2024

Dawn over the Bolivian Amazon. Cellphone photo from the plane window.

“The commitment in these circumstances, I believe, is actually to something larger than the self. You get in the right frame of mind to drop through that narrow hole in the ice by recalling the love you bear your friends, and that they bear you; by stimulating the professional need to make thorough, and accurate notes; and by appreciating an opportunity to give curiosity its full rein. You can’t do this every day, but you can once in a while. You can enter that place inside yourself where you privately meet your fears and say, ‘Yes. I know. But please, come with me. What we’re about to see is greater than the thing you’re running from.’”

Barry Lopez, Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World

~

This time last year, I was thinking about Patagonia. Well, actually, I had been thinking about Patagonia for quite a while by the time January 1st came around, mainly in the sense that before long, Andean condors would be gliding above me, and I had a story to tell about a person I hardly knew. If my mind went to the right place, my heart would start racing. I was less than a month from boarding a plane that would take me across the equator, roughly 6,000 miles from home, to a country I had heard lots about, but no one in my entire family lineage had ever set foot in. I thought about the thousands of dollars of uninsured camera equipment I had traveling beside me, and the fact that my long legs and tight back would have to endure a full day’s worth of travel on plane seats, airport floors and buses. Would I even make it?

~

“It’s all temporary,” Vero said, as we flew over northern Yellowstone, my eyes glued to my binoculars, pressed to the plastic of the plane window and fixated on Grand Teton, emerging with prominence from the relatively flat volcanic plateau that comprised the landscape just north of it. “What is so bad about this moment you’re in? Don’t think ahead, think about the present.” She was right. Her words eased my anxieties ever so slightly. Vero was well traveled, and not a month earlier, she had completed the same exact flight to Atlanta, then to Buenos Aires, and finally Bariloche, to visit her parents for the holidays. We were about thirty minutes into that twenty-six hour journey south. In hindsight, it was over before it began.

~

2024 may have been the best year of my life, though, I hesitate to compare them. I think a lot about those around me, and the year they may have experienced. I think about the good people that left earth this year, and the others that came into it. I try to be humble, and most importantly, infinitely grateful. Every day is just another in the grand adventure. I am hopeful for the year ahead, and hope you are too.

Feliz año nuevo.