The next several days trekked us through a wilderness that flipped though all four seasons in no particular order. In the morning we’d have to cling to the side of a barren rock strewn mountain, the wind threatening to give us an extra shove over the edge. By afternoon we’d be stomping through muddy green meadows, stripped down to shorts and t-shirts. Every bend unveiled a new vista worthy of a full camera card of photos. Every angle was packed full of something to see; a lake bluer than the last, a new mountain face covered in ice brighter than sunlight, or a beach covered in water polished rocks sprouted with ice crystals. We walked through miles of burnt forrest, each tree a black and white headstone with sprigs of fresh green life growing from the ashes. At the end of the forrest we came upon another lake. On this lake a parade of icebergs drifted past us.
Further up the lake as the icebergs grew larger, so too did the new sound of improvised wooden flute music undulating along in its own unfamiliar rhythm. This took hold of us. We were the needles slowly rippling across the surface of a vinyl record; our trail, the groove guiding us through its peaks and valleys; our sound whistling in the distance. On the most narrow and steep section of trail we passed our flute player sitting on a barely balanced boulder on the cliff’s edge surrounded in the hazy shimmer of the music. Once past, we never turned around to see if he really was there.
A hilltop later, we gaped at our first view of the mammoth frozen mass that had born the bergs. We sat on a rocky bluff that evening and watched the lights go out over the blue ice. In the distance we could hear the crack of breaking wood bats and the bone rattling boom of thunder as the ice cast off new wedges to make their way down the floating parade.
At night we would take refuge with other pilgrims equally over stimulated by the scenery and events of their respective days journey. Groups would gather to warm their blistered and sore stocking feet around wood burning ovens and share the day’s stories. Hunks of glacier ice rattled around in our cocktail glasses. As the last of the ice melted away, two by two, we pad off to our dorms. Tomorrow, we wake and walk to something new.
For all the magnificence and sensory overload of this place by day, it was night that was the most overwhelming. A few hours before dawn we stood in heavy silence beneath an endless sheet of sparkling space. Each second, hundreds of tiny new bright pin pricks light up above us. They drip down frozen star dust. It lands in spires on the polished beach rocks we’ll walk over tomorrow. Some of the lights break loose and streak past us; others dilate and grow more intense; while some flash and then disappear. We watch as this continues, waiting for the sky to rip open and catch fire. Eventually the tips of the Torres behind us begin to flicker and glow red. Far away, a wood flute plays. 
