Añihue

On my last day at the Añihue Reserve, I walked with dolphins. Or rather, I walked and they swam patiently, parallel to me. I can’t say there was an actual connection between us, but the one I created meant a lot. At least to me.

You see, friend, the absence of differences between their swimming and my walking was striking. I couldn’t figure out where the sand stopped and the water began, or vice-versa. There was no transition that I could see. The two were blurred together with each wave, the effect of which, at least on a beach, is just as much contributed to by the sand as it is by the water. The tide furthermore blurred the lines between the ocean being there and the sand being here. This is not to say that they are “one,” although they are, but that whatever differences they may have had didn’t matter. All that mattered was that for every few steps I took, a grey bulge would emerge from the water followed by a happy dorsal fin.

Acknowledging and then developing that thought was a sign, at least in my own mind, of my “growth” in Añihue. Now that I have left that place—a place that joins the short list of places that I would call magical—I want to analyze my experience, my growth, and my relationships that resulted because of my time at the Reserve.

In advance, friend, please forgive me if I at all come across as being egotistical. I struggled with the phrasing of a few things in this letter to you as to not sound so self-centered, but I decided that the only way for you to get the full effect of being at the Añihue Reserve is to put you in my position and tell you things from the center of my being. Hence, this:

Overall, my experience was more than amazing. I did something that very few people do in a place that even fewer people do it in a way that nobody has done it or will do it again. To recap- the premise of my time at Añihue was to volunteer my work on an “organic farm” in exchange for room and board for a month. Because Añihue is a nature reserve, most of my work was aimed at maintenance and upkeep of the infrastructure and systems present there, but also I worked on developing a few projects at Añihue. If you haven’t already, check out their Web site (www.anihuereserve.com) to get an idea of what it’s like and what it’s about.

A brief history from what I gathered over meals last month: About 10 or 15 years ago, a rich, Floridian philanthropist named Allison Fisher (or Alyson, or however you might spell the male version of the name) bought 10,000 hectares in southern Chile and called the place Añihue because of what the fishermen in the area traditionally called the place. He deemed it a nature preserve. If I recall right, the place has had three owners in history, first a rich Chilean, who then passed the land on to a Mr. Schidlowski who built the Casa Grande where I stayed during the volunteer trip. He left his son and his wife at that house while he worked in the city. After years and years, the son went crazy and probably the wife too, and they ended up moving. At some point on this jumbled timeline, Schidlowski sold the land to Fisher who swept in with his Superman Cape and all and saved the day, creating Añihue.

Now, the Reserve consists of two places, Añihue, Añihue, which is where the Casa Grande is, Casa de la Isla, and the animals. Here is where Francisco “Pancho” Gomez lives with his wife Antonia Sepulveda and their daughter Olivia. They are expecting a son in May. My volunteer partner, a Chilena named Javiera “Sassy” Carreño, and I stayed with them for the month, working with them and working for them; it all depended on the day, really. We all lived in the Casa Grande, a huge house heated by a fire, which warms the rainwater so we could take showers every few days. The solar panels provide enough energy on a cloudy day to power all the LED lights, and the internet and computer for a solid few hours, just enough time for everyone to check their messages and maybe to watch a movie as a group. On a sunny day, everyone charges their MP3 players, cell phones and other electronic devices to take advantage of the surplus energy in the batteries, which, surprisingly, can damage the life expectancy of them if there’s an excess of energy. Across a sand spit, which fills up to the knee with water during high tide, is the Casa de La Isla, which is in renovation/construction/remodeling at the moment. During Schidlowski’s ownership, a rich doctor bought the “island” from him and contracted him to construct a house there. The land was sold and the house erected, but never quite finished completely, and Fisher bought the land before anyone ever had the opportunity to live in it. It’s an amazing house with an even more amazing view. The animals at this part of the reserve are numerous. The wild fauna aside, Añihue owns, at the moment, about a dozen pigs/hogs, seven chickens and four sheep. They had just slaughtered a pig last month and the pigs that remained were babies still suckling, which in turn made their mother unable to be slaughtered because of their dependency and her skinniness. The other available pigs were only a few months older than their baby cousins and weren’t worth killing at that point—not enough meat on their bones. The chickens reliably put out eggs for us, about three a day. The sheep, having only been at the Reserve for a week before I arrived, weren’t able to be sheered because without their wool now, their transition into, and duration of, the harsh winter in Patagonia would surely kill them.

North of this, on the mouth of the Palena River, is “Toninas,” named after the Austral Dolphins that show up in the Patagonian waters. Here is where the administration of the reserve lives and works; it is also where tourists go to stay. One enters here by disembarking from whichever ferry drops them off at Puerto Raul Marin Balmaceda where the boat Añihue picks them up and brings them to the Reserve entrance on the Palena River. The kitchen and the workshop (also where some of the workers live) are the first two buildings on the path made of planks that cut through the Valdivian Forest. At the end of the path is a sand trail that leads a tourist to the beach, the hiking trail, the hot tub, or their cabin. There are two cabins designed for tourists and a third house where the Reserve director Felipe Gonzalez and his family live… it also has room for tourists and visitors. I stayed here on my last night waiting for the ferry. It’s an amazingly beautiful place, but after getting used to the open expanses of Añihue, Toninas seemed cramped and confined, not only spatially but also within their strict time schedule.

So what did I do there, you might ask? Here is my unexhausted list of things I did that seemed noteworthy or that we did frequently:
1. Tended to the animals (feeding them, watering them, cleaning their house(s) three times a week)
2. Worked at Casa de la Isla
a. Hung doors
b. Cleaned all the shingles from underneath the house leftover from the roof replacement
c. Installed wainscoting
3. Painted houses and walls
4. Found firewood, cut firewood, chopped firewood, hauled firewood
5. Moved a compost toilet
6. Transplanted artichoke
7. Made a wind chime from bamboo, shells, and recycled bags
8. Made a trail and a lookout point
9. Made a fire pit
10. Collected drinking water from a stream
11. Made wheat bread
12. Climbed a giant Coihue
13. Made a tree swing
14. Started a raft made of plastic bottles
15. Dove for shellfish

The setting of Añihue exceeded all of my expectations. Jurassic Park cliffs covered in impenetrable forests hugged the shores of the bay whose emerald waters rose to fill the place with life*** and then swept away to reveal a graveyard of seashells where the only life besides me and the dogs following my path were the fleas that, like cultures, scavenged by the dozens on bits of left-behind kelp.

At Añihue, I felt at home, comfortable, happy and needed. An established routine/schedule, healthy food and interesting company helped me to adapt quickly although I often had difficulty being talkative. The work, in many ways, was a very insignificant part of my month. More important were the times I would stop pushing my wheelbarrow to admire the cliffs behind the Animal House because they showed me something different each time I looked at them. Most importantly was my personal growth. Like any time of significant personal growth, I can’t pinpoint the ways that I evolved, but maybe you, friend, can make your own conclusions if I tell you some of the things I learned:

Take your time:
“Take your time,” said Pancho from over my shoulder.
Not only had he told me this several times, but he was committing pet peeve numero uno: hovering in that space where my peripheral vision just barely picks up on the presence of something. Above all that, he was telling me to take my time on the most meaningless task I did all that month—cleaning windows. It made me feel stupid, frustrated and also nostalgic. For 20 years I have failed to grasp that lesson that my own father had tried to teach me. Mowing the lawn, putting up Christmas lights, cleaning the garage, washing the car. “Take your time.” I can hear his words echoing off the walls of my skull. If I had a brain in there I might have been able to decipher the words he was saying. “Do it right the first time so you don’t have to do it again.”
“Yeah, I got it.” I said back over my own shoulder to Pancho, putting maybe just a little too much pressure on the glass. The next twenty minutes flew by as I wiped Windex off of windows, managing to complete one side of the house. Rounding the corner to start side number two, I felt proud of having accomplished my task in record time. It was then that Pancho came out of the house and started speaking to me, this time in English, making what he was about to say make me feel even dumber.
“Hey, I don’t know if maybe you haven’t done this before, but take your time. Look. You’re leaving all these…um…how do you say…”
“Rayas?” I interrupted, taking my best shot at the Spanish translation for “streaks.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Look, this is how you do it.”
He then proceeded to strip me of my Windex and newspaper wads and show me, in a painfully time-consuming way, how to properly clean a window and leave it streak free.
Ashamed, but not necessarily humbled, I waxed on and waxed off for over an hour, repeating the dethroning of my ego over and over with each spritz from the spray bottle. I feel it was then that I was able to accept the lesson that had tried for years to enter my consciousness. Maybe going to Añihue and being there made me more malleable, or maybe in utter embarrassment, the only way to save face was to admit defeat and try to learn from the moment.

Communication:
I also learned, or rather, reinforced, the important necessity of communication, both on a social and on a professional level. My social tendency towards timidity in new networks made getting to know everyone in any significant way somewhat difficult. My quietness was well-noted but not looked down on. However, by the end of the month, in the last few days when I finally opened up, I felt the benefits of a solid group of friends—a family of sorts. That shyness, at least in Spanish-speaking settings, translated to the “professional” side of things in Añihue. I learned that, especially in doing things that I have little experience in like carpentry, it’s necessary to not only ask whatever question that may occur to me, but also to openly provide the details of the job I’m working on so that the person I’m working with and I can have a clear understanding of our processes and objectives.

Initiative:
Initiative, I have discovered, is what separates noteworthy from forgettable people. Being at Añihue taught me not only to be responsible for myself and my actions and to own my work, but to actively seek out possibilities to develop myself, practice my skills, and deepen my understanding of the world. Pancho and Antonia are two amazing individuals who encouraged me to define my strengths and interests and to pursue them. They showed me that by taking the initiative to do something, a person helps to ignite a sense of enthusiasm within the people around them. The contagiousness of initiative is important to help create an environment where a person’s own interests and pursuits are valued, respected and encouraged.
During the month, I didn’t have one specific area, however I did have a few shared projects with Pancho like the raft, the lookout point and trail, and the bird catalog. The bird catalog wasn’t my idea, but it was my project, and although I didn’t get as far into it as I would have liked, I did make it easy for someone else to continue working on it. Maybe in some way, that was my Añihue legacy. Anyway, I definitely left with a greater sense of confidence in my abilities to create and follow through on projects and work in my daily life.

Another thing I want to mention is the people I lived with for the month. My time at Añihue was shared with the other volunteer, Javiera, a Chilena who we quickly nicknamed Sassy. There were also Pancho and Antonia, the couple who live and work from the Casa Grande at Añihue, and their daughter.
Sassy, for her education in eco-tourism and her never-ending questions which stemmed from a pure curiosity, was a good partner. Although our divorce happened only after three days when she moved out of our shared bedroom to the unoccupied one downstairs, we ended the month on a good note of teamwork and shared experiences, even given a few rough spots.
I must say that rough spots are to be expected when two new, young volunteers are thrust into the family life of a pregnant couple and their 2-year-old daughter in a place as isolated as Añihue.
Pancho will attest to that. He had to give Javiera and me “the talk” about initiative and not depending on him and Antonia so much. That was on day 10. We sailed smoothly through new and treacherous waters after that. Pancho, for being a steady and hard worker, is a very balanced individual: he has been both self employed and an employee of Pakistani royalty and he is learned in Taoism and skepticism, tree cutting and tree climbing, biology and technology, many languages and the Language of the World, —there are very few things that don’t interest Pancho. Of all the things he taught me, he perhaps showed me the important lesson of life: balance—that it isn’t worth living in one extreme lifestyle or the other if you can’t be willing to experience the other side. He manifested this lesson by working at an exhausting pace in the mornings, and then, after lunch, while putting down his second cup of powdered coffee from his giant blue Starbucks mug, saying, “We’re taking the afternoon off to enjoy the weather.” And with that, he would disappear out the door to the beach to smoke a cigarette and watch his daughter splash in the tide pools. His wife, Antonia, would be in quick pursuit to enjoy the moment with her family.
Antonia’s young age and waist-length dread locks hide her maturity and intelligence. A ski-instructor when she isn’t at Añihue, her patience and eagerness to teach helped me a lot. She was a master of the garden and knowing the rhythms of the universe. She also taught me how to bake wheat bread.
I attribute my good experience there at Añihue to one basic thing and to that thing only: it was an indescribable openness to what God tried to show me during that month. It may have been my lack of expectations at what the experience was to be like that allowed me to absorb so much. Or it may have been the physical isolation that made me depend on the people at Añihue that helped me. I can’t say for sure. I do know that there, in the Cold Jungle of Patagonia, it’s easy for one to learn the Language of the World, as Paulo Coelho would say. It is that method of communication through which we contemplate a hill and understand more than a mound of dirt with trees growing on it. It is through the same (lack of) words that we understand our impact on the world and its impact on us. It was easy to understand what nature was telling me and teaching me since, without distractions, I could hear their words through the ears of my soul and not the ears of my head. It was easy because “our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand” (Coelho, The Alchemist). In that way, my fated connection to that land, to those animals, to those people was everything but coincidental; it was meaningful in every sense of the term, and to the word’s fullest capacities.


***This statement might be somewhat misleading since the sad reality of southern Chile is its deceptiveness. It is spoken of and often advertised as an untouched paradise, a cold jungle where limited human contact has left the land and the sea pristine and pure. This is true, until you consider the fishermen and the businesses they work for. Fishermen cruise the waters until they reach beds of clams and oysters where there, at low tide, they harvest all that they can, stuffing sacks full of shellfish until they return to whatever port they came from, not blinded by the sun shining off the water but by the dollars gleaming from inside their laden boats. I spoke with a German biologist, Haike, at Toninas who was conducting research on the communication of Orcas and Pilot Whales. In dealing with the behavioral communication of Pilot Whales, she is one of two people in the world conducting this research. It was her research that prevented a business from constructing a salmon fishery at the mouth of the Añihue Bay, reasoning that the population of Toninas Dolphins that lives off the nourishment provided in that specific area would be destroyed by such a structure. Haike told me that, besides the unsustainable practices of local fishermen, Chilean salmon fisheries have gradually destroyed the coastline, raping the sea of nutrients and contributing back to her “abundance” only contamination. Of all the trash that floats onto the shores of Patagonian beaches, 99% comes from salmon fisheries. And the trash isn’t just plastic bottles and Doritos bags. The trash consists of huge foam blocks tangled in ropes and nets, giant plastic tubs used for storing the harvested salmon, tubing and an endless list of harmful pollutants. Hope comes in the form of conscientious people like those at Añihue who clean the beaches and are dedicated to living low-impact lives and to helping preserve Patagonia.


Google Map:
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Pictures: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=190645&id=629949459&l=033824c4df