Before I begin, I must implore you to watch “A Story for Tomorrow,” a stunning five-minute video by Gnarly Bay Productions that a good friend recently sent my way. The friend and I are both relatively recent expats, both on the move with our relatively new husbands, and both trying to sort out what our new terrain (Chile for me; Canada for her) means for our writing, our livelihood, and our friendships. I recommend viewing the video (trust me, you won’t be sorry) before proceeding with the rest of this post because I want you to share the feeling I’ve been carrying around with me since I first watched it (I may or may not have watched it every day since… and made my students watch it :). The feeling is one I can only describe as equal parts eye-opening, invigorating, emotional, and humbling, with a healthy final flourish of adventurism that makes me want to cut strings, lift up, and float across every single mile of this country.
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| City vs… |
You see, I’m starting to realize — or, rather anticipate — the differences between Santiago and Chile. This statement might invite some head-scratching. Of course, Santiago is just as representative of Chile as any other city, town, longitude or latitude. But it wasn’t until I watched this video that I realized how much I hold them in separate hands, if you will, and allow each their own temperature, population, sounds, and sights. They are separate to me because I know one much better than the rest. So, perhaps in one day getting to know the whole of Chile, I’ll also get to know a different version of myself and my relationship to the land, culture, and people here.
Do you understand a bit of what I mean when I mentally dissect Chile into Santiago and, well, anywhere outside Santiago? While I haven’t ventured much farther than a three-hour drive’s radius, I’ve seen enough to know that the differences are obvious from nearly the moment you exit the city. Uninhibited farm land, vineyards, and pasture begin to stretch out from either side of the highway. In mere minutes, you drive through small towns where you can peer inside open-windowed markets and see what they offer. You start to see animals on the move and big sky pierced by a jagged mountain range.
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| … Country. |
Having just exited an over-heated, jam-packed metro train, forgive me if this post is also something of a fantasy about open space. Because once you leave, you might, like we do, welcome the absence of, well, six million people. As I’ve mentioned before, a third of the country’s population lives in this one city. I don’t know enough about Chile’s history to posit why it is that Santiago holds the trump card when it comes to size, population, industry, and infrastructure.I do know that this feat of centralized development leaves epic stretches of unencumbered land to explore. We’ve seen Pichilemu’s dirt roads and Santa Cruz’s velvety rolling vineyards. We’ve welcomed the clear, coastal air deep into our lungs. We know that the eastern Andes journey, uninterrupted, all the way to Argentina to the west and run for over 4,000 miles north and south. But that knowledge is confined to isolated weekends that puncture many months of city living. Most of our experience of Chile has been within the confines of Santiago, resulting in impressions of Chile that are sometimes lined up with work commutes, smoky restaurants, the craning necks of construction equipment, five undeterred months of summer, and evening respites in a friend’s backyard that feel as refreshing as a bold dive into a lake. The rest of our home life hovers here on the fifth floor.
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| Which way to go? |
What have you seen and found in Chile? What should we not miss?
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