The first time I visited Maiwe, we arrived late at night. Toto picked up a rock and told me to listen carefully. He threw it into the vast darkness stretching out before us. A few seconds later, I heard it.
Glup.
It wasn't until sunrise that I saw what I had only heard the night before: a breathtaking lake, hidden away in the middle of the Andes.
- AN ANECDOTE OF MARCH 2015
I arrived in Chile all by myself. The plane crossed the Atlantic, flew over the endless expanse of Brazil, and cleared the Andes before descending onto the edge of the South American continent.
But I wasn't there just yet.
A night bus would take me the rest of the way to Patagonia. As darkness fell, I reclined my seat and drifted off to sleep. The next morning, with only a few kilometers left to go, the driver woke us with a hot cup of sweet coffee.
I pulled back the beige curtains and couldn't believe the landscape I was seeing. Endless meadows stretched to the horizon. Tiny sheet-metal houses, their chimneys quietly smoking, were scattered across the plains. Then, as if it had been waiting for the perfect moment, a volcano rose into view.
I had almost arrived.
- AN ANECDOTE OF JANUARY 2015
According to the unwritten rules of international hitchhiking solidarity, if you've ever been a hitchhiker yourself, you always stop for one.
One day, while cruising around Lake Maiwe with Toto, we spotted a woman by the side of the road making the familiar gesture we both knew so well. We pulled over, opened the door, and before long, we were deep in conversation. Meanwhile, I couldn't take my eyes off the wild rose bushes that brought countless vibrant red dots to the the mountains around Maiwe.
"Do people use all these rosehips for something?" I asked.
"Of course," she replied. "We make a skin oil from them."
I turned around, intrigued.
"They say that if you apply rosehip oil to a scar," she continued with a serious look, "you can almost watch it disappear before your eyes."
- AN ANECDOTE OF APRIL 2017
Every morning, I stepped outside our house in Chile to inspect the magnolia tree, searching for the first flower buds. My favorite tree always announces the arrival of spring in the Southern Hemisphere, usually at the end of September.
As my belly grew heavier with each passing day, the magnolia remained bare. Pippa was taking her time too.
The night after she was born, Toto knocked on the door of my hospital room carrying an enormous magnolia in full bloom. Clumps of earth fell onto the floor as he brought it inside. The room was so warm that overnight every last flower opened, filling the air with fragrance.
A few days later, I turned thirty.
Today, two magnolia trees grow in our garden in Chile. One of them will always be Pippa's.
