If Rachael Ray could do it, so can I...

This blog may be inarticulate and disjointed, on account of I just spent the entire day trotting a somewhat unruly horse across the Mexican countryside, rappelling off a giant cliff & then hiking back up said cliff to get said horse to trot once again back to the ranch. I'll skip over the sordid details of my sister's bachelorette party last night; suffice to say that, once again, it's exactly what I DON'T want, if for no other reason than that I look hideous in spangly pink, and despise guessing games. And there were lots of spangles. And lots of games being played. Today, we're off on an organized adventure: horseback riding across the countryside, followed by (if one so chooses), rappelling from what we're told is a 14-story cliff face. Apparently, Rachael Ray has visited San Miguel, and was scared shitless by the selfsame rappelling excursion we're eventually going on. http://www.rachaelrayshow.com/show/view/1389/ I'm not afraid of much. Not snakes, nor traveling alone (clearly), nor heights. We meet the hungover bachelor party at the local Starbucks and pile into two elderly passenger vans. I'm groggy and overheated but ready to meet this cowboy stuff head on. The entire ride there, our driver and guide, Andres, discusses the implications of Monsanto's buyouts and genetic patenting on Mexican national agriculture, land and water rights; I'm sitting too far back to join in. He's telling us about his history: how he speaks at least three languages, plays African percussion in a traveling troupe, wants to start a business that salvages found items and supplies for people to create mixed-media art with: metal scrap, rope and twine, beads, mosaic tiles, paints. I've missed this-the propensity of travelers to 'spill their guts' to locals, and in turn to elicit these responses that tell us how expansive human ambition can be. What ambition and the notion of success appear as from place to place, from person to person. The drive lasts about thirty minutes, winding from San Miguel out into desert scrub. More goats. More cows. Fewer people. What strikes me about it most is the sparsity of population. One either side of the road, heat waves rising from the pavement, are men, women, children in twos and threes, single-file wending their way between cacti to the roadside. It seems settlement occurs mainly on bluffs, and in order to get from home to the closest bus stop or market, locals must cross from one side to the other. Public bus stops exist in places so far away from the city center; groups of people sit patiently in the hot sun, waiting. The final ascent to the ranch looks out over the landscape. It is green, dotted with desert flowers-orange, red, yellow. A huge black butterfly is chased by a small white one. It is what it always is, the world over: idyllic, pastoral, rustic. Cut to the chase: we're heading out on docile, seasoned horses handpicked for each of us by the gang of cowboys. Mind you, at least three of the cowboys are under the age of 16, one no older than 8. Although the trail is mellow and slow initially, soon we're cutting across the hills, where it becomes rocky and somewhat treacherous. My horse, whose name I never caught, is not particularly adept at this walking thing. He stumbles quite a few times, catching himself, while I hold on for dear life and picture being fallen upon and smashed. Fortunately although he sucks at walking, he manages to make it all the way down the meandering, climbing trail, across the river (where we stop for a brief break, much to the relief of us amateur riders and our butts), and up, up, up to the top of the daunting 14-story (about 150 foot) cliff those brave enough will rappel from. There's not a lot of ceremony or training to this activity. As soon as we arrive, we're asked who's going: it will be myself, two of my brothers, our friends Roger and Silver, and the groom. One of the other wives is game, until she looks over the edge and sees nothing but rock and rope the whole way down. I confess: when she declines, I pause as well. I mean, none of the other girls are going. No one's going to judge anyone for not wanting to back down a cliff attached to nothing but a (slightly weathered) piece of rope ballasted by some dude wearing spurs, cowboy boots and a giant sombrero. We waver in so many ways, in life: simply-what DO I want for breakfast? Complex: Who am I, today, or tomorrow, or ever? And why? And what am I afraid of? Perhaps it's trite or cliche, but this rappelling adventure is analogous in so many ways to what I've done and overcome just recently: finding the love of my life, and yes: having doubts. About who'd be happy, and who would look at us as if we were crazy. About whether or not we shouldn't just elope, run away, have our happiness to ourselves for a while. It took me almost a month to get up the courage to tell my parents, who, shockingly, are happier for us (almost, not quite...) than we are for ourselves and proceeded upon announcement to argue over who knew first that we were in love. We live so often in this type of controlled fall: the cliff we cannot control, nor the weather, nor the circumstance, but with one hand for strength and the other for balance, with the heart for courage and the brain for clarity, here we are anyway. We ascend. We descend again. I watch first my brothers, then Roger conquer the cliff. From far below (we can't see the bottom totally), all we hear are whoops and hollers. Everyone is exhilarated. The cowboys are highly amused. Finally I detach myself from the onlookers and march up to the anchor point. Eff it. Go big or go home. It is, in fact, easier, technique-wise, than it really looks. Most of the effort comes from your upper body as you suspend yourself with the left hand and control your "brakes" with the right. Ok, so that's an exaggeration: there are no bloody brakes. Essentially, you wear thick leather work gloves and hope to god your grip and arms are strong enough to carry you the entire way down. What a metaphor for life THAT is. At first, I'm doing alright, leaning back into the harness and divvying out rope steadily. Then, I lose my footing and start to spin. (Funny, this is in no way synonymous with how I fell in love with Robert. I knew the second I saw his smile as he came down my driveway, that I would marry this man, if he'd have me...) Cooool, well...now this is happening. It is extremely. High. Up. Oh, look. A vulture. Nice omen that is. My nature is to try and control. To be if not methodical, at least practical about problem-solving. When one is spinning 100 ft. above any sort of blessed firm earth, one has two and a half choices: keep spinning and freakin' out; just let it happen and engineer one's way back towards stability; just hang there and hope someone else pulls your sorry ass back in. I am proud of this: I choose number two. No screaming. No crying. No flailing about. I hang and let rope out, and hang, and let rope out, and gradually come back to face the cliff rather than the open, daunting view from up here. And yet, as I come back around to put my feet against solid rock, I miss that view: you truly can see everything from up here. Birds. The rest of the cliff face. Tiny dots that are my brothers and Roger waiting below. THe cliff face is reassuring only because I'm where one is supposed to be while rappelling down a giant cliff. Not because, any longer, it represents terra firma. It is what, technically, is meant to be faced; the other direction holds the definition of the sublime: awe mixed with fear. I am slow-my left shoulder, damaged from boxing, is starting to ache, but I make it down, straight through the thinnest gap between rocks, and am suddenly on my feet again, shaking a little, but nonetheless exuberant. Roger gives me a hug. We throw our heads back and yell up to the watchers, receiving whistles and catcalls back. Little did we know that we'd have to hike back up the rocky trail to the lookout point! We're getting our workouts in, today. Then, we're saddled back up and taking a mercifully short, flat (ish) jaunt back to the ranch for a home-cooked lunch: tortillas that are not yellow or white, but nut-brown with local corn; a dish of green chile and corn in sauce; "potato salad". Fresh ranchero cheese, whose source bellows from the cow-yard, flicking flies with its tail. This is not "authentic" in the sense that it is untouched by tourism; it is authentic in the way that a student exchange, or a gathering of two cultures permeated with modern commerce may be: we're tourists, yes, but we're eating 'real food'. They are ranchers, cowboys and cooks, yes, but what they offer us is the best they have, perhaps not what they'd keep for themselves. I'm exhausted, and I want my husband here. He'd be proud of me. He'd have done it himself. Our controlled fall isn't over: the wedding is coming up, ours. I still have nearly 24 hours worth of flying before I'm home in three days. I smell like horse and my own sweat. My left arm aches. I love him in a way I did not realise possible. It is better, far better, than its counterpart, this spinning. The wind picks up over the ranch, while we eat and eat, and love.