Hallowed Spaces

I have been thinking a lot lately about what it is that makes for a sense of community, of being seen, of being accepted and appreciated, of being part of something, taken in and looked after.

As I think back on my life, I have most felt a sense of community in the least likely places. I was raised abroad, and all through my growing-up years, I often found myself feeling foreign and out of place when I set foot in my passport country, while overseas, at odd moments, in places I had the least right to do so, I would feel accepted and taken in. This experience has repeated itself throughout my life.

One moment that stands out for me is the dark, bone-chilling moment in 1978 when my boyfriend and I arrived at dusk at the remote field station in Patagonia, where we were to study whales for the next eighteen months. The caretaker of the camp was nowhere to be found, and the house, set on a vast, empty bay in the bleak southern Argentine steppe, was locked tight. The sea was roaring, the winter wind was gusting madly, we were instantly chilled to the bone, and we had no idea what to do. We had next to no Spanish, were dressed in ragged hippie jeans, and possessed of only the ignorant, blundering willingness of youth. After half an hour of wondering which thornbush we should sleep under, a truck arrived from over the cliff. A wizened Patagonian couple who knew us not from Adam or Eve—or perhaps only as Adam and Eve—magically stepped out of the old Ford. The old man, in an ancient beret and thin jacket, with quiet, self-assured dispatch, built a fire in a ring of thornbushes and set upon it a slab of mutton pulled from the truck. His wife, patting us and cooing soothing phrases we could barely understand, punctuated frequently with “pobrecitas,” for “poor little ones,” then handed us sizzling morsels of meat set on hunks of old “campo bread” from a burlap sack, as the man shared with us swigs of wine from a seasoned leather bota. After assuring themselves that we were fed,