Costa, Sierra y Selva

They came along the road as if out of some other world, and the muddy clay and leafy trees and even the mottled sky above seemed transported to another time, when the continent had yet to be civilized and man first confronted the wilderness. Two distinct realities, we crossed paths. Had it been a crowded street downtown, or had we been sealed off from each other in our own miniature eco-systems on wheels, it would have been easier to avoid the difficulty of the meeting.

And yet there was no awkwardness. Awkwardness comes from a shared discomfort, but here there was only wonder, on both sides. Wonder on my part at the possibility of there still being wild things in the world. Wonder on their part at my walking their path, a path partly formed, I believe, by their own feet, walking it day after day, all the years of their lives. Their eyes were clear and light and contrasted alarmingly with their dark faces and spoke what their mouths would not. The eyes bore into mine, and I thought about a neighbor’s dog when I was a kid. I believed it to be half wolf, and was told that if I stared into its eyes, it would go wild with rage.

They carried a brace of rabbits, tied tightly together, dead and dangling from their shoulders, and rifles as well. Their breeches (honest-to-goodness breeches) were tucked pragmatically into rough boots and their shirts were buttoned down to their dark wrists and up to their dark throats against the elements that had railed against the lowlands all morning. On their heads, they wore, completely within their rights, berets battered and beaten and glazed with time. There is a distinct difference between the wild man’s hat and the domesticated man’s hat: one bears the stains of the outdoors and hard use, the other still has the manufacturer’s label sewn into the lining. I later looked at my hat. SQUASHY SUEDE: WATERPROOF, it said. MADE IN AUSTRALIA, it said. I am sure their hats had no such words pressed inside; I felt somehow that there was something out there I could not reach, that eluded me like a wary coney in the tall, tall waving grasses of the Pampas, and I yearned for it.

We nodded, or at least, I remember nodding at them, a good-afternoon sort of nod, quick, friendly and to-the-point, and perhaps a humble acknowledgment that I had trespassed their territory, that I did not belong there, and that I had intruded upon the satisfaction of tired feet tramping homeward as the declining day shook hands with the evening. I remember the way their heads turned as we passed, and how much I wanted to know, for example, how they had shot the rabbits in the tall grass, and how long they’d been out, and where they were going home to, and whether or not they had any names and what those names were.

But I said nothing.

We passed, and continued on our ways. My friends and I were going back to Buenos Aires, and the gaping avenues, dark corners and worrisome sameness of one concrete block stacked upon another. The hunters were headed for home lights on the outskirts of San Antonio de Areco, but I could not see those dwellings.
***

The snake did not seem to notice the fingerlings as they played raucously about his tail. He was the prince of the creek, and they were beneath his notice. I watched his sleek form move regally, then stop, then move again in the glistening water. Perched safely above on the boardwalk, I could watch without fear. So the catch in my breath as I turned to continue my walk was not a product of terror, but something else. It was the startling realization that safety is too steep a price to pay for a life spent “indoors.” And safety, after all, is not what we are called to, is it?