The Patagonian landscape is a study in contrasts - rolling gentle hills with all colors of green and brown in the foreground of jutting rock walls and snowy crags. You can see the many striations on the face of the rocks - zigzagging stripes of blue and white and ochre and terra cotta. The hills and mountains swoop out across the horizon, where they are met by thick swirling rolls of clouds swooping out into the sky. Much of the land is strewn with decaying burnt tree trunks - evidence of land-clearing gone horribly wrong, and humanity's perpetration of grave injustice against the land. These trunks cut into the earth in jagged and random scars. The flesh of the earth swells out around them, trying to absorb the trunks into its bosom once more and heal.
I mean the land literally looks like a slave's back. Open wounds and twisted gashes. Who knows if it will ever really heal.
And yet the wildflowers jauntily spring up alongside, and the grass sways constantly, and it is my hope that the land can rejuvenate itself - but only with our help. We must repair what we have undone and damaged.
Looking out over this landscape reminds me of the red slices on a cutter's arm. Of course the earth did not do this to itself, but it is still crying out for help.
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