Tuesday morning I rolled into Valparaíso on the early bus from Santiago. When I left all was black, only a few lights twinkling. Slowly the darkness separated, first land from sky, and as strands of light began to leak in through the bus windows, land from mountain from sky.

I spent the first two nights with my cousin, Sofia, her husband Felipe and their young daughter Florencia in their apartment in Bella Vista - so wonderful to be received so kindly by family! Yesterday afternoon I moved into a pensión in Cerro Concepción. Cerro Concepción was once populated by German immigrants, and its fort served as the main defense for the city. Historically it's also been called Cerro Chivato, because of a mythical creature who was said to live at the base of the hill. Apparently in the midst of excavations on the cerro, a deep cave was discovered beneath the bedrock.

One window in my room looks out over a church, and there's a music school around the corner. Add to the chorus Julio, the house dog, and the groan of car engines skittering up the narrow, winding lanes, the conversations of passerby. You can just make out a sliver of sea through a passage splintered by telephone wires.

I forgot how long it takes to fly to South America. I was seated at a window on the eastern side, and watched the landscape ripple beneath gauzy clouds as we flew southwest over Georgia, before slipping into the sea to pass over Cuba and Jamaica before dark. From above in the failing light, the landscape is somehow softened, it seems greener, and the spiraling network of highways and city grids loose their edge.

As we flew, I came across a passage in The Power of Myth, by Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers, that seemed to resonate with the moment.

It's an address from Chief Seattle, of the Duwamish and Suquamish Native American tribes, in a letter to President Frankling Pierce in 1854. At this time the United States was angling to buy two million acres of land occupied by tribes in the Pacific Northwest, including the region in current Washington state, where Seattle's people lived. There are many versions of Seattle's address, which was said to have been dictated, and never recorded. Some doubt its authenticity, but I wonder if that even matters. The authenticity lies in the sentiment, and if it is the consummate work of several hands, whittled and woven overtime, it still holds great value, perhaps more in its journey through history.

It reads:

"The president of the United States sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? The land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?

Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every shady shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and the experience of my people.

We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the juices of the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man, all belong to the same family.

The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each ghostly reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells us of my people. The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father.

The rivers are my brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. So you must give to the rivers the kindness you would give any brother. If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So if we sell you our land you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers.

Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth.

This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

One thing we know: our god is also your god. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.

Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills is blotted by talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is it to say goodbye to the swift pony and the hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival.

When the last Red man has vanished with his wilderness and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here? Will there be any of the spirit of my people left?

We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother's heartbeat. So, if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it as we have cared for it. Hold in your mind the meaning of the land as it is when you rescue it. Preserve the land for all children and love it, as God loves us all."

This week I'm setting up my first interviews, and seeing if I can find a passage on a Naval or Merchant vessel to the Juan Fernández Islands!