Life Lived Wild: Adventures at the Edge of the Map

by Rick Ridgeway

Kris and Doug had had their eyes on the area for years, but the idea for the future park got a jumpstart in 2000 when my family and I, in a vehicle we borrowed from Kris and Doug, scouted the Chilean side of the potential project while Kris and Doug, in their other vehicle, investigated the Argentinian side. The genesis for the trip was Jennifer’s and my interest in exposing our three kids more directly to what Aunt Kris and Uncle Doug were trying to do. As I developed the itinerary for the road trip, however, I realized we needed more time than the two-week break the kids had over Christmas. Some of their teachers had pushed back, and I had called Doug to tell him I wasn’t sure we would be able to do the trip. I anticipated this would rile him, knowing his opinion of school since he himself had dropped out of the tenth grade and had never gone back. I was not disappointed. “You go tell those teachers,” Doug had replied, “not to let school get in the way of your kids’ education.” We started the journey by spending three days with Kris and Doug in Pumalín, where Doug took the kids on a hike that included a stop at one of the biggest alerces in the park, a tree more than 2,000 years old.