Pack and Saddle

The volcano stood silently in front of us, capped in white and riddled with lava rock. A semi-frozen flurry began to dance the mambo on mountain winds, melting onto my bare, red hands. My horse, Salvador, was breathing hard, but didn’t falter in his stride. He rarely did. Clearly nervous, he knew there’d be no shelter or pasture up ahead—just an endless horizon of dead pumice and ash, a place he’d prefer to never enter. But because I’d asked him to, because we trusted each other, he trudged uphill with me on his back, breathing small clouds for us to walk through. He’d become my best mate.

I turned to check my packhorse, Pichi. She was close but struggling with her awkward load. A hundred yards downslope, I could see my girlfriend, Heather, on Blacky. Beyond that, more like a speck in the distance down the mountainside, was poor old Harimau. He was tired, old, and put to the limit. I also knew he’d sooner collapse than get left behind—we were a herd, a family. 

We’d lightened his load as much as possible and Pichi was now carrying almost everything. I pondered for a moment how we’d even found ourselves on this Andean volcano in early winter…with four horses and no GPS. I’d set off from Alaska a year and a half prior, alone except for some pie-eyed dream of surfing the Pacific coast of the Americas from the back of a motorcycle. Then before I could say “fresh veggies with extra irrigation,” a super-cute organic farmer by the name of Heather Hillier had speared my quince-sized heart. Her long flowing hair, dirty fingernails, and constant giggling melted my hardcore solo determination into our shared huckleberry union of sweet jelly-love. Deep in Oaxaca, on the thundering beaches of Zicatela, that perpetually giggling pumpkin bought her first-ever motorcycle and together we roared into steamy Central America, surfing our brains right out of our craniums.

Fast-forward a year: After a moving encounter with a traditional Andean family, Heather and I decided to trade our bikes for four affable steeds. We knew nothing about horses, couldn’t even mount them properly, and had to ask our friends to test-ride them for us. There was so much to learn, beginning with how to prevent the horses from snapping ropes, destroying pack rigging, and galloping for the hills whenever we brought a surfboard anywhere near them.

Eventually we set off from the Zeus Farm on the dirt roads above Punta De Lobos. Our cavalcade—proudly kitted-out in its homemade gear, not one horse struggling in fear of the surfboards—was orderly. We almost looked like we knew what we were doing. I let out a horse-startling hoot and turned to smile at Heather, her ear-to-ear grin revealing how she felt about kissing mechanical conveyances, modern conveniences, and other so-called “progresses” goodbye.   

Time no longer meant much to us, although we had a lot of it—more time than money, more time than a clock could tick. Our first clip was 111 miles, and took three weeks to clop. As daily requirements shifted, so did our perspectives. Our caravan moved on a daylight schedule set by the birds and the stars. No longer focused on destinations, or the distance between gas stations, we hunted rivers, good pastures, and safe campsites. Nights by the fire were quiet and we learned that horses do indeed sleep standing up. At sunrise, it was always young Pichi to whinny excitedly, poking her head into our tent.

It was normal for us to take three hours to break camp and rig the herd. Then we’d ride all day (or week) until we found waves. We stuck to single-track trails that climbed cliffs and crossed estuaries, the ancient network maintained by artisan seaweed farmers and the traditional fishermen of Chile. Families invited us in for dinner, nostalgically enchanted by the horses. We’d share stories, laughs, and delicious local wine. Often they told us of Chile’s crooked fisheries department, poisoned fish-stocks, or the destroyed livelihoods of the locals. They explained the main culprit: the salmon-farming industry was currently lobbying the government to move operations to their shores. Why? Because the industry had already wiped out vital marine ecosystems further to the south. Their genuine concern was tangible, and sad to hear, but in their eyes lay the glint of a fight. They were organized, empowered, and enraged.  

Later, while sharing maté at a Mapuche family’s property, we saw those same communities on the television, the national news broadcasting angry protests of tens of thousands, all of them demanding respect for Chile’s coast while the president declared a “state of emergency.”  Mapuche, Lafkenche, Pescadores, Gauchos, Surfistas—Chileans are inherently connected to their coasts, and for that reason I’ll only discuss one of the waves we discovered.

We were sauntering down a dirt road when Pichi took a sharp turn to the left at the sight of green grass and walked straight through a fence. She knocked down two fence posts and was suddenly entangled in yards of savage barbed wire. By this stage, I had come to despise all fences—the one glaring mechanism of societal hostility we couldn’t escape on horseback. It was the best I could do to not snip each and every fence we passed, dancing in delight as their nasty wires slithered to the ground. 

“Where is the ‘wild’ left in the wild?” I would yell in futility.

We cut Pichi free, luckily before she spooked and cut herself badly. I decided to run ahead on foot to find a better path through the maze of hills and fences. Skidding to a stop atop a cliff, a beautiful pointbreak stared back at me, spitting and grinding its hips like it was spring-tide happy hour at the Sand Bar & Grill—a manifestation of sediment transportation and deposition perfection, its sand-bottom as neatly manicured as the 9th hole bunker the night before the U.S. Open, a silica coagulation of symmetry presumably sculpted by mermaids and an army of octopi alongside an igneous extrusion of rock that formed the dredging takeoff zone. Indeed, a sight to behold.

I sprinted back to Heather, who was taking photographs of an old bull skull while the horses grazed in their newly accessible paddock.  

“I…I…I think we’ve just found an epic wave,” I stammered. 

“Another one?” she said. “Hey, look at this sweet old skull I found. It’s even got teeth. Actually, Harimau found it, he was—”

‘No, no, no! You don’t understand…you should see the sand…”

We steered our equine extravaganza down to the point, the waves still piping and belching along the impeccable sandbank. Even a waterfall fell from the cliffs and there was more grass than the horses could eat in a month. We camped for a week on that empty beach, not a skerrick of shade, but enough perfect waves, grass, and water to keep our camp humming with the happy energy of 3,000 hummingbirds.  

The takeoff behind the rocks was tricky and thick, but also delectably square. When I eventually made it out of one (the spit producing rainbows in the sunshine), I couldn’t help but think that this was one of the happiest weeks of my life—a zenith fusion of hopes, goals, and passions. The only thing I could liken it to would be if my horse, Salvador, stumbled across a long-spired seashell in the sand, which he could fuse to his nose, thereby transcending the daily horse-plod to fulfil his colt-hood dreams of becoming a unicorn.  

During lulls in the ever-empty lineup, I’d look back at the beach and there would be my beautiful girl, foraging for seaweed, wild radishes, and watercress—for a fireside lunch. Our horses trotted freely up and down the beach, eating young grass, taking naps in the sunshine, and drinking, with nary a fence in sigh. Heaven, Nirvana, Jannah, Shamayin—this utopia had the power to bring ’em all together.

A few months later, our trajectory took an inland spin. We’d been tricked by a man with a big hat and an even bigger grin. Word had gotten out that a couple of gringos would need to sell their horses at some point and he offered us a deal we couldn’t refuse. He’d buy all four animals, keep them together forever on his “big farm,” just so his children could grow up the “proper Chilean way.” After we’d cautiously agreed, and taken a ten percent deposit, a local friend came to our rescue and told us the truth: Big Hat was a sly shyster from the markets, whose plan was to kill and butcher our horses the same day he picked them up.

We already knew that Chileans ate horsemeat—and that it turned a tidy profit—so I’d deliberately tested Big Hat when striking the deal. He reassured me the horses were for his children, honorably shaking my hand. I queried him three times in total, and three times he lied into my eyes. 

I was fuming, and if Heather hadn’t stopped me, I might’ve grabbed his oversized hat, stuffed it into his grinning mouth, and had my largest horse kick him square in the nuts. Instead we took to the mountains. Now we were headed for a friends distant ranch, a safe harbor for the animals. It was far from a fool-proof plan. We didn’t have a pair of gloves between us, I’d lost our GPS in a storm, and nearly all of our gear was broken or torn. But there was no way we were leaving the horses’ fate to chance.

So yeah, that’s why we’re trudging up a volcano in early winter. We spent another month riding through the imposing, but awe-inspiring Andes Range, before reaching our friends’ ranch in the valley of Pucón. Greta and Alejandro rode out on their own horses to meet us in the pouring rain. Their smiles and honest intentions were everything we’d hoped for. 

Just days after getting the horses settled into their new, 100-hectare, forever-home, it was time for Heather and I to leave. Walking up to their paddock, I sounded the call: “Kuuuudakudakudakuda!” All four animals lifted their heads and thundered towards me from 300 yards. I had four carrots, which lightened the mood, but Salvador seemed to know what was up. He pressed his muzzle into my shoulder and, just like a million times before, I gave him my best bear hug, his giant heart booming in my ear. 

“I’m gonna miss ya mate,” I said with a lump in my throat, now a horseman with no horses. That same day, Heather announced she was heading home to Canada. She hadn’t been giggling so much lately. We’d had a few arguments riding over the mountains.

“I hope you understand,” she said.

“Yeah…if that’s what you want,” I answered. 

I knew the development meant I’d be heading into frozen Patagonia without her. I thought back to our window of bliss at the wave beside the waterfall. 

Always the optimist, she continued: “The horses are stoked, Matty. Look at this place, it’s incredible—a beautiful valley of lush grass, a roaring river that runs right through their property, an epic volcano to watch over them. Even these lovely forests.”

 “Yeah, it all looks so beautiful,” I said softly, and turned from her to face the expanse, but I was lying. I couldn’t see shit through my blurry eyes.

[Feature image: Photo by Heather Hillier.]