by Dina M. Horwedel

Author's note: Vaquero is the Spanish word for cowboy.

Arcario Marin Casola was a story first. Aboard a Zodiac, bundled in bright orange rain and life preserving gear, I headed upriver across the saltos (whitewater) from the Bernardo O’Higgins National Park, where glaciers calve in the fjords, cliffs fill with nesting cormorants, and Andean condors soaring on thermals like a riff on a musical scale, to Torres del Paine National Park.

These Chilean national parks are an oasis for wildlife. An army of just-hatched rhea chicks followed their papas (rhea fathers, ostrich-like birds, do the child-rearing). Herds of guanacos, cousin to the llama, hunkered down against the omnipresent Patagonian wind, nursing their young. A puma peeked out behind tall grass.

After an hour of bumping (or more accurately, slamming) along on whitewater, we pulled into a cove. "There is something really special here we think you will like," the guide said. I hoped it was the chicken and rice lunch with warm coffee prepared for us in a rough lean-to. Our group had been up before the sun, and it was getting late.

Wrong again.
As we ravenously tore into our food, our hunger pangs abated, we started to notice the setting. Cowhides were tacked to trees, and strips of guanaco and beef were hung on drying racks near what appeared to be a lumber pile. We realized the pile of lumber was a home four and a half hours into the wilderness accessible only by boat. And, judging by the cozy smell of wood smoke drifting in the damp air, its owner was home.

"Who lives there?" we asked our guides, and in response were told Arcario’s story. He is a vaquero, the last of his kind in the old Argentine tradition of homesteading and ranching. He grazes a small herd of cattle in the park and hunts guanaco. He lives without electricity, running water (with the exception of the ice-cold river at his back door), telephone, and indeed, even luxuries I take for granted, such as a hinged door. His front door was a large piece of discarded sheet metal that he pulled over a hole in his teepee-style lean-to.

My initial reaction to this story through my American cultural lens was annoyance: I'd come to Patagonia for real wilderness! Why would the park service allow someone to ranch in a national park? Why would the park service permit someone to live here and graze livestock? Reflecting that the U.S. government grants grazing, timber and mining rights on public lands on a widespread corporate level, I decided to suspend all "save the world" thoughts, uncharacteristically shut my mouth, and surrender to the moment.

Marian, an older woman from France I'd befriended, decided to walk with me to get a closer look. She told me in French that Arcario is one of a dying breed.

It was her dream to see something like this. Just as she finished speaking, it appeared her dream came true. A man emerged from the woodpile and strode directly towards us. He didn’t look like a cowboy or even a hermit that one would envision living in a pile of lumber without a proper door. Marian, face to face with her dream, was startled, and screamed. She ran towards her husband, fearful of how the vaquero would judge her intrusion, leaving me alone in the company of the solitary man. Somehow trustful, I said hello, extended my hand and introduced myself.

Arcario’s hands were surprisingly smooth and soft. I sized him up. He was a slight man whose smallness did not belie his strength. He wore black pants, a gray wool sweater, and a red knit cap instead of a gaucho hat with the flat, wide brim. (Many people in the south wear the traditional Argentine-style gaucho hat, but they are more for show than for work. They are lugged from rodeo to rodeo in decorative wooden hat boxes that are really two cut and varnished boards screwed together to keep the brim flat, with a hole cut in the center for the crown to peek through.)

Arcario had bright, inquisitive eyes that were moist from the smoke billowing out from his wood fire, a mole on his nose, and was tanned. Patagonia has an ozone hole, so even cloudy days burn the skin.

He was also a quiet man, so after introductions, we stood a bit in silence. Finally, Arcario told me he has lived in this spot overlooking the river for 40 years. I asked him what he does for food. He said he hunts, raises cows, and fishes. I asked if he gets lonely way out here, after the season is over and the river traffic stops. He said loneliness is not as plaguing as the pestering of mosquitoes. And these days he shares the company of a ginger tomcat he calls The Puma.

"I have another puma friend here, too," he said. I looked around for another cat. "No, a puma, not a cat. I see him every night. He walks to the water for a drink. Sometimes around my house or my cows. He doesn’t bother me, though."

"What does he eat?" I asked.
"Guanaco, animals, occasionally a small cow."
I explained that in the U.S., where ranching is a dying lifestyle and increasingly a commercial operation, ranchers would have the puma’s head. I was amazed at how Arcario coexisted with wildlife: his respect for the puma and acceptance of the big cat’s need to eat, too. I tried to convey this, and a sense of my world. Arcario was curious, he asked about the animals and mountains where I live. I told him there are no big rivers like this in Colorado, and there are no glaciers. I told him about the hot summers and forest fires, and described the bears, the elk. Together, we were tentative creatures from different worlds encountering each other, bound by our love of what is wild.

Our guide approached and instructed me that it was time to leave. Arcario clung to the edge of the group as we put our gear back on and fastened our life preservers, drinking in human voices while he could. Though a quiet man, he seemed to enjoy company, and the riversong would replace our chatter soon enough.

We said our goodbyes. Somehow, through my Spanish peppered with a thick American accent and his strong dialect, which ran together like currents of water, making one word indistinguishable from the next, we managed to touch each other, a brief surprise encounter one that resonated more than the wild place I had traveled so far to see.

We jumped in the boat and the group continued to yell "Adios" and wave. Arcario stood mutely, waving, with a sad smile on his face, and as the motor jumped to life and carried us off against the current, I watched and waved until Arcario’s form shrunk, small against the epoch backdrop of the world’s youngest mountain range and glaciers, small as any man would be, and I marveled that Arcario’s acceptance of simplicity loomed larger than those mountains. He taught me that man is part of this place we call earth/Gaia/el mundo; we are not separate from wilderness. Something wild remains as long as something wild remains within each of us.

As we rounded a bend, Arcario and the mountains disappeared from sight, as we will all disappear one day. We continued on our separate journeys, as we must, us to the river, and Arcario to this last wild place that he calls home.