granja Valle Pintado in the morning just as I had finished packing and was ready to take my last stroll and say goodbye here comes Steve ambling down the path. It turned out to be fortuitous because we called the lady at the hostel in Valdivia and she said it was ok for us both to come and work and so far it´s turned out well. We´re both working on projects at the hostel and for the woman´s cabin in the woods. Steve´s building a rocket stove for the cabin and I´ve been expanding the garden, and doing odd jobs like painting and cutting firewood for the long winter to come. The weather is rainy and chilly in the morning, but then sunny and nice. The garden is small but the yard has a generous pear tree, two chickens, and an absurd pet duck named Gardel who enjoys digging up transplanted herbs and hopping between my feet at all times. A lot of intolerable rich European tourists are around the hostel, but they feed us well and we sleep deeply in comfy dorm beds, so no complaints. Still, I´m ready to back in the countryside and eating farm food. I´m in contact with several farms in the area looking to spend the month on April before I return to Mendoza and then up to work on a nature reserve in northern Argentina in the lovely month of May.
The last two weeks in Bolson were nice. I had been really antsy about where to go next, but once I got the hostel gig lined up, all good. My farewell dinner was a suishi bonanza replete with super hot edamame powder on everything and then song after song around the kitchen table until late. The last few days were blustery and with less activity. Time enough to meditate, reflect, and have a brief fling with a pretty canadian girl who came to Argentina fleeing a life situation where she felt angry and entrapped, and as of yet hadn´t felt much better as a result of travelling. One of many complicated lives crossed with in 2 months at Valle Pintado. Then it was a goodbye to Patricia, my friend via Eduardo from Centro Latino and wonderfully generous host in her messy but love-filled home in el Bolson (6 dogs, 3 cats, underattended pear and apple trees, and her teenage son Antus was, well, a teenager in the fullest sense).
Now Valdivia seems so bustling compared to el Bolson. Cars, thousands of university students, lots of sly street people, fish markets. Oh, and did I mention blueberries? At laaaaast! So many blueberries at the market!!!
Last weekend I took a trip 5 hours north to visit my hermano Federico who I met on a farm in Mendoza, a poor, good hearted, super anti-dogma kid from a poor villa who like me dreams of the rural anarquist revolution. I visited him where he´s been living the last couple months at a little anarquist collective house with a big garden in a tiny town called Melipeuco near a volcano. A wonderful weekend of drking mate on the sidewalk, feasting on blackberries and apples planted all over the town, and talking about the new paradigm. On sundat afternoon we harvested a huge field of potatoes as a community and I learned a great new folk song from a Chilean girl. The other people at the community were super awesome and the walls we covered with great posters about resisting the bullshit and spreading joy and creativity. On the way back to Valdivia I got stuck in the bus terminal of Temuco with a 3 hour layover, but luckily it was on the outskirts of town so I walked across the way into a field, harvested more ubiquitous blackberries, sat and watched the moon rise wrapped in my rainjacket so as not to be devoured by mosquitoes, and then went back and red the copy of the declaration of the people´s climate conference in Cochabamba, Bolivia that Fede gave.
So yeah, things are a-ok in Valdivia. Doing odd jobs, helping Steve track down materials (yesterday we went to a funky old time brick factory where they fire clay in a big wood oven and then hung out in a bookstore where I found a Mapuche grammar book- go figure!!)
So that´s the good news. I´ll write more soon when I´m at home on the next farm.
Night night.

el Gran Bio and more!!!!

Hello at last! What an incredible few weeks! Sorry for such a long delay between posts, but the few brief moments of internet access in the last month have found me too hurried and overwhelmed to try to distill what I´ve been living these days.
So first off, Bioconstruyendo Patagonia took place. For the fist half of February our numbers went growing on the farm until the magic week of the 15th arrived and we were more than 100 camping, eating, dancing, and building together in the blessed valley of the Rio Azul. Basically for me it involved 6 days of waking up in the cabin in the woods to the sound of flute music, eating 3 amazing meals a day, managing the irrigation system and weeding in the garden a but apart from all the construction madness, helping with herb and vegetable harvest for the kitchen, which converted into a mass production to feed everyone, and then huge fires and music every night. I met so many amazing human beings from el Bolsón, from Chile, Buenos Aires, even Colombia and Ecuador. So many great conversations about change and massage circles and collective silliness. And did I mention music?? Every day during the siesta, after dinner, and often to the wee hours of the morning playing tunes from the US, from Argentina, Brazil, and dancing like mad. One night a troupe of African drummers came and we had a massive dance and song to greet the moon as it rose over the mountain. I had a great time with a couple of slick guitar players, one from Neuquen, one from Chile who taught me a ton of tunes, and finally allowed me to dance folclore because before I was the only one who could play the tunes.
Anyway, so that was that. The last two and a half weeks on the farm have been a sort of slow recovery process. Every day a handful of people left and some arrived anew. We´re finally down to more or less 12 in all plus different visitors. The food continues to be amazing, though dangerously so. Wednesday for example after the CSA harvest we made an American style breakfast- fried eggs, hash browns, blackberry cobbler (did I mention that the valley is now literally flooded with wild blackberries). Anyway, it was so good that I stuffed myself even more than usual and spent the next 24 hours with stomach cramps and horrendous gas. Ahh, just the reminder I needed to go back to eating lightly.
Tuesday night was quite the adventure. So in the region of el Bolsón the winter are wet but the summers can get very dry and with brush and pine trees that means forest fires are common. It hadn´t rained for about three weeks and the dust was getting really thick. Then on Monday a fire started at the other end of the valley. We could see the plume of smoke just like a cumulus cloud on the horizon. The next morning it seemed to have died down when all of a sudden we got news that it had started up and had crossed the highway. Pastor, one of the main organizers of Bio who has a house near the fire came and asked for help, so about 10 of us loaded into his truck, some inside, some in the trailer, and rushed off in the late afternoon. We arrived as it was getting dark and found that the fire was raging in the valley right below his house. Let´s just say it was an impressive sight to see flames 50 feet high advancing through a valley. We had planned to dig trenches and cut down some trees but with such a blaze and with the wind coming our way we got pretty panicked and just ended up loading some expensive machinery and high tailing it back to town. On the way back we had to take an alternative route higher up the mountain because the gendarmes had blocked the route. In the end his house escaped the fire just barely because the next morning a glorious rain came and soaked the valley, but it did an amazing amount of damage across the way. That night, looking down at the lines of flames lighting up the night, smelling the pine smoke, rushing to load up the truck, . . . it was like a vision of the apocalype. Funny how much we talk on the farm about how soon the way of life we´re trying to advance will become urgent in the face of ecological disaster, it felt terribly appropriate.
Ahh, well that´s some of the many highlights of my time. More will have to wait for some other occassion. Other than that, this is a time of figuring out plans. As much as I love the farm, I feel weary of so much coming and going, so many goodbyes, and I feel like it´s time to move on soon. I´m in contact with farms in the south of Chile and hoping to be traveling that way in the next couple weeks. In the meantime, tomorrow is Alex´s birthday party (he´s the permanent resident on the farm) and it is sure to be full of music and madness. Afterward I may be able to meet up with none other than Steve and maybe spend some days climbing and sleeping in high mountain refugios. Time will tell. As for Carolina, she´s back in Mendoza and I´ll probably head that way to see various people by April. Our separation ended up very natural with so many great people coming to the farm. We both lost ourselves in new love interests and were very content.
Ahh to be free with a wide world waiting!
I apologize for the lack of pictures of me. It will take time to track down different people on facebook. For now, here´s three photos to give you a taste of my environment. One is a meeting during Bio (I´m in it, but it´s hard to tell), another of Alex in the garden, my second home, and the last of one of the best spots to take a dip in our beloved Rio Azul.
Until the next adventure!!

construyendo!!!

Ahh! Nearing the month mark for my time on Granja Pintado. Things have been intense in many ways. Every day more and more volunteers show up from the US, Spain, France, and Argentina as we prepare to recieve over 200 people for the building workshop Bioconstruyendo. Every day is a time blur of work in the garden, on the building sights, hikes around the valley and the river, yoga, amazing meals, and music music music. There´s a girl from Alaska who plays Irish tunes on the fiddle and we´ve been having ceilis every night after dinner. I´m starting to get to the point where I feel really established and comfortable with my role on the farm and starting to form deeper friendships with all sorts of people. Things with Carolina are up and down. Some wonderful moments, some painful fights, but growing as people and feeling so grateful for this beautiful place, grateful to be alive and feel a whole range of emotions.
Last weekend we rented bikes and went to the nearest Mapuche community. The Mapuche are an umbrella group of indigenous groups that are the indigenous peoples of the south of Argentina and Chile and have a wonderful cosmovision involving each persons´personal spirit, Nehuen, and a strong connection with the forest spirits of this blessed land. Unfortunately, in Argentina they are hardly recognized and continue to struggle for land access. What´s more, the community we visited was one of many altered by evangelical christianity. The families have their own land and a decent quality of life, but the cost has been almost a complete loss of their culture since, after all, evangelicals view their traditional songs, rituals, and sports as witchcraft and barbarity. It was heartbreaking to talk to the elder leader whose eyes were very sad and took an interest in what we had to say about solidarity with other groups here, but you had the sense that he felt trapped by the teachings of the outsiders who came and built the church and helped them keep their land.
On a joyful note, we have made friends with a remarkable Mapuche woman, Moira Millán, who will be spending time with us on the farm during Bioconstruyendo. The other day she told us the history of the valley, which was a place of refuge from the Argentine army until the late 1880s when a spy named Perito Moreno learned the secret portals of the valley and the army came and massacred the inhabitants. She sand a song and told us to remember the spirits that are still present at our side in the valley as we do our best to restore and protect the land. Needless to say, having her here is a wonderful, inspiring presence.
Other than that, things are well. Hard work, delicious food. A glorious mix of emotions here. My plans are also now wide open. I´ll probably return to Mendoza for a while with Caro in a few wees, but I also would like to cross over and spend some time in the south of Chile. News keeps coming in about my future. I´ve been accepted in the masters program at North Carolina Chapel Hill and nominated for a full ride scholarship, so it´s entirely possibly I will be there in August. I´m waiting to hear from Fulbright, from UT-Austin, from Ohio State, but I´m also excited about the wokshop because a ton of people are coming from all over, from farms, ngos, etc. and who knows what connections I might get there.
Ahhh, so it´s good to be alive, to be young, to have adventures, to feel excitement, heartbreak, brotherhood, and spend my days working the earth.
Hope all is well in Missouri. Enjoy the snow, haha!!

desde el Bolson!!!!!

Hello loved-ones!!!
Ahh, finally a little time aside to write and update everyone on how things are in paradise. I´m about to enter week 3 on Granja Valle Pintado and what an intense experience it has been. The valley is incredibly beautiful. Photos don´t do it justice, but I´ll try to have some for the next entry. Huge hills covered with pine and decidious forest, and the brilliant Rio Azul running through it with water so clear and cold that a 10 second dip turns you into a new person, hehe. The farm has a beautiful garden, which Caro and I are assigned to attend along with a wonderful older couple, Lila and Jorge, from Israel and Buenos Aires, respectively. But aside from the garden, there are many other volunteers, mostly from the US and Canada, who are working on gearing up to host a huge natural building conference, Bioconstruyendo, next month. With tons of people are coming and going it´s a bit hard to find peace of mind, especially since Caro and I have been sleeping in a loft above the communal kitchen, but there are a lot of fun characters that we´ve been getting to know. Besides the humans, there´s beautiful old horse, Petizo, that I´m in charge of caring for, taking him back and forth from pasture, as well as feeding the dogs and cats. The chickens and geese are another volunteer´s responsability, but they graze here and there all over the place anyway and leave little poops that are impossible to avoid.
After 3 weeks Caro and I are hitting a rocky spot where we´re realizing that we probably aren´t compatible long term as a couple because the magic that we expected just isn´t there. So we´ve taken a couple of days off separately to reflect and readjust to that reality. We care about each other a lot and want to continue to spend time together, so it´s just a matter of reinventing our relationship and deciding who we are and what each of us wants. Both of us know we´re here together for a reason and little by little we´re discovering that.
Oh, and I just found out that I made the intial selection for Fulbright, which means I have a very good chance of being in Colombia for a year starting in August. We´ll see.
Love to everyone!!! I´ll write more soon!!!

time to return!!!!

Wow! A year has passed since the last entry in this blog, since I left Argentina and returned to Columbia. What a year it has been! Lots of working, finishing school, growing gardens, starting friendships, and now enjoying the harvest and saying goodbye. Tommorrow afternoon I climb aboard a flight and wake up in Santiago, Chile where I will have lots of fun carrying my stuff from the airport to a shuttle to the bus terminal on the other side of the enormous city. Then it's time to cross the Andes and return to Mendoza, to my beloved Carito and 100 degree desert heat. Today I said goodbyes and walked the streets of Columbia in the freezing cold already feeling like I was an outsider visiting old haunts, a feeling I'll have to get used to.

Anyway, I will be updating soon when the action begins again- stay tuned lovelies!!!

en la patagonia!!!!

Hello all!!
Much has transpired since my last entry. I´ve spent my first week working at the farm in Epuyen, been up many mountains, down many rivers. The work is good; lots of gardening, odd jobs, building, etc. It is a very relaxed place. The owner Gabriel is very quiet and a little distant, but his wife and son and lovely, and my three mates on the farm (mom and daughter from New York, and Noemie from Quebec) are great. We´re in a valley surrounded by mountains and pine forest. It´s much prettier even than this little picture I send you. Anyway, much to say, but I´d rather tell you all later in person than sit in front of a computer now, so be well and be seeing you in two short weeks!

desde Córdoba!!

I´m writing from my hostel in downtown Córdoba. Have a little time to kill so I figured I might as well write.
So, what a day yesterday! Woke up at 4:30 am to catch my bus from Mendoza to here. Spent a seemingly endless ride in and out of sleep, arrive here at 5:30 and immediately rushed from the terminal dowtown to the place where tickets for Manu Chao were supposedly sold. I get there and despite the fact that I called the day before and specifically asked if there would be tickets if I came by at 6 pm, they were sold out. Ok, no panicking, I still have a chance if I haul ass 20 blocks down to the stadium itself. I rush there full of nerves, arrive, and thankfully they´ve just brought the last batch of tickets. Now I rush back downtown to find a bed to crash in later, eat a bit, do a 180, and join the parade of hippies and punks and anarquist and rastas marching across the bridge to the show.
What a show!! It was completely absurd. Thousands of people packed in losing their minds. The opening act was a huge drum troupe dressed up for carnaval, who played and danced themes against police violence. Then on came Radio Bemba Sound System and Manu front and center. By the second song my clothes were completely soaked through with sweat, mostly not mine. For most of the show I was right up front and center, 3 meters from the stage, and that meant being smashed up against everyone around me, lifting crowd surfers over my head, planting myself against the waves of people pushing back and forth and writhing up and down every time a ska beat came around. It was raging fun. My only complaint is that it was hard to breath with so much humidity and smoke, and dehydration was endemic. I was fortunate to be generally bigger than the average argentine, so I could hold my ground and not get smashed, and still be able to see the stage and jump up for some fresh air now and then.
They played 3 hours straight, weaving all the themes into each other, and pausing only toward the end (during one of 3 encores) to let anti-mining activists talk to the audience. It was amazing- I´ve never been to a concert where the artist let activists talk right in the middle of the show, but then Manu Chao is just down like that (background: in the south of Mendoza, new gold deposits have been discovered, but extracting them would threaten to contaminate a huge portion of the regio`n´s drinking water, thus the slogan of the resistence is ¨Sí a la vida, no a la minería!¨).
So anyway, after waking up and eating a hearty breakfast at 2 pm, to day was spent wandering around this pleasant, if balmy city. Saw lots of huge cathedrals, art museums, parks, talk to a lot of interesting people here and there. Climbed up a huge cypress tree on a hill above the zoo and watched a great sunset. Now I´m waiting for my aunt`s friend who lives here to come by so we can visit, and then hopefully I can get some sleep before my bus back to Mendoza bright and early tomorrow.