Driving up the Maipo river drainage following the Rio Yeso my heart was filled with the pure beauty of the place were had the opportunity to travel through. Soaring peaks, goat herds, and high desert vistas surrounded us. Energy in the car was high- I mean you get an international group of paddlers together, pack them into a van, and send them off on an adventure and you know there will be fun to be had. Stoke was definitely high.
And yet even in these relatively remote areas that are defined by their natural beauty there are still significant human impacts. My first gut instinct is to be saddened by the way in which we prioritize maximizing making our lives easier rather than trying to also prioritize minimizing impact. I was unable to figure out exactly what is going on here but the human impact here left an obvious scar on the landscape. It started me wondering what role aesthetics play in the fight for conservation of wild places and what the balance between utility and aesthetics might be.
Just upstream of the waterfall we were searching for is an abandoned Pinochet concentration camp. Such a powerful place. The combination of the dark history of suffering with the impressive overlooking mountain peak was intimidating. To me a purely beautiful, majestic mountain, but I wonder how isolated and lonely that peak made the people that were held here feel. A totally different kind a human impact, one that leaves a deeply emotional scar.
Inside one of the buildings I found this graffiti image. Interesting to find the message in English, I wonder if there is an additional meaning behind the language choice? A fatalistic image in a haunting place. A message that I sometimes feel myself agreeing with on this trip. The seemingly constant destruction of the environment and of human lives on this planet can leave us feeling quite depressed and helpless. But what does this mean in terms of our actions? Does it mean we should just give up?
But just as there can be a constant stream of negative messages, I also always find myself coming across moments of pure beauty in the world. Moments of friendship, passions shared, sunsets enjoyed with a delicious glass of cheap, dirtbag Chilean wine, and things feel a lot more worth it. Watching our friend Tino soar down from the high mountainside out across the Maipo river valley definitely left a glimmer of hope in my heart.
