La Tierra

The earth: it’s impressive.

I find myself gaping at the raw and dark faces of the mountains that rise up from the dry, hot landscape around Santiago. As we climb up switchback after switchback the slopes push up more violently from the valleys they have filled with rubble. A glacier dominates a towering peak in the distance, slowly sculpting away the volcanic remains below. The mountains here are more ominous for some reason. The black volcanic rock seems so sharp, the altitude so abrupt; you can’t help but to see the magnitude of force that created this range. Yet this is the attraction. The rivers of ice cascading down from towering peaks and the scree-filled valleys are breath-taking.

I have gone backpacking twice now in the cordillera, letting my body struggle up hill after gaining 4000 meters of elevation in two days, just to soak in this foreign landscape. I revel in these natural places that people really aren’t mean to go. The only animals you see up there are the condors, circling overhead with their impressive wingspan, looking for hidden rodents. I get to be privy to this solitude, this isolation with the wind, sun and mountains. I thought the earth and I were on good terms.

And then I experienced my first earthquake. It was nearly 1 in the morning, I was walking to the bus stop after going to a friend’s house. At first I thought the wind was just rattling the carwash across the parking lot, and then I realized there was no wind, and the shaking gained intensity. I suddenly felt as though I was on a carnival ride, as though it couldn’t actually be the ground, the earth, groaning and shaking beneath my feet. All told the quake only lasted two minutes, of which I probably only noticed a minute. It was a 6.5, with the epicenter about 20 km away from Valpo. The pictures in my house are still slightly askew.

Most of the other students or friends I talked to were excited – it was a new experience, a rush of adrenaline, and small enough to just be fun. But I felt disturbed in some way, as though some trust that I had with the earth had been broken. I’ve never lived anywhere where the ground suddenly moves violently underneath your feet, and for me it felt like a betrayal. The earth isn’t supposed to do this! I felt unsettled because this meant reevaluating my relationship with the very ground I walk on. It is frightening to think that another earthquake could happen any time.

When you really stop and think about it, earthquakes are a pretty cool phenomenon: two continental plates are colliding, reminding us that the earth, beneath the life on the surface that we interact with, is very alive in her own way, in a profoundly powerful way. It’s not necessarily a power that I want to be witness to in its full strength, but I’m glad to have this new appreciation and tactile understanding of how the earth works, and respect for everything she is capable of doing.