Dog Wanderlust Jim Ross

Fever Maw

Em Walling

We are so thirsty— looking up at a cloudless sky. The weather apps and meteorologists may lie; the dry, cracked earth does not. Swooping plovers attacked me a few weeks ago, my peaceful walk interrupted by their defensive cries and dives. A nest tucked away by the stream. Food. Water. Family. Home. In the same cradle. I walked to the same spot yesterday, and the birds were gone— the stream fizzled as quickly as a dream. The grass browned, cracking beneath my footsteps. Food. Water. Family. Home. Dissipated. The hike to a magnificent, cascading waterfall was silent. We thought we walked too far, distracted by the bird calls that translated to distress. We encountered rocks instead of water. The disappointment matched those of the snakes, lizards, birds, and marsupials craving nothing more than to drink. My footsteps were heavy as I climbed among the rocks, across the dead waterfall—a sacred space now filled with spiders weaving spells between the gaping cracks. They hoped to catch a dream because reality dried up months ago. A fuzzy baby bird shrieked from the sidewalk, and I had to stop. Title Sometimes, we can only be heard if we scream. I talked to the bird— whispered my love—but she blinked those frantic dark eyes and screamed Author at me again. I unscrewed my water bottle and filled the cap with liquid; she cried as I placed the lid in front of her, head craned toward the clouds. We turn our heads to the sky and scream. There are no clouds to capture our request—only the sun, the demon jaw of fever.

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Time to Go Title

Daniel Meinhardt Author

Digital Photography

Title Wired

Author Ashley Heatherly

Excitement’s for the birds. The pelicans, the hoity-toity cardinals and their secret robin partners. Hanging on the lamps on wires, waiting for electricity to jolt their hearts and send their bodies flying down to earth like a snowflake, a rocket, a husband with a cheating wife. Let the birds chitter, waiting for that feather singing shock. Beaks burn in the sun, swallowing starlight, closer to the stars than any person in a spaceship. That’s what these birds are. Excited, hot, melting down to their little bird bones.

Cycling the Circuito Lago Llanquihue, Chile

Simona Carini

February 28, 2020

“See you in Frutillar,” said Cristián, one of the guides, and we were finally off on our bicycles—“we” being a group of cyclists participating in a trip organized by the nonprofit Climate Ride.

The distance between Llanquihue, our starting point, and Frutillar is only 15 miles. I was not excited about the early stop, but our Ecotours Chile guides insisted on transferring us by van between the lakeside section of the town, Frutillar Bajo, and the elevated one, Frutillar Alto, to save us from pedaling up a steep hill and through some confusing intersections.

I had never considered myself a cyclist and if at the start of the trip someone had told me I’d be riding a long distance two days in a row I would have said, “No way I can do that.” Yet there I was, the day after my longest ride to date, 73.2 km (45.5 miles), from Puerto Varas to Ensenada, setting off to go even further, possibly to break the 100 km (62.1 miles) mark. The distance was only one aspect of the feat. When asked whether the route would be flat, the previous morning Cristián had answered, grinning: “Hilly Chile,” a perfect description of the flat-free route awaiting us.

The town of Llanquihue is located on the shore of the homonymous lake, the largest of two in the region—the other being Lake Todos Los Santos. Lake Llanquihue is a wide expanse of water, brilliant navy blue when it’s sunny, dominated by Osorno, a perennially snow-capped, conical volcano located east of the lake. I love volcanos, so immediately fell for the idea of having one as guardian angel and marker to orient myself.

We got started under a lightly overcast sky promising to clear up. The road around the lake includes a bike lane, which makes cycling more comfortable and safer. When we arrived at Frutillar Bajo, my husband decided to press on. Differently from me, Robert enjoys the challenge of a steep climb. I overheard Cristián warning him about identifying routes on Google maps:

“See this one? It looks like a nice road, starts paved, then boom! unpaved.”

When I stopped on the lakeshore in Frutillar, I had cycled for only an hour and a half, so I was neither tired nor hungry. A good number of my fellow cyclists went into a coffee shop, a white wooden cottage that looked cut out from a town in the Bavarian Alps, with a gabled roof, ornate mouldings and lace curtains covering the large windows. The reference to Bavaria is not hyperbolic: starting in the mid-nineteenth century German immigrants settled in the region around Valdivia, Osorno and Llanquihue as part of a state-led colonization scheme. Title Besides the architecture, the ubiquitous advertisements for Kuchen (German for cake) and frequent ones for Strudel, the words Oma (granny) and Tante (aunt) on store Author signs and food labels all point to a connection between Germany and this region of Chile.

Rather than heeding the call of Kuchen, I walked along the lakeshore towards the Teatro del Lago, a large wooden building that extends out onto the water, like a ship ready to set sail. The theater houses a stage theater and a concert hall .I imagined the charm of attending a concert there, of seeing the lake turn darker blue in the evening and watching Osorno across the water slowly fade into the night.

We finally got into the vans and after a brief ride were deposited at the top of the hill, from where we started cycling again.

“Next stop for lunch,” Cristián announced. “Before Puerto Octay. You’ll see the vans, can’t miss it.”

The distance was less than 15 miles. When the guides turned right into a dirt parking lot, I stopped just long enough to tell them,

“I’m skipping lunch, I’ll see you on the road.”

For the first time I was on my own and immediately got confused. In Puerto Octay, I arrived at a stop sign and could not continue straight because the road turned into a one way the opposite way. Caught by surprise and surrounded by cars, I turned left, the only direction open to me, then right at the first chance, hoping I’d be back on a northerly course.

I could not trust my non-existent sense of direction, so stopped to ask Google maps for help and received confirmation that I was not lost. After a steep uphill I saw again the reassuring bulk of Osorno, its head crowned by wispy clouds. ‘Hilly Chile’ describes the average situation, but a couple of times I encountered signs warning about Pendiente fuerte, which Italian speakers like me quickly understand to mean forte pendio, steep grade.

At the next large intersection, the road to the right looked promising: newly paved and heading towards the lake. I called my husband, who by then was well ahead of me:

“Did you turn right at the U-925 sign?”

“What?”

I didn’t know how else to explain where I was. I recalled Cristián’s words, though, and chose to continue northward. (Later, I learned that Robert had indeed turned right, and the U-925 road had become unpaved. While the ride was uncomfortable, he got some nice video footage of a cattle herd crossing the road in front of him guided by the owner on horseback.)

I finally reached the intersection where I turned right, south-east, towards the lake. The road crossed a verdant countryside dotted with small farms surrounded by gardens overflowing with flowers in full bloom, mostly tall, large-headed dahlias, their

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petals exploding in bright colors—yellow, orange, red, magenta.

Almost every farm had a sign next to its driveway announcing Empanadas del dia (turnovers of the day) and some also Kuchen. I had already noticed the local preference for hand-written signs. There was no attempt at precision: the words started with large letters and ended with cramped ones, lack of space sometimes forcing the last letter or two to drop on the lower line. It was as if the more amateurish the sign, the more the food offering would be taken as genuine. The food writer in me was tempted to verify my inference and wondered what the empanadas’ filling of the day was, but the cyclist kept the focus on the road. For on-the-go nourishment I carried extra-dark chocolate and local walnuts, fresh, crisp, and with the clean nutty flavor too often missing in store-bought walnuts in the US.

A headwind picked up. While I welcomed the cooling effect, I would have preferred for the wind to die down and let me pedal in peace under the blue sky, with Osorno straight ahead, watching over me. After miles up and down ‘Hilly Chile’, my legs started to fatigue and at one point, for no immediate reason, I lost hold of myself.

This is crazy: what if I fall? Nobody knows where I am. I don’t speak a word of Spanish. What am I doing?

My eyes clouded, Osorno faded into a ghost. I kept pedaling out of desperation: what else could I do?

Breathing in, I know I’m breathing in. Breathing out, I know I’m breathing out…

Osorno reappeared in my field of vision, its cape of snow sparkling in the sun. I laughed: what was I afraid of? I passed yet another farm with its empanadas del diasign: food was at hand and in case of emergency, I could turn an Italian cry for help into approximate Spanish.

The sound of an engine behind me came accompanied by the familiar rattling of the van’s trailer. It felt like hearing the gurgling of a spring while stranded in a desert. Cristián pedaled up to me:

“You OK? Couple of people behind you, the others are in the van: they’ll start riding from Las Cascadas.”

“I’m OK,” I answered. “I’ll get there,” and pedaled on.

There is a waterfall in Las Cascadas, but I didn’t have time to look for it. Once I passed the village sign, the only thing my eyes focused on was the van parked on the side of the road. I needed water and could have used a snack. I stopped and got off the bike next to the van. The driver offered me a bowl of fresh, local blueberries: plump, juicy, sweet with a hint of tang in their skin. I started eating one at a time, then two, then picked up two in each hand taking turns dropping the giant purple pearls into my mouth.

“Cómo se dice?”I asked, pointing at the blueberries with a purple-stained index

“Arándanos,”I echoed, letting the three a’s resonate, the r roll and the two n’s bounce. “Arándanos,” I repeated, wanting to etch the word in my memory.

Beaming, I said: “Thank you, they were perfect! Perfetti.”

I snapped out of the fruit-induced daze, filled my bottle with cold water and got on the road again. I knew I was behind, but the only thing I cared about was getting past the 100 km mark and establish my personal record in terms of distance. I had stopped my fitness tracker while we were in Frutillarthen again while I feasted on blueberries in Las Cascadasto preserve the batteries and save the partial data: as a result, I did not have access to the total distance traveled.

At the busy intersection with the sign to the PetrohuéWaterfalls, our destination, worry wormed its way into my head again: What if Robert continued towards Ensenada?

I stopped and called him but got his voice mail. As I was leaving him a message, the other guide, David, stopped next to me, like a saint emerging from a fresco in the flesh. I stared at him: I’m safe,I thought. We started riding again.

A sign I glimpsed at put the waterfalls further than I expected.

“David,” I called. “How many more hills to the waterfalls?”

“Two... No, wait: three.”

A voice inside me pleaded on behalf of my barely responsive legs: Stop.

It seemed sad to end the ride there but pushing myself beyond what was already a big feat did not sound appealing. We would be flying to Patagonia the following day: the last thing I wanted to do was hurt myself.

“David,” I called again. “This is it for me. Can you ask the van to pick me up?”

He understood and did not try to make me reconsider. As he was talking on the phone, I realized that the stretch of road we were on did not have enough shoulder space to allow the van to safely stop and load my bike.

When David finished the call, I said: “I’ll ride until we get to a safe spot.”

And so, I rode up and over the first of the three remaining hills. By the time I got in the van, it was a five-minute ride to the waterfalls. The first person I saw there was my husband, intent on eating ice cream. I wanted to scream.

I walked with others from our group to the vista point. Osorno, majestic in its snowy cape, stark against a cloudless sky, towered over the Petrohué River rushing through a gorge, the water foamy, white as the volcano’s peak. I saw people as faded figures, heard their voices muffled: tiredness was taking over.