This was the first Selk'nam word my memory recorded — more than that, I might say, my unconscious, for in a dream, I was saying it to someone.
Afterwards I wished to find it in Yaghan, and I could not. I do not have it in my notebooks, in my grandmother's records. And in Bridges' materials, all the words that refer to this line, to define, at a simple glance, the line that seems to join the earth and the sky, or to separate / unite the sky from the sea, more precise in this case, alluding to Yamana life. They only allude to it; there is no literal translation in Yaghan for this word, horizon.
This typical scene is described in Yaghan as: karata – people who are inside the vessels that sit upon the water, dwelling along the shores of the islands and the channels of Tierra del Fuego, as far as the Cape Horn archipelago.
If we seek the definition of horizon, it varies according to the plane one considers, the vantage point of the observer.
The horizon is bound to the curvature of the earth and to the phenomenon of refraction. This means that whatever lies at the horizon may be partially hidden from sight.
In certain definitions that refer in some way to the horizon, in Bridges' dictionary I find:
Kupamaseata – to disappear from sight by sinking below the horizon or beneath objects that stand in the way.
Makúmata – to go or come from south towards north and vanish from sight as a ship rounding a cape, or below the horizon, or as the sun behind a cloud.
Uwalamaku – to be almost covered, on the verge of disappearing, like a rock at high tide, or an island beneath the sea or the horizon as one moves away from it.
According to these descriptions, I believe the ancient Yamana were expert readers of optical horizons, and I would venture also of the astronomical and the apparent horizon. Theirs was an experience of living much of their lives navigating in their tiny canoes, skimming the surface of the water. Where immensity was the gateway to the ordinary world. The ocean, the rocking cradle of infinite stories, silences, meetings and partings. Life and death. The sea as a mirror of the universe. The sky tattooed with luminous routes of navigation. To descend, to fade, or to disappear into the horizon — a ship, a canoe — setting off towards some cardinal point of the earth.
To rise on the horizon, or above the land or the mountains, as the sun, the moon, or the stars. Nothing less than the first beings to inhabit these lands, who today dwell in the firmament as stars and as our ancestors.
And yet, there is a word, Uteka, which means: dawn, the break of day, the first light before the sun has risen. Which leads me to think of a singular moment for observing that line as it defines the horizon. And perhaps from here this very same word emerges, as an integrated and repeated scene, to designate the horizontal lines painted upon the face, Uteka.
Cristina Zárraga Ikamanakipa