The caps of snow, the crowns of ice, they look like the folds of noren curtains to me. The harsh cobalt mountains like a deep blue sea. Everything is inverted, a memory of other memories.
We are flying over the Southern Patagonian Ice Field. We may have passed the dagger peaks of Cerro Fitz Roy; we are not sure.
For right now my attention is entirely absorbed by the clouds. These are not mere puffs or kindergartener’s crayon sketches; these are battalions, are fortresses suspended in the sky.
As we are, I suppose, though we are moving faster. (We are moving faster, are we not? Sometimes life feels like a long sequence of dreamlike trailing.)
Soon enough we will land at the El Calafate International Airport and from then on, a long car ride to El Chaltén. But for now there are no runways and no roads. Only the clouds around us, like grown up versions of fairy tale fogs, like promises of better things to come.
The clouds tell us that there is always more, even when we suspect that we are less than ever before.