Reko

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´Reko´ is a Mapuche word meaning ´clear water´, and it is the name of my home for the next month. I arrive after a jolting taxi ride along stone tracks to find a nine year old boy brandishing a saw blade - enter Apollo, a mini overlord with the intelligence and audacity to preside over all volunteers that enter his home. His father and uncle, Gerardo and Gabriel, ten years ago exchanged their Buenos Aires existences for a life of clothes manufacturing in India and bio-construction in Patagonia. The current project is the taller; sitting in the shadows of the Andes, where leaves on every mountainside are now turning from green to an almost blood red, this ark like structure will eventually be used for the manufacturing of solar instruments. The roof is midway through its insulation, and for the next month I settle into a glorious pattern of shifting volcanic sand and clay into their final mixture, of forming chain gangs that encompass those mixing in the dark recesses of below to those ferrying endless buckets to those packing down the mixture on top of the roof like humans possessed. Music from all over the world accompanies our frantic rhythm; one fixture at the end of the day is 'Billie Jean´. If a stranger was now to make the journey up here, to a reality outside of anything else I´ve tasted, they would be met with a demonstration bio-construction dance routines. Gabriel is moonwalking his way through a pool of clay and water, the ho in his hand transformed into a microphone; I swing buckets, as if they were sequined gloves, to the roof above, where bodies throw the mixture around with all the seductivity of MJ himself.
And imagine that Friday feeling, of knowing that two days of bliss await your work ridden body, except that on this Friday afternoon you´re not hopping around you´re office floor but standing on the roof of a giant ark with friends, all of them belting out George Harrison´s ´Something´ a capella, looking out over mountains and the performance of the leaves, while in the distance the lights of El Bolson are already twinkling. We skip down to our cabin and to lost nights of mass multi-lingual blues singalongs and improvisations, to the most delicious beer I´ve ever tasted, to endless dancing and to the haze of El Bolson´s finest home grown. This particular Friday, twelve people stand in silence watching the universe dance further away from its origins; after twenty minutes the silence is broken with a cry of ´fuck!´. Someone has tripped over a bike in the darkness, hitting themsleves in the face with their own beer bottle in the process. Its a fitting reminder: nothing should be taken too seriously.
Home life at Reko is a fantasy in itself. Mornings begin with groggy greetings of ´buenas´and mate rounds to fortify body and mind for an onslaught of clay and dirt. Every volunteer undergoes a transformation - within a week its impossible not to feel like a creature of the earth. Lunchtimes provoke waves of terror in me - every day one person is asked to transform a box of vegetables into a meal for a dozen starving workers. I escape this insurmountable obstacle by offering other thing: guitar playing, bad jokes and the periodical burning of everyone´s used toilet paper. It becomes a ritual. After a while I´m transfixed by the deeply satisfying image of burning shit, my new hobby cruelly interrupted by toddlers attempting to pick it up and hurl it at one another.

More on Apollo. After one extremely indulgent Friday night I come downstairs to find everyone peering at a slip of paper. It states that Christianity is a lie spun by those greedy for money and that those liars must be punished. The author, Apollo, is swinging from the ceiling. He catches sight of a wasp, manouvers it with alarming dexterity into a crack in the double glazing and proceeds to blow smoke through until the creature is no more. There are literally hundereds of insect bodies in there. Traumatized, we attempt to eject him; a team of twenty something year olds are all at action stations trying to barricade the door against a nine year old who´s removed the lock with a knife. Sensing victory, we at last relax into our hangovers. Bang. Kitchen window flies open, in jumps Apollo hissing and clutching a terrified hummingbird that he´s casually caught. We cave in, Apollo settles down to suck the last of the beer out of discarded kegs.

Memories of this place: of playing football in green mountain valleys, all work bonds forgotten as varied nationalities revert to a pastime that follows me in all I do; of sitting on rocks above the Rio Azul, swigging on beer for courage as we prepare for the freezing swim back across, Erich demanding that we take an underwater photo whilst other scream that they´ll die; of finishing roof insulation, celebratory beers glinting in an almost fictional sunset, for some reason ´The End´emanating from inside the workshop; of jokes and songs that are strong enough to cross linguistic and cultural barriers; of sitting atop a plateau one weekend, mountains in front and glacier behind, momentarily alone save for a lion of a dog that´s led the way for the last three hours; of feeling myself sink into the earth, cigarette clutched desperately to my lips in the immediate aftermath of deleting all my music; of saying goodbye to many great souls. No hay nadie como tu, guys. Y ojo, ah? Those leaves must be pretty crazy by now.

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