These images tell a story about mountains, clouds, and wind...about how a relentless wind transforms the mountain landscape. This wind comes undeterred from across the Pacific, greets Patagonia with its full fury, and defines the place. And though autumn can provide a few weeks of respite, not this year. This year, it blew. It generated white caps on the lakes, day and night. It hurled water and dust horizontally across vast stretches of lakes and foothills. It parted the fur of foxes and guanacos, and caused humans to lean. It swept plumes of snow high off the ridges and crowned peaks magnificent in their own right. At night it created dreams of silence; in the day, it created a long reverie of roiling clouds and ever-changing patterns of shadow and light across the massif.



The transformation goes beyond the physical. This is the kind of wind that eventually permeates your entire being, altering how you think and how you act. The kind of wind that, when it stops, creates moments of disbelief that give way to a psychological and emotional liberation that can, well, make you giddy. It made me a humbled witness before the mountain.



All images were captured in April, 2008, in and around Torres del Paine National Park, Chile, over the course of five perfect days, and in some cases, a few minutes...





John Alfano

Los Altos, California