A frontier is a place that’s both physical and metaphorical. Our ongoing series, Dispatches from the Frontier, shares encounters and insights from life on the ranch, where the inner and outer wilderness converge.   

 Dispatch from John Hauf, Founder and Director

We’re sitting around the wood stove in the kitchen, and as usual there’s fighting. Not us, we’re calmly sipping mate, enjoying each other’s company and the warmth of the kitchen with its view outside to the cool morning. It’s two Ashy-headed geese in the fruit orchard who are squawking and flapping and creating the ruckus.

One or another “beach”-goose has transgressed too closely to a “yard”-goose and is being made to pay. Suddenly, they both stop and look upward in the same direction, then bolt for the sky, immediately dropping to wing low over the lake water, landing in a wet skid. They’re immediately joined by many others, all having perceived another morning ritual, two southern crested caracaras, birds of prey in the family Falconidae, winging along the shoreline then back over the horse pastures in their ominous loop.

Out beyond the floating geese a great grebe continues its steady, regal course, apparently dismissive of such aerial and aquatic drama. I offer to make pancakes for breakfast, and everybody groans.

WE ARE CURRENTLY BOOKING TRIPS AND ENROLLING PROGRAMS FOR THE 2022-2023 SEASON AND INVITE YOU TO GET IN TOUCH TO PLAN YOUR ADVENTURE. 

John Hauf founded Patagonia Frontiers in 1999 to connect people with wilderness through education, conservation, and adventure. From our wilderness ranch home, Patagonia Frontiers offers multi-day trekking, horseback trips, mountaineering, and education programs in the heart of Chilean Patagonia.