INTO THE FOREST PRIMEVAL

Chile’s Lake District is a kingdom of ancient trees, snowcapped mountains, and clear glacial waters. For MARK JOHANSON , it’s also a dear old friend.

- MARK JOHANSON

THERE’S A SPOT around six kilometers into the Los Lagos Trail, in Chile’s Huerquehue National Park, where venerable araucaria trees preside over a primordial rainforest. They pop like umbrellas from lumpy hills; they curve like palms over placid lagoons. Araucarias are so ecstatic, so top-heavy in their design, that they seemed to punctuate the path ahead of us like giddy exclamation marks.

My partner, Felipe, and I had been hiking all morning just to see them. The higher we climbed, the colder the forest became. Of course, the trees don’t mind; they’re dressed for the weather in fur coats of pea-green lichen. Araucarias grow only in Chile and Argentina, and only at altitudes above 914 meters. Perhaps that’s why this area, about 805 kilometers south of Santiago, has become a place of pilgrimage for Felipe and me over the years. It was our first trek down this particular trail, but our fifth time among the magical araucarias.

The Lake District was my introduction to Chile a decade ago when I first visited Felipe’s homeland. I was already sold on him, but I suppose this is what sold me on his country. A few years later, I dropped everything to move from Brooklyn to Santiago so I could have places like this at my fingertips. Neither as the Mediterranean as central Chile to the north, nor as raw as Patagonia to the south, the Lake District calls to mind the Pacific Northwest—that is, if you squeezed the volcanoes closer together, sprinkled in two dozen lakes, and replaced the Douglas firs with araucarias.