The Old Gringo finally settled in San Gerónimo, a little fishing village on the coast of southern Chile. It was a landscape of temperate rain forest clinging to rocky fiords that plunged into a cold, windy and violent Pacific. He lived in a little shack by the sea and amused himself on the occasional clear night with his little telescope under the southern Milky Way.

He argued politics over cigars with the village's Marxist doctor, and engaged in marathon chess sessions with it's fascist judge; and during the week tutored the town youths in algebra and English to earn a little extra money. On the endless rainy and windswept days, there was beachcombing and tidepooling, or the occasional timid sail in his tiny sloop--and on cloudy nights, the short wave and it's scratchy murmurings from a distant world.

The village urchins made fun of his accent, and played endless practical jokes on him, but they loved him just the same. The old man obliged them by pretending he was furious at their pranks, but he relished every moment and dreaded the day they might stop. Besides, sometimes, they brought him part of their family's catch for his dinner! And on Sundays, after Mass, the elegant widow from the town would come visit with a new book of verse she had just bought inthe city, and over cognac, share it with him until dark.