We rented a car in Ushuia, the southernmost city on Earth, and drove east, leaving behind the foothills of the Andes and entering the Patagonian steppe. There was a spot on the map marked with a tree, supposedly a nature reserve, on a point of land that was the true fin del mundo, the end of the world. Once we left the paved road, we had to abandon the rattling rental and walk through dunes of brilliant colored pebbles, bits of glass, shreds of plastic, and bone. The beach, when we arrived, was endless--nearly half a mile of flats out to low tide--and above the tideline, close to shore, was the flotsam of the world.

There were shells like I'd never seen, and thousands of bones, or shards of bones, of countless massive sea animals whose last remains must have been carried here by currents. And plastic. The whole Earth's refuse--bottles, tarps, nautical foam, gloves, barettes. It was all here, in a landscape of unfathomable size and emptiness, an awesome, humbling, tragic kind of beauty. I wish I could describe it. I think this painting, or pair of paintings--one looking to shore, the other to the sea--captures a little of that feeling.