Go Time

A moto, a canyon, a string of unlikely kindnesses, and the man I lost who found me again in the wind

There’s a rough sensation on my lips, a cracked desert soil, the cells of my entire being pulsing the last remaining molecules of moisture from my body. The dry winds cackle across my face as I rip down the gravel of Ruta 12 toward Piedra Parada. The 220-meter standing rock in the middle of the steppe, somewhere northeast of Esquel, gives me a preview of what I’d look like if I spent my life out here. Or so I thought

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Gualjaina shared a contrast. A little oasis in an otherwise barren landscape. The people here, plump, warm, welcoming, don’t resemble the land much. I can only attribute such contrary vibrancy to the foods they consume: greasy baby goat, plump brown trout, healthy Herefords. Contrast in the canyons.

So perhaps they do resemble the land after all.
Contrast

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Steel stars, deep greens, barren sands, spiny bushes, sweet shade, motionless silence and violent winds. Quite a change from my humid little valley of passion. I went from a steamy cool valley to a searing open steppe in under two and a half hours. My stead, a four-stroke 250 Zanella moto, carried me quickly into this realm of hidden glory

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I stepped back in time to a period of my life when I called myself a rock climber. I stepped back to a place where the horse is still the vehicle of choice.

The rock quality was mediocre, crumbly, sketchy, plenty of rockfall. But the climbing was spectacular, a backdrop of 300-meter cliffs rising out of a vivid green stream. Life and death, noise and silence, exertion and calm.

I met Edu, Dragoncito, at Juan’s acampe. We hit it off. I texted him the other day just to check in, and moments later he invited me on a weeklong climbing trip he was leaving for the next morning. Of course I said yes.

I saddled my moto, chucked my climbing shoes, a few layers, a sleeping bag, a couple tools. I rolled down the mile of singletrack from the house, crossed the pedestrian bridge over the Río Azul, and was into the wind without much thought.

This is the glory of my life. I can pick up and go.

The ride down was ethereal. My little moto chugged at 80 km/hr through the fertile hills of El Hoyo, past the violent pass of Epuyén, and spat me out onto the parched and quiet. There’s an image that comes to me whenever I’m on roads like that. I see myself from the shoulder, a silent witness. Birds chirping, silence, then “raaaaaaaap—ZIP,” and I’m gone again. The semi-arid landscape is the purest form of “witness” I’ve encountered. There’s a deep wisdom of survival and presence woven into the very soil. As one travels through it, you feel the all-seeing eye. You become part of the whole

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Dragoncito, Valen, and Facu whizzed by in their Peugeot as I was admiring an antiqued copper-green sand seeping from below a basalt cap. Fifteen minutes later we were at Piedra Parada. Finally together. A quick unpack, and we headed for the Cañadón de la Buitrera.

These guys could climb. They ripped 6b routes like they were warm-ups. It took me back to the good old days of Adirondack rock climbing, pushing my limits, learning the language of stone. I felt a surge of health and vibrancy within me, a memory waking up.

We talked about everything: life, politics, work, dreams, ideas. Conversation flowed like we had known each other longer than a day

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That last night we stood under the stars, glaring down on us with all the intensity of the Southern Ocean. The Southern Cross stood vigil; the Pleiades; or in Edu’s father’s words, “the box of jewels,” shimmered in the corner of the eye, offering their quiet twinkles as support. We all made a wish on a falling star. For a moment we were brothers tied together in the canyon, the way the earth is invisibly tied to the stars.

And then the long ride home, a simple three-hour return that twisted into a day and a half, tore the whole trip into manic shards of movement, grinding, human kindness, gifts, and stubborn tenacity.

Santander, the gaucho who waved me into his yard like I’d been gone a decade. His many working dogs swarmed and barked, but as soon as Santander said a word, they fell silent and dispersed. He let me stash my moto behind his fence while I went hunting for a new tire, and when I finally limped in three hours later, filled with an optimism for humanity I had forgotten I had, half-frozen and running on fumes, he pressed a warm baby-goat sandwich into my hands without a word. Just a nod, a smile, the kind of kindness that hits you deeper than it should.

The spiritual man who drove as if every god he believed in was riding shotgun.
The old man whose ancestors were some of the first colonizers from England, carrying that strange lineage with a quiet dignity.
And the sweet woman from Gualjaina who spoke fondly of life and her eight children, her warmth cutting through the starkness of the steppe like a small, defiant flame.

The waterless hotel that knocked a few pesos off. The 100-km/hr winds that bullied me into the magnificent Alerces National Park, then punished me with two hours of freezing rain that soaked me to the bone. The cop who tried to forbid me from crossing the windy section near Epuyén until a bit of “chamuyo” softened him. And finally, the arrival at Tueis, this crazy, beautiful, new home.

All these small collisions were strung together like beads.
Not random at all.
Something in them was speaking.

I think it was Denny. A friend I lost recently. I met him when I was riding through San Carlos, Mexico, about seven years ago. He was in his late sixties then, wiry and sunburnt, the kind of man who seemed carved from the land. He had built trails, gathered a small gang of expat retirees on little 250 four-stroke motos, and led them through the semi-arid backroads of Sonora and Chihuahua like it was a religion

Denny and I grew close. We went on multi-day rides into Barranca del Cobre, and countless smaller loops through the dry, thorny country. He became an emblem of who I wanted to be when I grew old; sleeping on the side of a dirt road on a piece of cardboard, moto beside him, drinking in the beauty of simplicity.

He had lived a life full of big crossings and wild stories. He was actually the first person to ride a motorcycle across the Darién Gap, way back in the sixties. Riding those gravel roads in Patagonia brought him back to me. The dust, the silence, the long gaps between towns; all of it felt like echoes of our two months together.

Denny had friends in every little Mexican store and village. We’d roll in, kickstand down, share a soda, talk with whoever was behind the counter. He knew how to be at home everywhere. I’m sad he’s gone, but out there in the wind and the emptiness, it felt like he was riding with me again

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Somewhere in that mix: the wind, the cliffs, the kindnesses, the small tests, the sheer rawness of the steppe; something in me thawed. It felt like a truth I keep misplacing: that I come alive in motion, in exposure, in the thin places where comfort dissolves and the body remembers what it is.

The steppe has no softness to offer.
It strips you down until only the essential remains, and somehow that feels like grace.

Climbing with these guys, laughing in the canyon shadow, hands chalked and bleeding, shoes tight and familiar, felt like touching a former life and realizing it still fits. Not perfectly. Not without ache. But honestly.

Maybe that’s enough.

Maybe the real point isn’t the climbing, or the moto, or the steppe.
Maybe it’s this simple: sometimes you have to leave, violently and beautifully, to remember how to arrive.

Returning to Tueis with soaked gear drying in the sun and my hands still trembling from wind and cold and effort, I felt something I haven’t felt in a while. A quiet satisfaction. The feeling of a man who can leave hard and return soft. Someone who can go out into the wild edges, push himself, scrape himself, test whatever version of himself is alive that day, and then come back to a nook he is building with his own two hands

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It struck me that this is a new kind of movement; not escape, not hunger for the next horizon, but a rhythm.

I’m not running anymore.
I’m orbiting a place I chose, this crazy, beautiful, new home, and every time I return, I’m a little more myself.And today, in the sun, with my gear drying and my hands still trembling, I know I have arrived.

Until we share the next horizon

Tim

Ps. sorry I didn't grab any photos from the ride home. I was in “go mode” and didn't even think to pull out my camera 🤣.. anyways thanks for being with me. You too Denny 🫶

PPS. Also I have a lot of volunteers coming to help on site in the coming weeks. I'm going to be wildly busy getting over milled, the garden set up, building projects started, on top of a lot of general cleaning and organizing. Please bare with my absence if it comes to pass!