Our Man in Santiago
In Chile, weather is the element of surprise.
By STEPHAN DRAKE

It was late in the day when the first lazy clouds started to gather on the horizon. Damian, Ed, and I were perched on the balcony behind the old Hotel Catarina drinking red wine. We rocked back and forth in our chairs and gazed at the weighty, dark waters of the Chilean Pacific. Confused whitecaps and a low-hanging moon sculpted the view far offshore.

We had been on the coast for a week, refugees from a heat wave that left the Andean snowpack a rotting mess. We descended to the lowlands through wine country down to this sleepy seaside surf town, and as if in response to our departure from the mountains, I was having powder dreams every night.

I took a long pull of Malbec, let my eyes track the flight of a seagull soaring past the balcony, and self-consciously asked my friends, "Can a person desire a storm, and then in an act beyond coincidence, have it come?"

I expected a quick-witted reply from Damian, but there was nothing but the rustle of a light breeze through trees, and I began to feel embarrassed.

Finally Ed bit on the question. "Medicine men," he started, "call upon storms to make rain for crops." Damian and I had shared many travels with Ed and watched him fill journal after journal with his thoughts. Rarely, though, did he philosophize out loud. It was a treat, perhaps courtesy of the drink and setting, and Damian and I glanced at each other as Ed continued with his eyes half-closed.

"The heartfelt thoughts of fisherman bring fish. A sage can make lightening strike. Hell, even Vail Resorts, traded on the New York Stock Exchange, will employ a shaman to dance for snow. But these matters are no joke."

Ed stood up, his sermon gaining momentum. "You have to want the snow to come deep in your heart like a new lover torn from you by circumstance. That's when the big storms come."

"I'll buy that," said Damian, clanking his glass against mine. It's taboo to talk of such things in our scientific age. But we were far from the oppression of the rational, lost in our own trusted companionship near the end of the earth, our feet dangling over the railing, the gaps between our toes framing the mighty sea. It felt good and free to posit lunacy.

"When your spirit longs for powder snow from the very depth of your being," Ed continued, "yes, I believe that you can will its, or if you prefer, her arrival."

He opened his eyes as if coming out of a trance. A gust tugged at the tails of his shirt and threw his dark curly hair into stormy chaos. "And you wonder why hurricanes are given human names..."

We listened as he shifted to a franker voice. "To want something that badly, though, takes tremendous desire. Deep desire, the kind that doesn't come around too often." He sat down, looking a bit spent. Ed's tanned fingertips traced the rim of his glass as he finished his thought. "That kind of intense wanting will break you in two."

There was a long pause while we stared out to sea, only as awkward as pauses get among three old friends who know each other's brightest geniuses and foulest offenses. The small, clean waves we surfed the day before were now windswept mush. A wetsuit-clad windsurfer waded past the breakers. Damian, who snowboarded, suddenly piped in, "When she comes to me I like to plunge in deeply with my stick, so I don't let that precious white go blue!" We exploded in hard laughter. Ed grinned wildly, his eyes blazing, as if dismissing us from our brief trip deep into his mental space.

The sun dropped into the sea as we laughed and drank and projected our hopes onto faceless clouds that showed little sign of subjecting themselves to human whim.


Ed and Damian were still asleep when I slipped out of our room and into the lobby. Before opening the hotel's large front doors, I stood for a few seconds in a sleepy trance and studied the spider cracks in the paint. I let my fingertips trace the wild patterns. There were infinite variations of beauty and decay in the doors and walls of this place, all born from the hands of ocean air. I lingered and dreamily imagined the door as a link to an older, more elegant time.

Outside, the morning air was brisk and damp, and clouds hung over the one-story colonial buildings. A faint drizzle speckled the sidewalk. My wool hat and down jacket replaced the shorts and flip-flops of the past week.

A portion of the Hotel Catarina's front porch had been enclosed and transformed into an Internet café. I entered and sat down with a cup of steaming tea, my eyes still sleep-swollen. The computer's monitor fired up going from black to blue. Labored noises poured out of the old machine as if clunky gears and pistons were driving its achy operations.

At the gas station across the way a salty old man filled up his small, aging pickup. He was short, stooped, and wore black, knee-high rubber boots. His peppered beard hung well below his collar. A skinny street dog skulked past him, ribs glaring. The dog's suspicious eyes were glued intensely on the man before it darted into the alleyway behind the pumps. The browser was ready and I keyed in my favorite weather sites, engaging in the modern ritual of cheating surprise.

The satellite maps slowly loaded. I slurped at my tea, impatient, and finally there she was dressed up in flowing red and green tails churning around a solid orange core: a massive storm spinning Northeast out of Antarctica right toward our little hideaway on the Chilean coastline. The map's isobars nestled snuggly against one another in a sign of her solidarity. "Holy crow," I heard myself whisper.

Nervously, I clicked on an icon and watched the storm spin forward in its predicted track. The ferocity of our newfound friend was confirmed by the extended forecast: nothing but heavy rain predicted for Santiago for a week, which meant nothing less than feet upon feet of snow in the central Andes.

Satisfied that we were in for a legitimate pounding—a storm so big I was safe from social castigation in the face of error—I flew past the big colonial doors, across the lobby, and opened our hotel room door. The room smelled like old nylon. Damian and Ed were still sleeping.

I relished this sort of wake up call. "Gentlemen, there's a holy thing coming our way," I announced. Ed was lying on his back, his yellow sleeping bag pulled up to his bare chest. Though his eyes remained closed, a large, wizened smile slowly crept over his face.

"We're in for four or five days of a storm like I have never seen before." Damian skirted into the dark corner of his bed like a cockroach. "Wonderful," he grumbled. "You know I was just courting a red-headed señorita a moment ago, aboard an Indonesian pirate ship manned by Smurfs, they had mastered all sorts of board games, Scrabble being their specialty..."

"When does it hit?" interrupted Ed.

"The brunt will get here late tonight. We can hang out here today, bust out tomorrow for the hills when it gets going."

Ed continued smiling at the ceiling, his eyes closed. This trip had been mostly his idea. Damian and I were quietly skeptical during the long drought, but things were suddenly lining up. Satisfaction was etched across Ed's face.

"Powder," he declared, and just like that our stay on the coast was over. He cocked his head in my direction and opened one eye, forming a sort of wink. With the look of a mirthful medicine man he added, "It's a fine thing to live by the weather."

Stephan Drake is one half of powder-board manufacturer DrakeBoinay Skis.


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