We came over a hill and the land opened up. Huge basin, mountains all around, went on for miles. And right there, cattle and wild horses, and we’d startled them just by showing up. They ran off in every direction, surrounding us, dust everywhere. I didn’t know if I was watching something or ruining it.
Here’s what got me though. The horse I was on used to be wild, on that same ranch. Now it was carrying me up a mountain so I could watch its old life take off without it. I kept thinking about that the rest of the ride.
There was something else too. We were out on unmarked trails, no fences, nothing telling us where to go, just this massive untamed, desert-like landscape stretching out in every direction. It felt like total freedom. But at the same time, we were all riding single file, following one another, nobody breaking off on their own. Freedom and order, happening at once. I hadn’t expected that combination, and I couldn’t stop noticing it.
That night we had barbacoa from a goat that had been roasting all day. It had been raised right there on that land, and it was offered to us, to me, a total newcomer, as a gift. Nourishment, plain and simple. It had been waiting for us the whole time we were out riding, and there was something about that I couldn’t get over, that this thing had been prepared for us before we’d even arrived. There was nothing fancy about the presentation, just meat wrapped in a cactus leaf, laid bare on the table, piles of tortillas, salsa from the molcajete, and mismatched silverware. It was raw, rustic, and absolutely beautiful.
We ate it together afterward, then moved on to bone marrow tacos at sunset with wine from vineyards nearby, and told stories late into the evening. Some of it was in Spanish, some in English, and plenty of it was neither, just gestures and laughing and pointing at objects. Even when we couldn’t fully communicate, there was an understanding between all of us that didn’t need translating. It should’ve felt like a contrast, wild horses in the morning, a feast at night. It didn’t though. Felt like the same trip. Wild stuff, tamed stuff, and me stuck somewhere in between.
This is actually the whole reason I fell for wine in the first place. Not the wine itself, at least not at first. It was standing in the actual regions where it comes from. Seeing the dirt, the slope of the hills, the exact light the grapes grow in and then tasting something that somehow tasted like that place. Once you make that connection, you can’t unmake it. Every glass after that is a little bit of geography.
That’s why I started cooking and hosting people at home, pairing wine with food I made myself. Not to show off. I just wanted other people to have that same moment, where a place stops being a photo you saw once and becomes something you can actually taste. Watching someone’s face change when the wine and the dish click and they suddenly understand why is honestly one of my favorite things to witness.
So sitting there at sunset with bone marrow tacos and a glass of wine grown not to far from where we’d just ridden, that wasn’t a break from the wild horses moment. It was the same thing. Both were about being somewhere completely, with all your senses on.
I think that’s what I actually chase now. Not just good food, not just good wine, but the thing underneath both. Being somewhere so completely that you stop being a visitor to it. The horses running through that basin weren’t performing for us. The goat had been turning over that fire since morning, no matter who showed up to eat it. None of it was staged. We just happened to be there for it.
That’s the difference between a trip and a moment like this one. A trip you photograph. A moment like this you carry around for weeks, still turning it over. The same way I didn’t know what to do with the thought of my horse watching its old life run free.
I don’t have a clean lesson to wrap this up with. I’m not sure I want one. A basin full of wild things, a fire that had been burning all day, a glass of wine that tasted like the hills we’d just ridden through, and me, somewhere in the middle of it, wild and tamed in equal measure, exactly like everything else around me that day.
Really well written!