Contentment?

I was looking into an expansive sunset, I could seen a big, round moon rising in my rear-view mirror, the river floated along on my left and the mountains rose to my right. With a smile on my face, river water in my hair, a two-month old puppy on my lap, I drove towards the setting sun in contentment.

The day hadn’t started as wonderfully as it ended…Stephen and I were on food-shopping duty. We had started the morning at Puelche – Argentina’s version of Costco – a huge warehouse, filled from floor to ceiling with bulk food items (The main difference being that Puelche somehow landed a lakefront property with a view of the Patagonian Andes . . . I would have rented a room there if one were available). We had the task of buying enough food for 40 people for 2 months. Yikes! We had a list of all the items and quantities needed and only 6 hours, 5 friendly Argentine employees, 4 credit cards and 12 flat carts later, we had everything we needed. It took two trips to actually move the food away from Puelche with the Nissan truck strategically loaded from floor to roof with bags of rice, pasta, milk powder, etc etc. The 648 rolls of toilet paper and the ten 3-kg bags of cereal were strapped onto the roof rack. The plan was for me to take as much food as possible (and the puppy that was adopted by our guacho-landlord’s son) to our field base, an hour north of Bariloche in the wild, windy steppe. As I chugged along with the loaded-down Nissan out to field base, I expected any minute to look in the rear view mirror and see endless rolls of toilet paper or bags of pasta strewn across the highway. But all was going according to plan (the puppy had even stopped crying and was sound asleep) and I was strangely excited by the challenge of organizing all the boxes, cans and bags of food into 6 distinct piles. But, of course, as always, nothing really follows a pre-determined plan out here . . .

I arrived at our base camp and saw no sign of Juan Carlos (our guacho-landlord) anywhere. From the look of his boarded-up house, it appeared that he had left for awhile or had been gone for awhile. That blew the leaving the puppy idea. No way was I leaving a 2-month old puppy alone, crying, hungry for food and love. I would be haunted by his crying for at least the next year. So, eager to get started on my task and become a food-organizer guru, I walked to the brick in the chicken pen where we always keep the key to the house. I was taken aback when I discovered the key was not in the brick. I looked again, and again… and again. I couldn’t believe it - Shit! The thought of all that time shopping, strategically packing the car and driving only to turn around and head back to Bariloche with the car still filled with food made me feel a bit desperate. So desperate that I started digging around in the chicken-shit dirt, startling the hen with her chicks, hoping that the key had been buried. I looked everywhere for the key, tried to break into the house, looked under the brick again, looked through random collections of trinkets outside Juan Carlos’s house (What the hell does he need a broken plastic Christmas ornament for?) and finally gave up hope of being able to get into the house. I had to think of a different solution.

The attic!

There was a storage space above the house where I could put just enough stuff to leave room for the remaining food (still in Bariloche) that hadn’t fit in the Nissan. I drove the car right next to the house so that the toilet-papered roof rack was aligned with the attic entrance (not really big enough to be a door). Thanks to my climbing experience, I was able to balance between the narrow opening to the attic and the roof rack of the car, passing package after package of toilet paper from roof rack to attic. I alternated between roof rack and attic, tossing boxes, rearranging them, then throwing more boxes from car to roof rack, roof rack to attic. I was hot, sweaty, very dirty and very dehydrated when the inevitable happened – my foot slipped. Luckily I had a hand on the rim of the attic entrance and hung on to the dusty surface with sweaty hands (dust + sweat = mud; mud = very slippery). I had about 2 seconds to get at least one foot on something. My Croc-clad foot found an edge on the door handle which held just long enough to stretch and lower my other leg out to a chair. And 6 seconds after slipping I was astonished to find both feet on the dusty ground, unharmed. I took a break and drank about 1.5 liters of water as I assessed the situation. I had emptied more than half of the truck in my dehydrated delusional state. That was enough. The sun was low in the sky and there was no sign of Juan Carlos – he wasn’t going to show tonight. With only my happily sleeping puppy friend to chat to, I made a plan. We would leave Juan Carlos a note about the key, arrange a few more items in the attic and head for home, making a necessary stop at the river for a quick dip. Puppy seemed to agree.

The Limay River was a big river. Big and cold. It was the river that flowed out of Lake Nahuel Huapi – the lake that bordered Bariloche. I had never swam in the river – the big, bubbling circles on the surface suggested deceptive undercurrents that could offere a surprise for a lone swimmer and I was in no mood for another adventure (well, maybe just a small one? I was an experienced swimmer after all.) On the way home, I spotted a road turning off into some willow trees along the river. I pulled off to the side and followed the road down (Oh, the joys of having a 4WD vehicle!) It opened up to a lovely clearing on the banks of a peaceful, deep swimming hole. No sign of deceptive currents. Puppy was excited by the many chicken bones and smells of strange, intriguing foods around the campfire ring. I changed into my swim suit (one thing I learned in Venezuela – never leave the house without a swim suit!) and dove into the cold waters. Nothing like a quick dip in frigid waters to refresh the mind, body and spirit.

We hopped back into the car and puppy decided my lap was the only suitable place to nestle himself and I decided having him in my lap was less distracting than he screaming. So we drove like that into an expanse of soft oranges and yellows, the river floating by on our left, the mountains on our right and the moon rising behind us. I was content. The feeling of contentment is a bit strange for me – I am usually trying to improve my situation or look for something better, something more adventurous, more exciting, more “me”. But driving through the expansive landscape of eastern Patagonia, refreshed from a swim in a big, wild river, awed by the colors of sky and land and warmed by an adorable puppy nestled in my lap, I felt very content. And this feeling of contentment after a should-have-been frustrating day of food shopping, near misses, lost keys and puppy-sitting? Where would I rather be? What would I rather be doing? Nothing, really. A puppy, a sunset, a river, mountains – is that all I need?