La Querencia

In English there are no words for La Querencia, an act of love, or the return to one's roots. It could be the last vibration of a sound that travels on the Andean spirit wind, el Zonda, and ripples the red cintas of the Difunta Correa, unofficial patron saint of travel, who died in the Argentine desert on her journey to recover the bones of her martyred husband. In route to La Querencia, our Kia sputters and shakes over the hours of ripio from Upsallata to Barreal in search of the Southern Cross. This is the place where the Nazca Plate converges with the South American Plate and the deepest layers of the Pacific Ocean sink beneath the continent and push the purple, red, orange, green, and yellow sedimentary layers twenty two thousand feet into the sky and then the winds sculpt the pre-cordillera of the east into monuments that leave us all with one voice exclaiming, "Holy Shit!" as we turn the corner and our gaze meets the Cerro del Alcazar. This is La Querencia where the tumbleweeds are carried by dust devils across hard packed sand flats and an astronomer sits with his five telescopes and tracks the expansion of the universe and the paths of asteroids. We follow a cantoring horse through the dark night in this place where a post card stamp costs two dollars and there are no telephones. Our hostess whispers to me as she hugs me on our departure, "I will not say good-bye to you, Amiga. I will only say, 'Welcome Home.'"