Knowing When to Quit

by Tanner Smith (United States of America)

A leap into the unknown Chile

When Uncle Stephen, who did not have children of his own and loved his nieces and nephews like a parent, offered to take each of his 8 nieces and nephews anywhere in the world upon graduating high school, Trinity and I, cousins and kindred spirits, immediately turned to each other and decided to take our trip together. As lovers of mountains and dreamers of exploration into the wildness that this world has to offer, we picked the infamously ruthless area of Patagonia as our destination to embark on three famous backpacking routes. So, here we were on a twenty passenger tin can plane from Punta Arenas, Chile to Puerto Williams, the southernmost city in the world, alongside a group of photographers en route to Antarctica in hopes of capturing images of the native penguins. The first crack in my naivety came upon realization that all my belongings combined cost less than each individual article of clothing worn by these seasoned explorers. Money is not everything, but in this case it accurately reflected experience. Once we landed on the island, we needed to get from the airport to the town, which was a few miles away, and we began our journey the way all great journeys begin...crammed in the back of a dirty pickup truck with an Australian man that just sailed across the Pacific Ocean. Upon arriving in town we found a small outdoors store where we picked up some bags of quinoa and hiking poles, and we were ready to begin, our objective being the Dientes Circuit, a 4 day hike named after the jagged mountain ridge the looked eerily like the bottom row of a wolf's teeth. The hike began with blue skies and no wind, and we chatted and listened to Uncle Stephen's strongly opinionated, sometimes abrasive, but always enjoyable and stimulating thoughts on the cohesiveness of evolution and religion, Jesus' apparent advocacy of Socialism, which countries produce the best wine, and every other imaginable topic. Our favorite was always his stories of our grandparents, who passed away when we were young, and their travels as medical missionaries to Indonesia. After two hours of blissful walking through the most beautiful landscapes I have encountered, the first rain storm hit. In a matter of twenty minutes, the wind picked up and carried in ominous clouds bearing loads of rain. I enjoyed approximately 2 minutes of dryness in my $20 rain jacket before I could feel my sweatshirt starting to dampen. The rain lasted a little over a half hour before blowing on, probably to soak some other chump who had not yet learned the life lesson that you get what you pay for. We survived the rain, but the sun was beginning to set, and we still saw no sign of the first campsite, so we picked up the pace to make it before dark. The dark set on quicker than anticipated, and as we puzzled over this, the sky provided our answer with the second rain shower and 20 mph winds. We pulled the straps on our bags tighter and tilted towards the wind to attack until we came upon the campsite, which was thankfully only 15 away. The rain persisted as we dropped our bags and scrambled to cook some of the quinoa to satiate our cold and immensely empty stomachs. While Uncle Stephen cooked, he directed Trinity and myself to set up the tent. We dug through his bag, and with the sun completely disappeared, we struggled to find the tent. He walked over and pulled a small, light green bundle out of the bag tied up with a string and no bigger than a rolled up newspaper. With our concern already piqued, we unraveled the package and searched for instructions and tent poles, but no tent poles were to be found! With the rain still dumping, we held the instructions close to our lamp to find no mention of tent poles. Our only option was to place our sleeping bags on the wet ground with a glorified tarp over us like a blanket as the rain continued through the night. The next day we threw up the white flag and humbly trekked back home.