By Douglas J. Lanzo
Copyright 2022

First published in Founder’s Favourites Issue 21 (December 2022)

Who will be there?

Those who have experienced the wild,
remote and pristine beauty of Patagonia
say that its vast glaciers, towering peaks,
echoing valleys and joyful whistles of
sheepherds, gauchos and baqueanos —
pathfinders who have blazed its mountains
on surefooted Criollos for centuries —
transforms your soul,
tenderizing it like fresh papaya leaves
gently wrapped around a beef fillet,
harmonizing it,
with the rugged and extreme nature
that you experience each waking moment
around each mountain pass.

Yet a central element of it is dying —
its spirit and unlocked secrets
vanishing each day into droplets and streams
that flow into mighty rivers
that wind their course into the sea:
glaciers carving their own trails of tears
from pristine blue, compressed sky
embedded into ice through weight
of ancient mountain snows,
seasoned by the passage of time.  

Though it may seem
spectacular in the moment
to witness a mighty slab of glacier
break off and vault tons of
sky-blue ice down mountain slope,
it is in truth a tragic moment,
the tremored sound of its shearing
a distressed cry to the ears of our souls,
for man to change course
to preserve what yet remains
of the fast-diminishing fields
of Patagonia’s 626 glaciers
before they melt into
 a sea of dreams.