The Realities of the Road: Finding Magic Behind the Smoke

This week has ended in an entirely unexpected way. Instead of camping in a beautiful forest by the shore of a lake, we are locked inside an apartment in the Toronto metropolitan area.

There is something strange in the air

On Wednesday, I woke up sneezing. When I opened my eyes, I saw the first rays of the sun filtering through the thin fabric of the tent. With the very first sneeze, a half-asleep Martín said, “Salud.” Then came another, and another. As I counted them mentally—health, money, love…—I ran out of traditional wishes for the fourth, fifth, and the next five that followed. The plants are still in bloom; it must be the pollen, I thought.

We packed up camp and started driving. Less than ten minutes later, we spotted a thick column of smoke rising over the crops near the highway. At first, we didn’t pay much attention, assuming it was an isolated incident. But as we kept moving forward, a thick, white cloud completely enveloped us. Could it be fog? I wondered. But it had a very strange glow. It was as if the sunlight wasn’t coming from a single source, but was instead magnified through a giant diffuser.

After two hours, we pulled over at a café. When we connected to the internet to look for information, what we found shocked us. The air quality index indicated extreme atmospheric pollution. Nearly 200 forest fires had been reported in northern Ontario, and that toxic cloud had spread south, blanketing a massive area of Canada and the northern United States. At first, we looked for alternative routes to continue our journey. Still, we were right in the center of the cloud, and it stretched for hundreds of kilometers in every direction. Escaping it was impossible, and we had to cancel our camping plans.

We searched for a place where we could shelter indoors with air conditioning to filter out the tiny particles of ash, dust, and soot. It is from this temporary home that I am writing to you today.

The Heart of Our Journey

Traveling toward Patagonia in a tent and on board our Volkswagen Atlas sounds highly idyllic, but the reality of the road is different, and we love that it isn’t perfect. For starters, we are carrying a painting inside the car that I started back in Florida before leaving. It measures one meter by seventy centimeters, it is filled with frailejones and orchids, and it progresses slowly because it is impossible to pull out brushes and watercolors while camping. It has become our most uncomfortable passenger: it constantly gets in the way, and we have to move it in and out every single time we set up camp.

It is still in its initial stages, but seeing those Andean silhouettes floating inside the Atlas while we cross Canada’s pine forests has something truly magical about it. It is our anchor, a constant reminder of where this compass points: Patagonia. Carrying art on the road is not easy—it demands protecting every centimeter of space and shielding the paper from the northern humidity—but it is what gives this journey its soul. The art, along with Martín’s music, doesn’t just accompany me; they are the engine of this route.

If You Can’t Walk, Maybe You Can Swim

Yet, this week’s adventures had begun when we left the Gaspésie National Park behind and started heading west along a highway that bordered the Saint Lawrence River. It was hard for me to believe I wasn’t looking at the ocean. Its blue waters crashed against the shores with heavy waves, and the horizon was so distant that I couldn’t see the opposite bank. Late in the afternoon, we found a park that advertised a harbor seal colony. At the entrance, the park ranger warned us that their presence couldn’t be guaranteed and that we had to remain at least 150 meters away.

I started walking under a leaden sky, the wind blowing hard through the high treetops. To reach the beach, I had to climb down an infamous, treacherous trail, clinging to the cliffside. The path used an old concrete structure that time had already cracked, with a makeshift series of steps made of logs and a metal pipe serving as a handrail. It was a weapon of last resort to push yourself forward or to stop a fall into the void.

As I zig-zagged down, trying to ease the pressure on my knees, I could feel my toes jamming painfully against the front of my shoes. I crossed paths with three people much younger than me who were coming up almost on all fours, panting from the exertion. Seeing them made my blood run cold as I thought that, perhaps at my sixty-eight years old, I wouldn’t have the strength to climb back up. But stubbornness is a powerful engine, and I was determined to reach that shore, even if I had to crawl my way back.

In the end, a massive beach awaited me below—a desert of gray sand protected by the towering stone wall I had just descended. The shoreline was dotted with hundreds of dark rocks, creating a stark landscape against the light. But when I aimed my camera’s telephoto lens toward the furthest shadows, I discovered that not all of them were stones. There they were: the seals, resting and stretching with the slow grace allowed by their massive bodies, completely ignoring the storm and enjoying the last rays of sun.

Quebec City: Stone Alleys and the Echoes of Resistance

We arrived at night in the beautiful city of Quebec. The next day, we went on a nostalgic tour through its stone alleyways and castles. I always feel a deep duality when walking through it, because it is not actually a medieval European village, but rather the reflection of a colonial past. Beneath that picture-postcard setting, I could feel centuries of wars and treaties hidden between governments and their people. The struggle to preserve their French language and traditions was felt at every step—in the graffiti and in the refusal to use English, even going so far as to cover it with paint on traffic signs.

That was the first day I felt the intense heat of summer. The streets were packed with people, and I arrived panting back to the SUV, which felt like an oven when we opened the doors.

After lunch, we drove for three hours to Montreal, where we looked for an apartment to spend a couple of nights because rain was forecasted, but mostly so we could wash our clothes. The road always compensates for our hardships with laughter. We booked the first apartment based on some beautiful photos, especially one that showed a washer and dryer. So, the very first things we brought down were our laundry bags and detergent. It was already late at night; we had to walk three long blocks, and when we reached the building, we found it completely under construction. We had to enter by jumping over debris and walking up a wooden ramp. We climbed three floors because the elevator wasn’t working, opened the door, and the first thing we noticed was that the laundry closet was entirely empty, with the electrical and water connections exposed.

I was so tired and frustrated that I decided to take a hot shower, but—oh, surprise!—there was no soap, and the only towel was a tiny one meant for drying hands. I knew we had everything we needed out in the SUV, but it was almost midnight, and neither of us had the energy to go back outside.

The Art of Eating with a Single Fork (and Other Realities of the Road)

We rested in the morning and moved to the second apartment, where we were finally able to do our laundry. In the afternoon, we made a strategic stop at the discount store, “Dolarama,” to fix our precarious survival logistics.

During our almost four weeks on the road, we had adapted to sharing a single set of cutlery. I was certain we had two, but it was time to face reality: the other one was not going to appear. When Martín ate with a fork, I used the spoon, and vice versa. That was our very first purchase: a complete set with four knives, four forks, and four spoons. We were going to live in absolute abundance!

Additionally, we emerged triumphant with the haul of the year: a collapsible bucket to carry dirty dishes at the campsite, two flat plates (goodbye to eating everything out of a bowl), a spice tray because they were always getting lost in the kitchen box, and finally, two real pillows—the inflatable ones are so slick they kept rolling around the tent, leaving our heads on the floor. Martín, with his co-pilot wisdom, insisted we shouldn’t leave without some warm fairy lights to decorate the tent and a roll of duct tape because, according to him, no one can travel across the continent without it.

With clean clothes and the dignity of eating with proper cutlery and plates, we continued our journey, ready to face the road once again.

The Two Faces of Montreal

What I loved most about Montreal was the architecture of its traditional neighborhoods. Houses that perhaps had once been single-family homes were divided by building spiral metal staircases, which allowed direct access to the upper floors right from the street. What was originally a functional solution ended up giving the city its unique flair.

Those metal curves, exposed to the elements, break up the rigidity of stone and brick. The walls painted in bright colors with vines climbing up the facades and the flowers hanging from the balconies reflect the quirks of the people who inhabit them. I adored those balconies; they felt like an invitation to express individuality. I couldn’t help but think of Hundertwasser, an Austrian architect who has always fascinated me, and I felt that, just as he wanted, the people of Montreal had completely taken ownership of their facades. In his words, a house should not serve to isolate oneself from the world, but to open up to it: houses should not be walls, but windows.

There is an amazing duality to this city. Above, metal and plants take over the facades. Below, sheltered from the extreme cold, breathes another Montreal. I was surprised to walk through the underground city: a universe of tunnels and artificial light where people take refuge and walk peacefully. At the same time, the long winter months freeze the streets up on the surface.

A Magical Night (and an Unexpected Neighbor) on the Shores of Charleston Lake

After preparing our dinner over the campfire, we cleaned up. We cleared away every trace of food to avoid attracting the forest wildlife. Only a bag with matches and a lighter was left on the table. Suddenly, Martín tells me:

“Mami, look who’s here!”

There was a raccoon on the ground. I looked at it; it looked me straight back, and instead of running away, it climbed onto the table and held my gaze defiantly. We were very close, and, with complete calm, it grabbed the bag and tried to leave.

“No, you can’t take that!” I yelled. And as if it understood the boundaries of our deal, it let go of it. It walked back into the forest with absolute tranquility. But he made us laugh. We were sure our little neighbor knew the bag didn’t contain food, and perhaps he just did it out of curiosity.

We chatted for a while by the fire when a firefly glowed right beside us. I looked out into the woods and saw many others blinking among the trees. I felt an indescribable emotion. They were on my bucket list for 2026, and I had been searching for places to find them. As absurd as it sounds, in the Eastern United States, you have to register and enter a lottery just to get into the parks where they aren’t extinct yet, just to see them for a week or two (like Congaree National Park in South Carolina and Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee). I never qualified for that privilege, but there they were, right before our eyes.

We watched them in fascination for a long time and walked through the darkness to the lake’s shore, where the twilight still showed its intense colors. But the best moments arrived when the first stars began to shine, reflecting on the dark waters of the lake where the fireflies kept blinking. We stood there with our cameras pointed at the sky, trying to capture that immense beauty so hard to see in our cities filled with artificial light.

Between the smoke that forced us to recalculate our route, the small luxuries of brand-new forks, and the unexpected encounters in the woods, the road keeps showing us that its beauty lies in the unpredictable. Today we write from our shelter in Toronto, but our compass remains intact. Thank you for joining us for another week on this journey toward the south.