Chapter One: The Soldier’s Secret
With only an hour or so of light left, we headed up to the main road quickly. Seven kilometers on concrete to Perito Moreno. I set a brisk pace. At first, with his long gangly legs Yaniv kept up easily. Supposedly, the glacier would rise out from snow covered mountains into the gray lake to our left, but soon an immense, hilly forest blocked our view. We hiked silently--I was wondering whether we’d get there before dark; no doubt Yaniv was worrying about matters far more complex--after all, he was Israeli. Half an hour later, we came to a sign: five and a half kilometers to Perito Moreno.
“Let’s walk faster,” I said.
Yaniv bent down and rubbed his legs. “Ack.”
The sun disappeared steadily behind the forest as we continued on the road, up and down hills, tall pine and fur trees arching over us. So close to the mountains, the air was fresh and exhilarating. Just the two of us, finally.
It’d be lucky to get a ride to the glacier, I told Yaniv, but we hadn’t seen a single car. I checked my watch. Our best bet was to find the alternative path to Perito Moreno--my guidebook had mentioned it, though the park ranger didn’t seem to know about it. Soon, the treetops began to darken and the air grew colder. Then headlights appeared from around the bend. Stepping to the side of the road, we stuck out our thumbs. In the car was a young couple with two empty spaces in the backseat, but they shook their heads, mouthed ‘sorry,’ and sped along.
“Why didn’t they stop?” Yaniv asked, surprisingly agitated. “They could not have been Israeli, Danny. An Israeli would have stopped.”
“That’s the first good thing you’ve said about Israelis, ever,” I pointed out. “Are you feeling alright?”
Yaniv never missed an opportunity to badmouth Israelis, which is partly why I was able to convince him to leave them. That’s also why I liked him. I was sick of Americans; he was sick of Israelis. Both of us were disenchanted with our countries. Neither of us knew what to do with our lives. A perfect pair of twenty-something angst.
Finally, we reached the head of the short-cut trail my guidebook had mentioned. The trailhead was overgrown with reeds and barely marked, just a small, moss-covered wooden sign with an arrow pointing into faintly treaded shrubbery. Yaniv remained skeptical, obviously wishing he had brought his Israeli guidebook, which he had left it at camp. No doubt one of the many notes he had stuffed inside said something about the alternate trail at Perito Moreno. According to Yaniv, it was Israeli tradition to travel in South America after graduating from the army. The Israelis had been doing it for over forty years, and so each young ex-soldier who came over already had tips and recommendations from past generations; I had bought my guidebook in Florida, a Lonely Planet 2003 edition.
After a little prodding, I convinced Yaniv to try the path. For a few minutes, we were led down towards the lake again. The lake was beautiful, a meditative gray with streams of blue and purple. We stopped for a moment to admire the sunset in the water, took a quick drink of water, and continued on. The path veered just before the coast, up a slight hill into a dense the woods. Sprinkling through the branches were the last rays of sunlight, and in a few minutes, dusk settled over the woods, casting the trees in somber tones and quieting us. Aside from the occasional squirrel darting along the forest floor or bird flitting from limb to limb, all I could hear was our heavy breath and the wind. We were practically running now, and everything was blurring.
“Are you sure this is right?” Yaniv asked, rubbing his legs.
I put my hands on my hips, looking around the forest. “You can take the road. I don’t mind going alone--I have a flashlight.”
“I’m coming. It’s just--you are American.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that you like to go first and ask questions later.”
“Like Iraq?”
Yaniv grinned. “I was thinking, fast food.”
I hurried at a half-run past tall pines, oaks, masses of vines, and thorn bushes, Yaniv lumbering behind. A few times, I lost the trail and without telling him ran on. Not that you could exactly call it a trail. Deer probably used it, but who knew when a hiker had last set foot here. While we had the lake by our side, the hiking--even if we were rushing--had been pleasant. Now the animals were gone. The birds weren’t singing. Every snap of a branch unnerved me. The woods had assumed a sinister quality, as though we were running into a trap. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the first time Yaniv and I had gotten ourselves into trouble.
“Ack, my legs are still hurting from the French Valley,” Yaniv moaned.
He was far back now; I could barely see his blue parka. I thought about waiting, but Yaniv would have resented that. He may have been different from the others, but he was still Israeli, and Israelis did not care to show weakness--men or women.
“Come on, you had a whole extra year in the army,” I yelled back, slowing to a half-run.. “Surely that means that you’re even more fit for a hike.”
He scoffed. “If I catch you…”
Lapping water, nearby. I knew we were close to the lake again and started to run. The forest was thinning slightly, so I cut between trees, abandoning the trail completely. Looking back, I saw Yaniv managing a sort of goofy trot. Desperate to see the glacier before the sun went down, I scrambled up a small hill and hopped over some stumps, quickly descending. In my haste, I ran off the edge of a cliff, spent a few seconds in the air cursing my American stupidity, then landed reasonably well on a boulder below. Just a minor scrape. In the distance, something crashed into the water. I looked up hopefully. There was the lake, purple with dusk. No glacier, but I could feel it was close. From the boulder, I leaped down to a rock beach and headed for the coast, expecting to see the glacier around the forest bend.
“Yaniv, Yaniv, this way!” I screamed.
In the distance, I heard what sounded like a booming canon. It came again, an explosion ending with a loud splash. Then, as I neared the lake, I saw it, a wall of jagged blue ice crystals rose out from the water. There was Perito Moreno. I yelled for Yaniv again, then made my way alongside the coast and sat down on a nearby rock to drink some water. That stunning blue wall stretched across the lake and up into the snow-covered mountains. It didn’t look real. The clouds above Perito Moreno were a grayish-blue, not quite as dark as the glacier. The upper clouds, wispy, smeared across the sky, were tinged purple. The glacier was silent for several minutes. Then the ice broke again, a spike near the top hurtling into the lake. I walked a little closer, near a section of the glacier that was almost touching land. Again a chunk of ice fell. The birds were quiet. Catching my breath, I watched Perito Moreno, waiting for the next piece to break.
Twenty minutes later, when Yaniv still hadn’t arrived, I began to worry. He had been limping. Until a few months ago, Yaniv had been a soldier in perhaps the finest army in the world. Four years--an extra year than most Israeli men served, though he wouldn’t tell me why. Yaniv Blum. Tall, powerful, like a juggernaut. A machine. And he had been limping. I didn’t know what to think. I headed for the forest’s edge and turned on my flashlight. Nothing. I called to him. Just darkness. Turning back, I continued down the rocks along the coast. The water turned silver as the sun struck the glacier one last time. In the failing light, Perito Moreno began to glow like a blue coal. I ran towards it.
BOOM.
Chunks of ice fell into the lake, right in front of me. Had Yaniv heard? Couldn’t he follow the sound to the coast? Perito Moreno rumbled, a large section crumbling into the water. I laughed with pure joy, forgetting, for that moment, everything. My eyes were on only the glacier. Finding a rock to sit on, I watched peacefully, awed by its voice, waiting for Yaniv to show. I already regretted having left him. Any minute, he’d come bounding down the rocks with a smart remark, or appear in front of me, asking “what took you so long?” Yaniv and I had met on a bus ride a week earlier, both of us heading to Puerto Natales, the jumping off point for the famed Torres del Paine park. We had become close friends, but would not have met if for Yaniv’s persistence. You see, we had started up a conversation only after he repeatedly pushed a liter of coca cola in my face. Why? To find out if I were Israeli. Later, he admitted that, if I had answered “lo,” a simple “no” in Hebrew, he would have chosen a different seat.
