I have just spent the last two weeks dancing with the energy of Patagonia, the wild land at the southern end of Chile and Argentina. It was a profound experience, a lesson from a magnificent landscape. 
Patagonia is a very rugged, stark and majestic place, unlike anywhere else I have ever been before. Argentinian Patagonia is made up mostly of grasslands and savannahs, but I was in Chilean Patagonia, a land of rolling hills, arid landscapes, meandering fjords, extensive glaciers and magnificent mountains rising up almost perpendicularly out of the surrounding vast expanses.
The major commercial enterprise is sheep ranching, with a ranch (or estancia) encompassing tens of thousands of acres with only a few shepherds and their dogs in attendance. The resident population is therefore quite sparse, but grows in the summer with numerous tourists who come to hike, climb and just experience the mountains, fjords, 
glaciers and unusual wildlife (Guanacos -wild llamas, Rheas – small ostrich-like flightless birds, pumas and lots of different bird species, including the Andean condor.
I found the energy of this region to be completely distinct as well. Despite the starkness of the landscape, there seemed to be a deep and profoundly steady vibration that also had a much higher frequency of hope and anticipation associated with it. This combination felt like the energy of excitement and exhilaration and at the same time, a strange kind of deep tranquility.
In my experience almost all natural spaces afford harmony and healing of the spirit. But the vastness of Patagonia extends for thousands of miles, with glaciers that encompass hundreds of miles, giving it an untamed depth and breadth that breeds excitement and awe while also feeling incredibly stable and sovereign, as if it cannot be disturbed or perturbed by anything. It is as if the land encircles you and makes you part of it, unlike in other parts of the world where humans demand control. It is an energy that makes your spirit soar.
The people of Patagonia seem to embrace this energy completely, as symbolized by a wonderful sculpture by the waterfront in Porto Natales that I call “Flying Humans”. It portrays the energy of the place far better than any words.
The people here are intensely respectful of their land. You can tell this by how they speak about it and also in how they act. In the many hundreds of miles we traveled by bus over dirt, gravel and paved roads, I saw only one scrap of litter by the side of the road. I remember that piece well because our bus driver stopped the bus, got out and retrieved it, just as a matter of course.
Although a very wild and natural place, Patagonia is not subject to many of the natural catastrophes that plague other parts of the world. It is arid, so there are few floods. It has rain and snow but no thunder or lightening, so there are no wildfires (other than those for which humans are responsible). It has no tornadoes or hurricanes and is not seismically active.
What is does have is wind, and this wind is fierce and strong, especially in the spring and summer. Even in the off-season, the wind can reach close to 100 miles an hour, as some of our group discovered. But the dwellings are built to withstand it, and the residents take it in stride. It’s just part of the land.
And as I felt into this strange energy, I began to understand the wind’s role. Wind can be destructive but it is also cleansing. Although fierce in Patagonia, it is rarely destructive because the residents know how to live with it.
The problem may well be the tourists, many of whom aren’t tuned to this energy and consequently don’t offer the same respect and honor as the Patagonians. Consequently, visitors often do not follow rules and cause real harm. For example, there have been three devastating wildfires in the last thirty years, all started by the carelessness of foreign hikers.
Ironically, (or maybe not so ironically) the wind blows primarily in the spring and summer, the tourist season. The tourists come and the tourists go, and the wind blows all energetic traces of them away, leaving the land once again pristine. In this way, this wild place continues to serve as an example of how humans and nature can live in harmony, even when the conditions are stark. In its vast majesty, Patagonia demonstrates how much we need wild places.
The energy of wild places continually springs anew to nurture and sustain us. It curls itself around our beingness in a spirit of cooperation and co-creation. It sings to us of deep connection and longing for harmony between Earth and human. In conquering the land we lose our souls, lose the grace of moving forward together. By invoking control and the power to bend and force, we break these bonds and render invisible and forgotten our entangled togetherness.
And then we feel alone, cut off from ourselves and the ground and spirit that sustains us. 
For more on energy and the energy realm, see my book, “It’s All About Energy: Adventures in Expanded Reality”, available on Amazon, in local bookstores and on my website, www.transformationalexpansion.com