Dear Readers,
Many moons ago, when I was a maiden not yet familiar with the steep ways of the adult, I found myself lost in wild territory—both literally and metaphorically.
I was mistress to the gods of wild range and resilience, perpetually stretching myself from barefoot river walks to stilettos in gritty bars, from punk rock, to fern tendrils in search of unbreakable toughness. I had stretched myself all the way from the ciudad de la furia, Buenos Aires, where I was living then, to the end of the earth as we know it: Patagonia, where I had escaped.
I escaped for a season. My boyfriend and I were taking a trial separation after six years together. He went to Australia, leaving me to head south until I reached a place so remote you could walk for days and not see a single other person.
He’d been my beloved since college, and the idea of us not being forever was absolutely blowing my mind even as we took space. The separation was his idea. He’d asked me to marry him, and my response—a full-body vomit in front of a group of friends—wasn’t what either of us had hoped for. I thought I was ready to marry because the world seemed ready for me to marry. But the wild child of my heart wasn’t ready to surrender. Not yet. My body did not lie.
So I ran away to the Torres del Paine. It was summer and the sun never set, just hovered in the sky, performing a midnight dance of fiery reds. In that land of eternal sun, I fell in love. Not just once, but twice. Simultaneously.
All while still loving and longing for my boyfriend, even as I sensed it was actually over.
One was a German poet, an acrobat and muse. He was wiry, with long scraggly blond hair and a beautiful amber pendant. We had nothing in common except our dedication to wilderness, our love of hot saunas followed by cold glacier plunges, and overtone chanting.
The other was a different species of wild. Born in the Chilean mountains, he was raised by a father who taught him to climb as soon as he could walk. Grizzly. Strong. Eyes like struck flint. His heart was a mountain—steady, amused by us city folk who didn’t understand nature or maintain any relationship with her. He laughed when I tried to follow him into the Sierras, laughed at my tiny, unsure feet, laughed at my terror on the climbing rope. But he knew exactly how to wrap all my tininess into his bear arms and make me feel huge, secure, at home.
These men captured my heart simultaneously, and I had no idea what to do about it. For months, I was lost in confusion. I’d hike for ten hours through the Torres del Paine, and instead of tracking the magical transition from temperate forest to shrubs to moss to rock to glacier ice, my mind bounced frantically between them both.
Who should I be with?
I knew I’d see my actual boyfriend at summer’s end, so I had two months to figure out what my heart truly wanted. Two incredibly uncomfortable months. Messy. Human. No matter how many pros-and-cons lists I made, no matter how hard I prayed to be shown an answer, I remained utterly confused.
When summer ended, I left both of those beautiful wild boys. I think they still live there today.
I returned to my boyfriend only to break up with him, too. Turns out none of them were mine. My boyfriend actually passed away not long after that, in what will be another story to tell here one day. What was mine lay years ahead on the Camino, and in many ways is still revealing itself. We are surface walkers. Here to walk—maybe never truly meant to arrive.
I heard the poet David Whyte suggest recently that perhaps there’s magic in not knowing. In those moments when choice feels impossible.
Who should I be with?
What should my career be?
Where should I live?
What if the magic lies in letting ourselves be profoundly uncomfortable in the unknown? What if the very appearance of multiple paths exists only to stretch us in ways we haven’t been stretched before? What if the medicine is in the discomfort itself, in growing and stretching and not knowing, until finally our identity stretches too?
When we find ourselves at those crossroads, can we recognize ourselves as stretched, as growing, as grander beings for having faced uncertainty with bravery and faith?
Looking back at that summer when I was just a young surface walker with no idea how many paths I’d walk, how they’d keep surprising me, how my life would look nothing like I’d imagined (and what a gift that would be)—I see no certainty, nothing that could have been predicted. Only the stretch.
I marvel at its range, so wide, so impossibly expansive. I marvel at its resilience. I feel her, and all the multitude of paths she walked, like a great strength within me.
Maybe next time I’m confused about what to do, I’ll get down on my knees and say a prayer of gratitude—that I’m still worthy of being stretched, young enough to keep growing, resilient enough to be pulled like a rubber band and snapped into something new.
In Everything We Trust,
Sylvia
PS: If you want to time travel with me—back to the bars and bus stops of Patagonia, to the girl who didn’t yet know who she’d become—this was the soundtrack of that season.
Soda Stereo. En la Ciudad de la Furia.
Still makes my heart stretch a little wider.
