To Summit the Mermaid

Just got back from a hike up to ‘la sirena,’ a mountain bluff on Guanajuato’s eastern border that is capped with a white iron cross. It was my first long walk-with-destination since the San Juan pilgrimage two weeks ago. Climbing up from the panoramica, there is no clear path to la sirena. I left a crumbling dirt road wide enough for one car and made my way straight up the mountainside. A ragged and no doubt thirsty horse seemed an unlikely animal to find on that hillside, but I did. Here you must pick and choose your way through the cactus and other brush and try not to slip on any of the abundant scree. Dry fissures in the folds of the mountains look like ancient riverbeds but I don’t know if they ever held any water. It seems doubtful. I followed one for a few minutes before veering off over the parched grass, which crunches underfoot and makes you wonder how (and why) it survives out here. The summer rainy season must supply the grass and other plants with the vast majority of moisture for the year, and they tough it out for the other eight months. The sun-baked landscape of central Mexico, and especially the unforgiving vegetation, gives me the impression of a great stubborn will to exist. The prevailing sense of manifest heaviness that D.H. Lawrence describes in “The Plumed Serpent” is here. I scrambled up a shoulder of bare rock, determined to reach the summit quickly, willfully. Still thinking of Lawrence, and of the question of will and desire that the main character, Kate, faces:
“But for herself, ultimately, ultimately she belonged elsewhere. Not to this terrible, natural will which seemed to beat its wings in the very air of the American continent. Always will, will, will, without remorse or relenting. This was America to her: all the Americas. Sheer will!”
I trust desire and I'm wary of the will, though conscious of being driven hard by it. It occurred to me that a riotous act of will might also be a way to rediscover a desire and give one the courage to go after it. It is a delicate balance, like trying not to slip on stony scrabble.* I don’t think climbing up to la sirena and back, a hike of a few hours, qualifies as riotous, but it’s at least a sort of brawl with the usual day.


* I slipped once.