(Photo by Jill Schinas)

Within the tortuous maze of islands and channels which makes up Chile’s inhospitable coastline is the small town of Puerto Eden, which has the somewhat dubious distinction of being the settlement with the highest rainfall on earth. But when we arrived in our current location of Puerto Natales, less than two hundred miles along the coast from Eden, we found scrawny cattle attempting to graze on arid, brown plains of dry grass. We recently watched the first few days of spring melt away all the snow from the nearby mountain tops; and some of the locals expressed doubt as to whether they would ever see it return with the coming winter. Over the previous four or five years they’ve seen progressively hotter weather, with less and less rain, and it seems only reasonable to expect the trend to continue. Continue reading