The ability to move freely is intoxicating.
Bad weather coming? Your locale has lost it’s luster? Don’t like the new neighbors? Perhaps a little civil unrest is brewing?
Move on. It’s that easy.
Go wherever your heart desires. Just over that ridge lies unexplored territory.
And although I think this way of living is in our DNA, most will never know such freedom.
Unfortunately for us, our life nomadic ended last April.
We saw it coming, and picked an awesome spot to hunker down. A big, remote ranch, on the Chilean side of Patagonia, that has an awesome river running through it.
We fish in the shadow of snow capped Andean volcanoes.
At first I believed the pandemic pass. I thought countries would shut down. People would be smart. And we’d be free again within three or four months.
But watching the global stupidity play out in real time… it became obvious that this was the end of our nomadic ways for the foreseeable future.
Time to adapt.
The owners of the ranch were happy to have us stay. There were tons of projects that needed doing, and they were short hands to do them. So for the last ten months we have been ranch hands.
I recommend the experience.
I have always preferred physically strenuous, outdoor work. I find it to be good for the soul… and the body. It’s funny that societies tend to look down on those who do it.
I think we all know where that comes from. “The world needs ditch diggers too Danny.”
When I was a kid it was cowboys and explorers.
Now it’s ‘influencers’, and keyboard pilots.
Too bad. But… it explains a lot about what’s going on.
I digress…
Chile is beautiful. It’s very, very similar to California. Mediterranean climate. Forests. Mountains. Desert. Ocean. And you can drive from the Andes to the Pacific in less than 3 hours. We’ve done it.
The big difference is Chile, being twice the size of California, and having less than a third of it’s population (nearly half of which live in Santiago), still has wild places. A LOT of them.
Nevertheless, being stuck is tough for nomads.
We occasionally fire up the rig and head up into the Andes to give our itchy feet a scratch. And we get the old rush. The feeling of total freedom. The anticipation of the undiscovered. The memory of driving through wildness where no roads existed.
And then we remember that we have to be back inside the ranch by curfew… or there will be hell to pay.