Argentinian Patagonia

The ultimate escape is being able to wander in nature and know you're completely alone. However, it's not an escape from reality but an escape to it. I've never been so in touch with my own mortality, yet also with my own strength, as during my week of solo backpacking. The trail crossed icy waist-deep rivers, dipped into marshy grasslands, and ascended steep moraines. Sometimes it disappeared for kilometers and I was left following wild horse trails and shoving aside shrubbery. In contrast to the rigorous adventures of daylight, the places I set my tent up at night were some of the most serene: soaking my feet in glacial water with fingerling trout nibbling my toes, waking up to the golden sun dappling my tent each morning, being surrounded by fields of every-hued lupines dancing in the breeze. Starry nights were filled with the rumble of calving glaciers, the thumps of wild horse hooves, and my head-full of thoughts. The grandeur of the landscape was numbing at times, how could I begin to comprehend the huge chunks of bleak rock spiking from the earth? The massive expanse of the ice field? The bitter wind that scoured the contours of the land? The multi-hued vegetation that has clung tenaciously to the thin soil for thousands of years? To be present in such a place…