Torres Stories
Laura Maestrelli on Tuesday, January 18, 2011 at 12:01PM When I was 9-years-old, I bought a beta fish with my allowance money and set up a small aquarium for my new little friend in my bedroom. Since this was the first pet I was allowed to name by myself, I spent a long time trying to come up with the perfect name for him. I finally decided on “Patagonia,” a place I had probably heard about in my social studies class or possibly in an issue of National Geographic lying around the house. I didn’t actually know anything about Patagonia – I’m not even sure I knew it was in South America – but the word “Patagonia” conjured up all kinds of romantic images of faraway exotic places in my little third-grader brain, and that was reason enough to name a fish for me. Twenty-four years later, I finally got to see the place that had inspired the name of my wispy little fish friend. Partly because of my childhood fascination with Patagonia and, more recently, because of the stories our friends Tanya & Eric and Courtney & Patrick and had told us about their adventures there, Patagonia was one of the few places that Dustin and I had resolved we had to see on this trip. When Dustin’s appendicitis struck in Spain and we seriously considered coming home early, more than anything it was the prospect of missing out on Patagonia that spurred us to keep going.
