El Chalten: The Patagonian landscape is vast. It feels unending. It wraps around and swallows you. The small town of El Chalten sits at the feet of Andes. Towering above you is Mount Fitzroy, the iconic granite mountain that adorns every piece of @patagonia clothing you wear (my favorite outdoor clothing company to be sure). We had to ride with the infamous gauchos before we left, for to not would feel like going to the Vatican, but not seeking out the Sistine Chapel. I use this metaphor due to its fitting parallel: This land is a spiritual place for me. The expansive environment is my church. I feel rooted to the Terra — Maybe an epigenetic carry-over from my days as a hunter gatherer. The gauchos live up to their name in most of the ways you can imagine. We had experienced this connection of human and animal in the plains of Santa Cruz (I’ll have to tell you about that some time), but now we were going to live it — at least for a few hours. My horse was bigger, sturdier, older, slower than the others. I am no gaucho. My horse and I had an understanding: Let’s soak this in, let’s take our time. We travelled up scraggly paths and through churning rivers. A dome of blue cleaved off of Fitz Roy’s peak. I glassed the vista, one hand on my horse, and through unspoken words I began to share with the large equine at my fingertips, “I’m a heavy load, you’re doing great, concentrate on your footing, tranquilo, tranquilo...” We continued to travel through this place, my hips rocking in the saddle, my shoulders countering the movement, channeling Eastwood and Redford. As the path cleared, an older wooden structure sat at the sloped foot of the mountains. From the porch we processed the image I present to you (above), the landscape that lay before me. My horse is third in from the left. This is where the gaucho’s roam. This is where cold white clears the town for winter. This is the place where legends are made. We cleared our meal and got back into the swing of our trek, a climax was brewing. Coming off of the mountain, a prairie opened up. We were free to ride, to ride as fast as our horse would take us. My ex-wife snapped her heels and her young horse carried her small frame with such speed that the medic in me was immediately fearful for how dangerous it seemed while I also felt like a challenge had been laid before me. I wasn’t near as comfortable as she was on her horse. My horse and I, we had an understanding. I was, however, a gaucho for a day...so let me ride into the blue! I snapped my heels, my horse slowly gained in speed, my hips began coming off of the saddle with each stride of this large mammal beneath me. I could tell that she was struggling under the weight of my 6’ 4” frame. I dropped my hand once again, and through unspoken words I began sharing with her, “I’m a heavy load, you’re doing great, concentrate on your footing, tranquilo, tranquilo...” Our pace slowed, we began to trot along, the vista sharpened back into perspective. Fitz Roy stared down at us from the clouds. This is where legends are made, blue hues cleaving from the tops of the mountains. It was another good day...
Perito Moreno Glacier: Finishing up our fieldwork in the rolling expanse of Santa Cruz, we ended up back in El Calafate. Time on our hands before taking the travelers pilgrimage to El Chalten, we decided to take the advice of the locals and go to the Perito Moreno Glacier. Please go. Just head south, if you aren’t already living there, and go. It is immense. It is beautiful. You are small in it’s presence. It’s good to be humbled by nature — it drives me to care more than I thought I could, and already did. There’s a sound that comes with the Glacier that I cannot fully relay to you. It’s familiar to me only in an experience I had when a boulder rolled off of a cliff in India and I heard it resonate throughout the valley on its way down. The calving of ice is magnificent. You feel it. It’s almost akin to why I’m drawn to music with deep drums or low frequency bass rumbles. It vibrates you, deep inside. It echoes for miles. I know what it is, I know what I’m hearing, but it’s still hard to process the magnanimity of it. Without context, without my modern sensibilities, without my iPhone in hand and laminated pictorials explaining the science of this event, this would be Zeus, this would be the clashing of Titans, I would pay penance for the wrongs that I’d perceived I had done. It’s frightening on an evolutionary level. It’s exciting in the present. An excitement that shakes the fibers of my being. I wanted to capture the sound. I waited with my @h4 and missed it each time, as soon as I let my guard down, it happened again. My mind remembers though. My soul will take it with me into the expanse of what is to come. It was a good day...
Somewhere deep in Santa Cruz: I am so small. I am a mere drop of mercury on the Arecibo Observatory. The orange hues stretch for miles sliced by a wall of blue — Wilhelm von Bezold must have been to this place before. I stand in the shadow of a slight ridge that gives way to another immense plateau. There must have been water here in this depression, but now it is dry...so very dry. The land is flat with little vegetation, nothing but low lying mosses and sharp needled ground covers that propagate across the plateau. We are six hours by vehicle from El Calafate, a GPS coordinate in the desert, but we are not the first to take refuge here. The ground under my feet is covered in knapped stone. Shards fan out in the darkness of the ridges shadow by the thousands. Many people have been through this place for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Evidence of their lives become more prominent with each gust of wind, dry topsoils lift into the air, uncovering more sharply pointed stone pieces everywhere we look. The closer we get to the ridge, the more it makes sense that this was a rest-stop for our ancestors. The wind leaps off of the plateau and over our heads as we hunker down in the protection of the ridge line. I find the perfect lithic seat and look out over the landscape. If you look closely, in the the top right of the photo, just below the skyline, you can see our vehicle for scale — Patagonia swallows us. My eyes follow along the line where terra meets sky. Generations of eyes have moved in the same way, from this very point. I’m just following in the tradition. It’s been a good day...
Cerro Solo: We hiked for a couple of hours, up through the greenery of the foothills, rolling paths that became shrouded by the lower forest canopy. In our distant view, the mountains of Cerro Solo, Torre, and Fitz Roy towered, lock armed in unity. They looked down at us, watching as we popped in and out of the the brush and from various lookouts along the way like salmon swimming upstream. The hike became more arduous and steep, more barren and rocky. We were told that we would reach a lookout where all the peaks would be visible from one point. A few times we thought we’d reached it, condors diving off of clips above us, riding the headwinds up and down. We would soon realize, however, that some of the peaks were still obscured and so we forged on. Before us lay a much higher point with a few small black dots atop the crest of it’s head. I took out my zoom lens and peered up at the ants moving around up there. They were bipedal, that was our destination — A steep shale mound stood between us and our view. We moved slowly. Admittedly, we began to stop every 10 minutes. We were scrambling up loose slate chips that slid out from under our feet and hands. It felt like it went on for awhile. We made it though...shoulder to shoulder with the view of the condors. Cerro Solo stood out to me. A huge sloped, snow capped mountain top, crisp and untouched. We broke out the ziplock bagged spaghetti we’d made the night before. My partner fell asleep immediately. I stood tall among the wind and the bite of cold on my ears and nose. It was immense. I was a bit awestruck and it felt like a bit of a crucible to reach it. Nothing too crazy, but challenging enough. It was so totally worth it. I hope you’ll find yourself there. It was another good day... . . How far will you climb? What heights can you reach? Spread your wings, fly like the condor. Keep moving forward and look for all the peaks of opportunity in your life... . . #Patagonia#Argentina#Mountains#Highs#RyanMitchellLives#CerroSolo#FitzRoy#ElChalten
#PeritoMorenoGlacier: This place is arresting. Grand isn’t even the right word. It’s size and scope is a bit shocking, I felt great reverence to it. Also, the sound. Anyone that knows me, knows that I have an affinity for sonic environments, interesting sounds. I was half expecting to be blown away by the expansiveness of this Glacier, the shear magnitude and immensity of it...and I was. But, it’s the bass rumble of the calving ice that really carried right through to my soul. It plucks a very primal string nestled deep in my evolutionary fabric. My intuition says to fear this sound. My logic knows what it is, but the pull to engage my fight or flight response is real, exciting. I wonder when this response was embedded into my epigentics. At what point did my distant mRNA relatives experience this sound? We’re they knocked from their boats as large junks broke away from glaciers as they sailed from land mass to land mass? How many were lost? Were they swallowed up into dark black crevasses while crossing the ice-plains of far northern and southern lands? None of this can fully be answered right now, but I low what I feel and I feel as though what I experienced tapped into something deeper inside of me...where did that inner reference come from? It may just be how I’m wired, working with the FD, doing the job that I due, but I felt like running towards the sound. Every time it cracked and shifted sending low frequency blasts throughout the valley, I could feel the fear response kicking in...and I wanted to see it for myself — more fight than flight. It was another good day... Please go see it... . . When was the last time you were truly moved? When did you feel that deep seeded fear and wonderment? Which way to do you run? . . #LiveOfAdventure #In2Nature #OutdoorAdventurePhotos #AdventureMobile #OffTheBeatenPath #WanderOut #TimeOutSociety #TravelerOfTheWeek #instagood10k #mthrworld #exploretheglobe #roamtheplanet #welivetoexplore #neverstopexploring #adventurevisuals #lifeofadventure #letsgosomewhere #stayandwander #Earthofficial #Artofvisuals #Life #Unity #WeAreOne #Glacier #Instatravel #Travel #Landscape #Argentina #landscapehunter
