Travel Fallout...

Travel fallout - kind of like jet lag... Perhaps best described as a vertiginous reeling inspired by fleeing one continent for another and skipping through time zones like a deftly thrown rock from the lakeshore.  Memories still burn wildly like a haunting landscape burned on the retina, then they flicker and begin to dim in the squinting heat of this Midwest heatwave as feet slowly steady... One image still burns clearer than the rest. A cold fire ignited in my soul when I first saw it escape the clouds. It seems to be more prone to the Antarctic style weather patterns, sitting just behind Fitz Roy and Poincenot...

Cerro Torre is a siren and it calls... I may never be good enough or bold enough to summit it but a piece of me feels charged and pulled to witness it again and up close... It is mythical... the quintessential, iconic feature pulled straight from an impossible dreamscape.

Our highpoint was Cerro Constitucion, situated in what appears to be the center of a vast mountain world with snow capped peaks 360 as far as we could see, the heart of the Andes. Mt. Tronador (The Thunderer) behind...

Frey was all I could hope for and more. I was lucky enough to have a travel partner that catered enough to my vertical addiction so that I could sample some of its captivating routes. Stunning location, perfect stone...

As the bullfrogs begin to croak and the moths flutter the welcome chill of evening descends in rural Illinois... My mind is still a continent away... Remembering jamming my way up cracks on spires my muscles twitch, I close my eyes and reflexively brace as I slip through shin deep mud on the misty trail below Paso de las Nubes, my eyes strain to follow a pair of Patagonian foxes as they trot into the sunset in Nahuel Huapi National Park, again I feel the cobblestones beneath my tired feet in colonial Humahuaca, I taste the mildly astringent coca tea in the Milmahuasi hostel in Iruya, I again feel knocked off balance by the unbelievably fierce phantom winds of Torres del Paine, through my yearning mind's eye I marvel at the distance covered in mere seconds by an Andean condor as it soars across the Fitz Roy Range, I still smell fresh facturas in a panaderia...  Soon... Soon.