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Sierra los Baguales / Range of the Wild Horses. We ride horses for five hours through whirlpools of dust and wind to the summit. Our party consists of two baqueanos, Luis and Chechin, our friends Max and Kevin, Macduff and me, and several ranch dogs. In the distance, shadows swim up the sides of bare mountains washing their charcoal and russet flanks in deep purple. Spots of golden light rest on shelves of the steppe. Our horses love being worked. They pick their way carefully up the knobby mountain. Los Baguales is home to the black-necked swan, grey fox, condor, ibis, bull, cow, guanaco. We see them all. We lope past six feral mares, each with weeks-old colts. The sky is flooding, the light is streaming down on us. We rode up on an ancient riverbed crammed with fossilized seashell and bone. The riverbank once marked the edge of a meadow and shady forest, however, now only shreds of petrified bark remain, splayed around the base of phantom trees. Once verdant, now desert — all umbers, blacks, and ochres of Van Gogh’s early palette — small bursts of splintery stone sprinkled on the ground, a starry night etched in the sandy soil. Geography is fate. I can’t help but think of the glut of carbon dioxide, the diminishing aquifers, and the global warming that hastens our own destiny. The sudden illumination of an experience is always elusive. What I wanted to do was conjure memory to try to get at the heart of the feeling I had on top of that mountain. It seemed natural to use earth pigments, applied with my hands, and a process of layering and excavating in order to coax out unknown forms—vessels, fossils, bits of detritus— so that these might serve to express something of the untold impermanence that was so palpable. - journal notes, Patagonia 1/06
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