Layovers

I'm here. Here being La Confluencia Lodge fifteen minutes outside of the town of El Bolson, Argentina. It took me almost exactly thirty hours to travel from Austin, TX to this place and I could not have been more grateful for a bed when I was offered one. Before I gave in to a desperate fatigue, however, I had the pleasure of a window seat at sunset while landing in Bariloche, the ski-town an hour north of here. The slanted sun reflecting off of numerous lakes and pink clouds with the snow-capped Andes in the background reminded me of how UNREAL this place is. When we flew over green pastures dotted with grazing sheep, I was struck with an intense desire to gallop in the grass and immediately pictured myself doing so from the eye of a spinning areal camera--just like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music... but better.


After the obligatory welcome-to-Argentina-now-you-will-eat-steak dinner in Bariloche, Shea and I drove back to The Confluencia. We walked into the lodge at 12:30 am and I was immediately sucker-punched by a Pavlovian response. The smell of the cedar and the root-cellar-like climate of the building reminded me of exactly what I was getting myself in to. Part of the "what" is the romance of the place: the earthiness, my hands wrapped around hot cups of tea, the sound of the river, and the incredible clarity of the stars but the other part feels a bit like loss and anxiety. (On Loss: I'm back here, but the previous generation of WWOOFers that defined my experience the last go-round are not. I am also no longer technically a WWOOFer and as such will be missing out on the community it creates and the benefits of shared living spaces. On Anxiety: Well, for one, I'm going to have to get used to the country again which is to say I'll have to start taking responsibility for my own entertainment, artistic stimulation and education. And, for twos, I was struck with the feeling that, as an employee, I'm going to have to start behaving--cleaning up after myself, making a schedule and not losing it, being in charge... the sorts of things for which I am universally recognized...)

Today the anxiety increases as I find myself with no real tasks and everyone else around me with something to do. Yes, I know I should give myself a day to rest and that that is exactly what my employers are thinking as well, but I’m just not good at that. Hence, this blog-post, which I am hoping will help me reconnect with the style of life at which I had become so practiced in Hawaii—this is to say, a life lived through a lens of inner-contentedness.

Anyhoo, all of that business aside (concentrating on it, I’m inviting a panic attack), I’m REALLY excited to flex my culinary muscles. I have SO many ideas and projects I want to get started. I can promise that the food here is going to kick butt if not only because of the variety and quality of the produce and food-stuffs produced in a very small radius. They’re growing barley, rye and wheat (beer me?); any type of vegetable you can imagine; and sheep (sidenote: the lambs are friggin’ cute and they’ll make for great sweaters). There are honey bees to be taken advantage of, salmon waiting to spawn, walnut, apple and pine trees aplenty… It’s an Omnivore’s Delight (see what I did there) over here!

I guess that’s enough for now… I can feel you, reader, losing interest so I’ll report back after this layover is finished and I am in the swing of a new routine. One final note however: it goes without saying that I miss you all terribly. It was unusually difficult for me to leave San Diego this time because an unexpected new job, a pleasent armistice with my parents and wonderful friends were working to make me a very content person. So! Please keep in touch and I will do the same.

Xoxo,
C