Finally, some pain!!!

The sun is out, I have gone from my farm, my idyllic (sp) world of steaming homemade apple pastries (from the apple tree outside the yellow house) for breakfast and long chats in a stinky cheese room. I have left, I have said farewell but not goodbye, because there are more stories to be told in the garden and perhaps, just perhaps, another few games of chess with a customs officer in a village in a massive green fjord where the many sealions swim about. Maybe I will come back to share with my friends, to learn. But I think that my time with the axe is over.
Let me explain. Last weekend I went into town again, into the grimy, stinky and fairly sketchy town of Puerto Montt, to read and write emails, to recieve some mail and so on... Upon my return the same saturday I saw in the bus station Wiley, the WWOOFer who had only one week earlier left to return to Santiago, 12 hours on the bus. He was suffocated by the city, drowned in the time that that others were lost at sea forever, Wiley was trapped by the heat and the buildings so he hopped on a bus and came back. COMPANY!!!
The next day we wandered down the rocky beach in the wind and rain around the steely sea and the deep green hills. We saw a Whimbrel (one of the birds that my Alaskan and Canadian friends were studying!!! I almost felt proud to identify it - it was all alone) and dolphins cutting about the bay. After a packed and stinky bus along a gravel road that hugged the steep green, after the bus rolled down a hill, packed, backwards because the engine failed, after the driver made another run at it and everyone´s petrified glances moved about from eachothers eyes to the cliff and the sea a hundred feet below, after all of this, we arrived at literally the end of the road. To go further south in Chile you must take a ferry, so we bought some cheesy empanadas and some sodabread and we hopped the rusty ferry to the next little village really just for the trip. We sat on the side of the boat marvelling at the fjord that at its end becomes the Valle Cochamo (a place the call the Yosemite of Chile for its landscape and its climbing) and when we arrived in the village of Puelche we disembarked and walked up the hill past the customs office. There the officer was cleaning some mats, whacking them with determination against the stone wall and as we passed he looked up and simply asked, do any of you play chess. I jumped at the opportunity, Yes I said. So we went into his freakishly clean building (the man works 16 hour shifts but there is nothing to do but clean and study chess problems). I controlled the game, I was on my game. I had seen a dangerous position he was in but i didn´t think anything of it because I was so ravenously on the attack... three moves to checkmate. I moved my queen into position - and indeed out of position as it was guarding the line that he had. We didn´t even bother finishing the game because we both knew he had me in two moves and there was nothing to do about it.

Sergio was his name (not to be confused with Checho) - the man talked to us about chess problems and historic games, and then he launched into a chess metaphor on life and existence: impressive at first, then confusing, then basically incomprehensible. His ideas about northamerican society are scewed and contradictory; after lamenting the selfish, power and money hungry attitude that seems to be human nature, he immediately praised western culture for throwing their children out the door (here everybody is a "momma´s boy or girl" and they get pregnant and married or not and continue living at home - at once beautiful to see close family units and also sad to see dependence and at times a sort of a leech behaviour). He ranted about how this, everything that he has materialy is his and belongs to him, he worked for it and it is not his childrens.
Then he paradoxically invited us in to his room and fed us and told us we can come back at any time, like children...BIZARRE and mildly hipocritical - we walked back to the ferry with our jaws on the floor. To get back to our farm we hitchhiked with a couple from Austria and Italy. Great people!
The next three days we worked clearing bush for a road - about 100m by 3 m and the chainsaw didn´t work so we did it all with axes and machetes (while nowhere close in skill to Checho, I´ve become handy with an axe!) These days were full of stories and indeed a collection of short stories is brewing so when I have written more I will post them but it was breathtaking and my respect for Checho has only grown with our talk about death. His views are decidedly (without conciously being so) buddhist. He spoke of all living things, and how we will all return to the same place, the earth from whence we came. He spoke of the respect and love we must have for everything around us and of the uselessness of material posessions in a world where only interaction and introspection can bring happiness...

I left, that familiar lump again in my throat, but this time smaller - I am, I think, becoming accustomed to this finally - is this good or bad I don´t know...

Now I am in Valdivia and after arriving here a few days ago I saw a sign for a 7km running race... Finally!!! I had complained to Wiley that I was lacking motivation to run (perhaps a canine issue) but missing the feeling of being active and in good shape. So here was the kickstarter. This morning, race day, I woke up to sun, wind and a bit of chilliness - perfect for a race and perfect for tights. I was expecting slow and rather uncompetitive race -I was mistaken. I came in about between 15 and 18th somewhere with a time almost 4 minutes off the winner at about 25mins and god was it painful, as I have run no more than an average of once per week for these three months, and thats generous!! I got to know some of the guys after the race, all very nice and welcoming - some of them are going to qualify in Pucon this month for the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii - no wonder!!! It feels good to do this and I have made a commitment to run now as I start to move south - in place of hiking I am going to run trails, where there will be no dogs! I don´t normally do this sort of thing but I bought a running backpack so that I could be comfortable with all my stuff like water and food and whatnot - it will be an interesting adventure.
Those plans that I mentioned last time, I am heading, in the next month, south toward Puerto Natales and after that no idea!!! Until next time, from a sunny Valdivia, where the massive sealions beach themselves under the stench of the seaside fishmarket, adieu