My heart grew heavy when seeing/reading the National Geographic photo essay about the fires in Patagonia. Examination of the details made it weigh a ton. “An imported tree fuels Patagonia’s terrifying summer fires,” https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/how-fear-of-summer-came-to-patagonia.
I’ve been to Patagonia more than twenty times. This photo is from March 2017. Enlarge it and you can see the writing on the hat given to me by my guide.
Sadly, things have changed.
Here in the US, we now know about fires in the West and including Boulder, Colorado in the winter and the forecast for more of that to come. We’ve asked Bob Bunting to discuss those fires, and that message is coming soon to readers who are interested in the climate-change story. But for today, let me focus on Patagonia and the National Geographic story.
El Bolsón is the jumping off place into that section of Argentina. I know it well. I have stayed there, eaten there, visited friends there, fished there, ridden a horse there, and seen the mountain carvings there. And from there I have traveled on to fish, taken a trip to the Alerces trees, and ridden past Butch Cassidy’s ranch.
El Bolsón is a place of many sweet memories for me.
Lago Puelo is the headwaters of the Rio Puelo, a river that flows from the Argentina/Chile border through miles of pristine forested mountains and canyons, past the magnificent Osorno volcano and to the Pacific Ocean near Puerto Varas. The source of the water is glacier melting. The trout fishing around the lake and in the Rio Puelo is wonderful and the scenery wild and enchanting. It is what the word Patagonia conjures when the eyes close.
Memory a journey. Get in a boat in Argentina after a three-hour ride from Bariloche and picking up some provisions at a mercado and cross the Argentine side of the lake. Exit Argentina at the border station. Then down two sets of rapids with a jet motor — a prop can get sheared by the rocks — and you enter Chile, on the Andes side of Patagonia. Travel again the length of another lake and stop to see the Carabinieri for a Chilean entrance visa, and down the Rio Puelo in Chile to a fishing lodge I once knew.
Now, the region around El Bolson and in Chubut province in Argentina is in the fire danger zone. The photo essay shows places I know and stirs the aches that arise from contemplating how we are burning up our planet. The fires were fueled by pines, a species not indigenous, amid fire conditions exacerbated by climate change and drought.
There’s not much else to say. National Geographic has done an excellent job in telling the story.
I mourn for the Patagonia which I experienced with affection and respect.
And there it is.
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