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On the second night we camped in a valley below the lake. As soon as the sun rose, I left my tent and found the stream that ran closest by. I washed my face with melt water and we set a fire. The stream ran down the valley to join the river, like a thousand more did above and below us all the way to Carmensa. This fact dispels the idea of a beginning, a source. Like a myth or a folk song, the source was lost to time and the great movements of the earth. If I could ask the river, I doubt even she would know. To find a start would be like finding the beginning of a mountain or a forest. They all start where the journey starts. We started at the lake.
"Today, for the first time in our journey, we arrived at a lake. In the distance we could see a dry island of rocks, and beyond that, a line of cement. Where was the true path of the river under the surface? How had a river that ran 100km, carving out a mighty mountain range and deep valleys, been halted by a little over 300 metres of concrete? Why was it uncomfortable for me? What simple view of nature and the world am I clinging to? You would probably ask, ‘At what point did we not manipulate nature to live?’"
The water is somewhere below our feet in huge pipes from El Nihuil to the far side of the canyon. We scrambled and squeezed through the rocks and took each other’s hands to lower ourselves down. The deeper we went, the higher the walls of the canyon rose and the more terrifying the image of that water-filled canyon that was once wild and respected, and is now just a stream.
After several days of dry and arid land, today we returned to the boats to enter a paradise. We raced past families and friends, young lovers in borrowed tents, the smell of asado, the scent of tortitas passing us in clouds. Kids ran their fingers through fleshy river plants. Elderly couples rested their toes in the water’s edge and spoke of their favourite places on the river when they were younger.
I need you to imagine this: a line of cement suspended in the air, crossing perpendicular to the river. We had come to what they call the Canal Marginal – an artificial fork in the river where most of its water is channelled away into a cement canal for agriculture and drinking water. The river doesn’t end but continues elsewhere. In the juice that rolls down your chin when you bite into an overripe plum. In the green leaves of the Elms that cast shadow on the streets of our little city. In the sweat that evaporates off our bodies while we move.
Late in the afternoon we came to an old wooden train bridge, like an image from a silent movie, frozen but flickering from the projector light, to keep the memories of the trains that no longer pass. And what of the canals? Will they too one day be monuments to the water we once had?
The river subliminally fades into the earth and so do the things that need it. The quiet stillness of old age. Our oars suddenly are digging through soft sand. We find a stranded fish, huge fires scour the land, canals become pointless and we have to walk. And then there is nothing, or something that can’t be related to what came before.
