Reach Your Dreams and Realise They Were Not What You Wanted – Wuthering Winds

My story begins in the autumn of 1986, when I was born.

I will not start all the way back with Adam and Eve, although perhaps because of my name, that famous snake and apple seem to have followed me throughout my life.

I cannot say I had a difficult childhood.

I arrived healthy into a loving family at the dawn of a freer era, and they did everything they could for me.

“Study and always work hard…

Be careful with change.

Never give up certainty for uncertainty.

Take care of yourself.

Home and family are the most important.

Be good.

Nothing else matters.”

That was the basic package I carried with me thirty years later when I travelled to the southernmost edge of Chile to work — a place from which Antarctica almost felt visible.

Why there?

Chance.

What I want to tell you is the story of a single afternoon.

Looking back now, I know this was the point after which I saw the world, my road and myself differently.

Nothing supernatural happened.

Nothing unbelievable or impossible to explain.

The real miracles live inside ordinary grey weekdays.

Often right in front of our feet and eyes.

We simply fail to notice or understand them.

Twelve of us set out that foggy morning.

We were planning a hike to a lighthouse.

We had already spent two weeks in Punta Arenas, Chile.

Fifteen people.

Different nationalities.

Different personalities.

Different levels of knowledge and temperament.

Different ways of seeing the world.

Until then, the only thing connecting us was that we all worked for a major IT company and had spent years being among the best in order to earn this international assignment.

We had come to a developing region of Chile for one month as volunteer NGO consultants.

The project had to be completed within that month.

The deadline was strict.

The workload heavy.

Everybody already missed their families.

Their own beds.

Home cooking.

Small conflicts were beginning to surface.

We were tired.

Many of us worked not only during the day but late into the night.

When we were not working, we tried to support one another — usually with the help of excellent Chilean wine.

Slightly dazed, I climbed off the bus beside the ocean.

I had never been a morning person.

The coffee I had swallowed instead of breakfast had done very little to awaken enthusiasm for hiking.

What had they said?

Seven kilometres?

Or half an hour of walking?

That did not sound terrible.

The sky looked reasonably clear.

The wind was not too strong yet.

I decided not to struggle into waterproof hiking trousers.

Two layers of cotton leggings, a lighter jacket and a fleece would surely be enough.

What did that sign say in Spanish?

Isidor Lighthouse at “the end of the world”.

Protected landscape.

Not exactly picturesque.

Everything was grey.

The sun had no chance of breaking through those clouds.

Perhaps five degrees.

Winter was approaching.

How ironic.

I had always dreamed of South America as sunlight on white sandy beaches.

Colour everywhere.

Music.

Movement.

Well…

Not exactly.

But this was what life had dealt me.

I would make the best of it.

Anything was better than spending another day bent over a laptop in my room.

The work could wait.

The ocean was enormous.

I could hear its rumble on my left.

An endless mixture of black, grey and poisonous green.

The shore was pebbled and full of dark, moody boulders.

A strip of beach perhaps five or ten metres wide.

To the right, dense Patagonian scrub.

Beyond that, gigantic trees.

When I was little, I loved collecting black and white pebbles beside Lake Balaton and along rivers.

Only black.

Only white.

Opposites.

Everything had seemed simple.

Something was either good or bad.

Right or wrong.

Since then, I had grown up.

Now I knew black and white are only the beginning and end of a scale.

Between them lies life:

An enormous number of shades of grey that we try to fill with colour.

For the first fifteen minutes, we still talked.

Then everybody found their own pace.

One by one, people disappeared into their thoughts and the fresh air.

One colleague watched the sky suspiciously because she never willingly left home in rain.

Another enthusiastically photographed crab shells washed onto the shore.

I usually loved walking in front.

This time I stayed near the back.

From there, I could see everybody.

And I could move at my own rhythm.

I was beginning to feel cold.

The same clothes had been enough in the mountains.

Here the wind was stronger.

Ocean mist hung in the air.

I was not moving quickly enough.

And perhaps breakfast would have been a good idea.

This place felt strange.

A shore at the end of the world.

Good thing I did not watch horror films.

At least five would probably have come to mind.

Time seemed to have stopped here.

Patagonia’s giant trees had long since bent beneath hurricane winds.

The ocean was becoming angrier.

The penguins had already retreated to an island.

The condors had finished hunting for the day.

Somewhere on the rocky plateau, a puma was looking for prey.

There would be no human soul here.

Only noisy gulls.

Could they even control where they were flying in this wind?

They looked so helpless.

Gliding.

Sometimes almost frozen in the air.

I felt a little like them.

I had worked in the same place for six years.

The previous year and a half had drained nearly all my strength.

Half the team had resigned one after another.

I had turned grey from empty promises and robot-like routine.

Still, I stayed because I believed the project could eventually help a great many people.

And because…

South America.

I had never believed I had enough savings to travel through the continent myself.

Now I could see that I could have bought the flight after only a few months of saving.

Backpacking and volunteering would not have cost much after that.

Many places even offer accommodation in exchange for a few hours of work.

And safety?

Here we needed written management permission even to go hiking at the weekend.

They would not even allow us into a dance club.

Just in case.

Behave.

Stay safe.

As though the streets here were somehow more dangerous for me than Budapest.

Of course, everybody was valuable.

The company would not take risks.

I kicked stones as I walked.

I was angry.

Why had I been sent here of all places?

Other volunteers were already enthusiastically posting tropical sunshine from several degrees of latitude farther north.

Their projects seemed easier too.

And I had landed in the thick of things again.

Still, I had been delighted by the idea of spending a month away from everything.

A month in which I could finally think seriously about what I wanted to do with my life.

Well.

Now I had time to think about myself.

I did not need a wellness hotel for that.

What should I think about?

Work?

I was exhausted.

I had no idea what I was genuinely good at.

And I urgently needed to figure it out.

One day before I flew to Chile, my company announced that the entire Budapest unit would be reorganised and dismantled.

I kept emailing HR from a timezone eight hours behind them and still could not even find out exactly when I would become unemployed.

Should I not worry because I had a degree in economics?

Fantastic.

Only accounting interested me less than IT.

I spent the first week updating my CV and applying for every role that looked as though I might survive at least six months without wanting to run screaming.

How long would my savings last?

No.

I did not want to think about it.

I wanted to yell louder than the starving gulls around me.

Life had seemed so simple in primary school.

I believed that by thirty I would be a happy mother.

Perhaps not a princess — Diana had already made that dream complicated enough — but at least an ambassador.

Or an ambassador’s wife.

Either way, I wanted to work for something noble.

Travel.

See the world.

Meet different cultures and people.

Perhaps it was only a question of perspective.

I had abandoned the ambassador dream immediately after graduation.

And yet here I was, with fifteen foreigners at the end of the earth, hoping our work might actually help local people.

Perhaps that was naïve.

By now, I could also see the political and corporate strategy moving behind the system.

But where was I inside all of this?

Here.

Freezing on the ocean shore.

And that was no longer mist.

It was rain.

The wind was becoming stronger.

Clouds?

Half the mountain had already disappeared into fog.

What time was it anyway?

Something felt wrong.

We had been walking for far too long.

There was nobody anywhere.

The shore seemed endless.

Never mind.

Keep moving.

Surely the people in front knew what they were doing.

Fine.

Think.

How was my wonderful family-and-motherhood plan going at thirty?

Everybody kept telling me I should settle down.

Half my acquaintances were already married and raising babies.

The other half were apparently living their dreams in some earthly paradise — at least according to Facebook.

Biological clock?

No.

It was not ticking.

The previous week, for the NGO project, I had visited a rehabilitation clinic for children with disabilities.

I volunteer in Budapest too.

I had seen sick children before.

This was harder.

I deeply admired the parents who still found the strength to smile.

And the children themselves were genuine heroes.

One little whirlwind suddenly jumped into my arms.

A child with neurological and immune-system problems.

He refused to let go.

He simply looked at me through enormous brown eyes that might not even have seen me clearly.

The doctor said the toddler was probably fascinated because he had never seen a green-eyed, blonde, pale-skinned woman speaking a language he did not understand.

To him, I might have looked like some kind of angel.

I had never felt so special simply because someone wanted to play with me.

But no.

I was nowhere near an angel.

And I did not want to disappoint anyone.

The beach ended.

Now we were pushing through dense scrub.

I was not exactly gliding through it like an athletic Amazon.

Everything caught on me.

There was no path.

Only thin red ribbons tied to branches.

Where the hell was that lighthouse?

I was absolutely not ready to hold my own child in my arms yet.

Part of me was still a child too.

Thirty years or not.

I knew I wanted a family one day.

I knew I could place somebody else’s needs before my own.

But right now, I did not feel even the most basic safety net beneath that decision.

I was afraid.

And I wanted it too.

It did not help that everybody else seemed to know better what I should do.

And Him?

He was waiting at home.

My best friend.

A partner I believed I could rely on.

We had already gone through so much in recent years.

Both of us had entered the relationship carrying wounds.

We tried to trust that this time we would not be hurt.

So why did I feel tired?

I was strong.

I survived everything.

I had learned how.

The ring on my finger was my own.

I had no idea what a proposal might feel like.

Weddings had always made me break into a cold sweat.

I did not know what frightened me more:

That he might propose.

Or that he still had not.

We could not yet afford to move in together.

Financially, both of us were struggling.

And what if we moved in and it failed?

Would he leave too once he no longer needed me?

Or would I ruin it because I was restless and he deserved somebody better?

They had always told me to be good.

But how good?

For how long?

And what if I sometimes enjoyed being bad?

As though I needed one more complication, there was also that colleague.

Better if we kept some distance.

Something about him attracted me too strongly.

Like a magnet.

We talked a lot.

I was constantly embarrassed around him.

It felt as though I had known him forever.

I saw myself in him.

And it irritated me that somebody could look so nearly perfect from the outside.

At least I had already learned there was no single “One”.

The One can be anybody whom we keep mutually choosing, again and again.

How many times had I already burned myself by following my heart?

I could not see the road.

Then suddenly:

We were at the top.

We had crawled on all fours through the wind and mud because the old wooden steps had disintegrated.

But we were there.

And now?

The lighthouse was closed.

The view was probably spectacular in good weather.

Today we could barely see ten metres.

It felt frightening.

Huge rocks.

The ocean roaring at us.

Trees being torn by howling winds.

My outer layers were already soaked.

My muscles were trembling.

Let’s go back.

Anywhere warm.

There was a lonely boat on the shore.

I smiled.

In its own way, the place was romantic.

Then I noticed something.

Where had the path and beach gone?

The route we had crossed earlier had disappeared.

High tide.

Damn.

And the grey sky was becoming even darker.

Our guide admitted the mistake.

The distance had not been in kilometres.

It had been miles.

And according to the weather forecast, the storm was going to reach us earlier than expected.

Fine.

We could still see the coast.

We simply could not pass everywhere anymore.

The waves were powerful.

If one threw me into a rock or if I slipped, I had no idea how anyone would pull me out.

We moved inland toward the forest.

Across water channels.

The red ribbons became harder and harder to find.

The group had split.

I could see only a few people at a time.

Still, we tried to help one another.

Pull one another forward.

A small stream we had crossed earlier had become several metres wide and violently fast.

We had to get across.

Two moss-covered tree trunks formed a bridge toward the next hill.

I slipped.

Everything spun.

Ice-cold water.

Of course I went in up to my neck and the current carried me.

The rocks were sharp.

A hand reached toward me.

Frightened eyes.

Do not stop.

No, I had not hit my head.

That had always been hard enough.

My phone, however, had been inside my backpack without a plastic bag.

Maybe it would dry.

We could not have called for help anyway.

The rain had already soaked it.

Keep going.

By then, I was no longer thinking.

Back on the shore.

One foot after the other.

Always one more step.

Do not look up.

The end was far away.

How was it possible that the insane wind was still blowing directly into our faces on the way back too?

Always.

I was shivering.

Water dripped from everything I wore.

The waves breaking against the rocks were throwing more water over me.

I barely noticed.

My boots were full of water and stones.

I did not care.

I simply had to be there.

I started collecting stones.

Only grey ones.

Perfectly round.

Smooth.

I held one tightly in my palm and kept moving.

Why had everybody stopped?

Was that a cross?

With a plaque?

The name had disappeared.

Salt water had erased the story.

The person had been young.

You could still see the face in the photograph.

An accident?

Violence?

Or had this person chosen to end things here?

At the end of the world, where the shore itself seemed to stop?

A large stone stood in front of the wooden cross.

One word had been carved into it:

Libertad.

Freedom.

The stone was broken in two.

By then, I was grateful for the rain.

It washed away my tears so nobody could see them.

But I had a good life.

Why was I jealous of this unknown person?

Of their peace?

Their courage to make a decision about life?

One way or another, they had chosen.

What did freedom mean to me?

How far would I go for it?

Perhaps complete freedom meant being released — and releasing — everybody I loved.

The highest form.

A state in which there is no more “must”.

No fear of disappointing someone.

No desire to satisfy expectations.

When everything belongs to you.

And nothing does.

I did not want to leave yet.

But I had to.

My legs were becoming harder to bend.

I could no longer feel my fingers.

My back hurt where I had hit it during the fall.

A week earlier in a museum, I had learned that indigenous people here once hunted without modern protective clothing.

They faced their fears and the forces of nature.

Later, they gathered beside a fire inside animal skins and dried quickly.

Perhaps they had understood something.

How simple.

I wanted to remove my clothes.

They felt like lead.

Full of water.

I wanted to run.

Feel my muscles.

Somebody took my hand and pulled me forward.

The waves were erasing more and more of the road and shore behind us.

I do not know how long it took for all of us to reach safety.

On the bus, we shivered in silence.

We were safe.

Back at the accommodation, I was trembling and exhausted while trying to unlock my room.

A woman’s hand touched my shoulder.

“I just wanted to say thank you.”

For what?

“When I thought I had no strength left and could not keep going — after the broken Freedom rock — I looked back.

And I saw you coming behind me, smiling.

I felt ashamed because you were much colder than I was, yet you never stopped and never complained.”

Smiling?

I had simply been laughing at my own tears.

Inside the room, I finally fought my wet clothes off.

The boots felt like lead and were filled with salt water and debris.

My feet were covered in blisters.

I stretched out on the warm bathroom floor.

I listened only to the pulse inside me.

Blood moving through my body.

Slowly, every tremor stopped.

The strength remained.

I stood up.

And faced the mirror.

Myself.

How can this be beautiful?

It is only a collection of broken fragments.

What holds everything together?

Why does it not split apart under the pressure?

The answer was engraved directly in the mirror in front of me:

---

Tierra del Fuego.

Land of Fire.

That was why I had needed to come all the way here.

To see the fire in my own eyes again.

The passion that waves and whirlpools had pushed so deep inside me.

That fire always carries me one more step.

Then another.

Even at the end of the world.

Now I could go home.

Because I knew:

Whatever I decide, I am free wherever I am.

A well-designed portrait session aims to create genuine, confident presence in the final photograph.

Part of the BANHALMI ecosystem

For the professional context and practical side of portrait photography, visit the BANHALMI professional website. Related art series, books and exhibitions are preserved in the BANHALMI ART archive.