Darwin Slept Here - Eric N. Simons [78]
We picked a more accessible mountain. Cerro La Campana, or Bell Mountain, didn’t achieve the lofty heights of its Andean neighbors to the east, but it was the highest mountain in Chile’s coast range, at roughly 6,000 feet above sea level. Darwin had climbed it and enjoyed the way that, from the top, all of Chile had appeared as if on a map. Situated a few hours east of the major port town of Valparaiso, it was also possible to climb the mountain, hike back down, and be back in the city for dinner.
It was a popular trail, but climbing it as we did on the shortest day of the year meant that there were no other hikers around. Which was not to say they hadn’t been there. Hiking through clumps of frail, red-leaved trees, we passed boulders covered in graffiti. The scrawled names, dates, and hometowns—“Houston, Texas, 2003” or “Patty y Miguel, 1996” or “Elvira, 1972”—got more dense as we climbed, until almost every rock had someone’s name and yearbook quote on it.
“Who brings a can of spray paint hiking with them?” I asked—other than, obviously, the group of six from Valparaiso who had left their names in yellow paint on the rock next to me.
“I fully expect the summit to be solid graffiti,” Josh said. He started to point out some more distinctive markers—l ike “The Cure” (1999) and “Metallica” (date unknown). “At least we know the benefit now of always carrying a can of spray paint.”
I grabbed a rock and pulled myself over it. “You don’t see ‘Charles Darwin’ written anywhere here, do you?”
Actually, we did. At the base of the peak, surrounded by more happy graffiti, we found a bronze plaque honoring Darwin’s ascent and placed by the “Scientific Society of Valparaiso, the British Colony and his admirers.” I wondered how Darwin would have rated this memorial, out of all the hundreds of bronze things placed around the world in his honor. He certainly would have liked that it was a plaque in his name that didn’t remember him as an old tormented evolutionist and instead honored him for climbing and adventuring. He would have liked that it remembered him with one of his own quotes, translated from English into Spanish: “We spent the day at the top of the mountain, and the time has never passed faster.”
Time did pass quickly for him, and it wasn’t because his work was so imperative. He’d spent a few days on and around the mountain already and done plenty of geologizing. Once, on a different mountain, annoyed because he hadn’t reached the top, Darwin wrote that, “all purposes of geology had been answered,” so it wasn’t really necessary to reach the summit. (Looming darkness and thigh cramps had nothing to do with it, you see; he had merely concluded his geological studies.) At the top of Cerro La Campana, Darwin didn’t need to spend the entire time geologizing. He was instead taking a moment to restore his pleasure in an arduous voyage, to remember why it was that he’d been so eager to leave England, and to remind himself that with all Chile arrayed below him, “from the Pacific to the Andes,” it really was worth it.
As we trotted down the mountain that evening into the gathering fog, Josh and I talked about reaching the peak versus turning back just short. This had been a real question for most of the day; Josh was still hiking his way into shape, and the day had been short and the climb longer than we had anticipated. Faced with a choice to turn back immediately or reach the summit but face a hike down in the darkness, we both chose to deal with the dark. We needed that triumph.
As we walked down, the darkness that had seemed like such a concern on the way up suddenly didn’t bother me at all. And Josh appeared to be elated. He distilled it perfectly as we reached