Landing on the Red Sand

Although this should have been the first post from Chile, for various reasons it took forever to get together. So…if you can, forget the last several posts and read this as if the first.

P.S. Scroll down and hit play first. The music helps…

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03/01/07 - 2:15am

I’m sitting here waiting to board the plane home. Today was nightmarish, not believing that the weather could turn so suddenly. All day I was afraid my flight would be canceled and yet here I am, delayed by 2 1/2 hours, still waiting to get on the plane.

I’ve spent years abstractly wishing and dreaming of this day, and now faced with the inevitable reality, I’m too damn tired to feel anything. The point of no return is almost upon me and I can’t even get excited.

I am not looking forward to the flight. Before it even starts I already want to be coming in on final approach.

14:13PM - 03/02/07
We’re starting to come down now, 80 Kilometers from Santiago. I had forgotten that this is what Chile is; pure, mountainous earth. Dusty and beautiful. It’s all varying shades of red and brown and very little is flat. No matter where I looked when the plane was descending, there was evidence of people that had adapted their lives to the land. Fields inside valleys, milking the only sources of irrigation. Tiny towns nestled in little valleys, vying for the drops of water that flow through them. Roadways encircling a mountain, twisting and coiling to the sea because a straight road was either foolish, futile or suicidal.

The landing strip was bordered by red sand, imagery I had always associated with the desert but never my home, and now outside this plane, in a place that to so many others was completely foreign, I would see these two things brought together. I looked out the window of the plane and saw a beautiful hazy blue sky that was jaggedly cut by the red and brown coastal mountains. Everyone clapped and cheered when the plane landed, echoing the feeling I’ve been holding since we took off. The gangway was stiflingly hot but I couldn’t help smiling the most enormous smile. I knew the heat was simply coming in from the outside; it’s still a 32C degree summer here. It took 5 minutes to get off the plane, and the whole time I was fighting back tears, a hair’s breadth from a moment I thought about since I was a kid. Every time I would see the mountains through the windows, all I wanted to do was cry.

Wandering through the arrivals area, the smile just wouldn’t leave my face, even as I made my way through immigration to the ‘Chilean Citizen’ line. At my turn the official asked for my Chilean Passport and then my exit papers; I told him I hadn’t been back since ‘83. He held for a second, shrugged his shoulders and stamped my passport; The 6 month baby face on my old papers wouldn’t have cut it anyways.

My dad was waiting for me, looking great with short hair, super dark skin and a showing a massive smile on his face as he took my picture, knowing that for all the things that have changed in the three decades since he, my mother and I had left, at least this would be the same. We would be here together again.

I could look around now for the first time and know it was real; no longer part of childhood memories and half forgotten dreams. I was home.