10-09-08

I met the man who makes the milodons today. The hulking figure of a giant prehistoric sloth, its arms outstretched towards the water, reaching for its cave 10 miles out, has been living at the roundabout for a few weeks now. It looks less like a prehistoric animal than it does a representation of death, because it is covered by a giant black tarp, billowing in the Patagonian wind. Only the milodn's clawed bronze feet are uncovered, as if the poor creature was an unfortunate patient in a hospital dressing gown.

I saw the man with the long yellowish white beard and sunglasses arranging rocks around the base of the milodon just as the evening was settling in, and I was coming back from a bike ride. I almost didn't stop--until curiosity took hold of me, an instinct I know is inherited from my mother (who sent me the most fabulous care package today--Halloween candy and books--yes!). So I stopped to say hello.

The man arranging the rocks is sculptor called Harold (last name--TK). He also crafted the giant milodon in the cueva--which I put my arms around to pose for a picture I'm quite fond of. The rocks, which were begining to tower up toward the milodon's feet in a graceful slant, were from what I think Harold said was a morraine deposited by the glaciers. He asked me what my language was and went on to speak in an elegant, quiet, and cadenced English. His father Për was Swedish, I think, and his family had owned land in the region. Although he had grown up around Natales and Punta Arenas, he was based in Santiago, where he worked as a sculptor. He told me some of his family had relocated to Chicago, and he had visited once--but it seemed for some reason that he was not able to find them.

He told me about a Chilean mummy--the Copper Man--which, through an auction, had wound up at the Museum of Natural History in New York. Chile has always wanted this mummy back, he said, and one of his projects as a sculptor was to go to New York to make a cast of this Copper Man to bring back to Chile.

"This is a special animal to the people here," Harold said of his milodon. "And Magallanes is a special region to me."

The tarp comes off next Tuesday.