If I were a guacho I would want to be just like Alicia, with her long side braid and maroon scarf, her wild eyes and even wilder wonder. Yesterday, Julie and I went horsebackriding. There are no words to descibe the beauty that we encountered, from the pristine horses, speckled or white-hooved, to the startling mountains, awash with dust. If I were a guacho, I would spend all of my days startling back these mountains...chasing sheep, developing calluses on my thighs, barbecueing soft slabs of meat and sucking water from the streams.
Julie is a lovely friend. A friend who stands by you when you cry, who stands up for you with more than fists, who will wash the dust out of your clothes and offer you chocolate bears. She is the kind of friend who believes, in both the best, the bad and the worst of moments, in the people that she loves. The best kind of friend.
The pampas grass is the most beautiful golden-brown. It seems so much more alive than the grass in New York City parks, than the Argentine flowers even, the lone buds that sometimes speckle this landscape but fail to impress.
They rounded up our horses yesterday and gave me the biggest of them all. I was evaluating them on the distance I would potentially fall. Luckily, my horse (though large) was quite sturdy and sweet and while I was a bit terrified on the mountain sides covered in stones, I was elated. The hundreds of sheep sprinting through the dust, the sun hot on my back and Alicia, more filled with life than any woman I have ever met. The combination of her spirit and the landscape made me question whether I am really a city girl at heart.
In fact, my heart seems to fall everywhere. In each city, town that I visit, I fall in love. Maybe it is the diversity of the world, or maybe it is how similar each place is to another one I have loved. Whatever it is, Bariloche has found a place in my heart. Some of the most beautiful moments-simply walking through the mountain town, seeing school children in uniforms, entering local eateries, gazing at hill after hill in the near distance, failing to perceive past the lakes, tasting media lunas, large cups of espresso and chocolates formed in the shape of giraffes...
Today we went kayaking, which was also beautiful, though our guide failed to impress in the way that Alicia had. There is something so serene to sitting within the water, though my body craved to dive deep beneath the pale, clear surface, to touch the earth below. Maybe what I need right now is to be much closer to the earth, to the natural places, perfections and imperfections that pervade.
I think one of our best meals was that which we made in our room: cheese, avocados, french bread, wine, chocolates, fresh cookies, raspberry yogurt. The fruit seller is a beautiful man, with those beautiful Argentine eyes that startle as much as the landscape, that are deeper even than the seven lakes of this south. I love food. I also love mountains: I used to think I loved the snow-capped the most, but now it is the dusty red that captures my heart. I could live here, I think. I could have so many lives in so many different places, with so many different beginnings. I love speaking Spanish again, feel it coming back to me in the smallest ways, remembering words, rolling my rs...returning to the first tongue that enchanted me.
I am trying to find peace with myself, within myself. There are so many things that I regret and yet I know now that I can move past them. I know that I will live many wonderful moments, those moments we all know as giving us the most life (like lying in the rain, cuddling a baby, sipping a perfect cup of coffee, crying a happy tear, pushing yourself only slightly beyond your limits). I am glad, these days, that I feel so hard, that I love so hard. Instead of battling the senstivity inside of me, I am trying to allow it to touch every experience, every hour, every taste, movement, part of me.
I don´t know what will happen in the weeks, months, years to come. But for now, maybe, it is enough to know that I will eat ravioli tonight, we will be offered midnight dancing by our waiters and return to Mamushka to build up our chocolate supply-and I will fall asleep in the mountain silence, a friend by my side, if only temporarily at peace with it all.
