Tales of a Female Nomad by Rita Golden Gelman Page A

position.
    I sit on my hammock, feet on the floor, and reach for the far end of the netting so that I can twist myself into position. I end up on the floor, laughing.
    Wolfgang swings himself out of his hammock and helps me up. Then he holds my hammock as I get in, talks me into the right position, and gives me a push. It’s delicious. When the hammock stops swinging, I pull on a rope that is not too far from my shoulders; and I rock myself like a baby, thinking that if my marriage is over, I will rent an apartment somewhere and sleep in a hammock forever.
    The next morning I wake up to the sound of a lion roaring in the jungle.
    “What was that?” I ask quietly, not wanting to alert some wild beast to my location. Wolfgang is sitting on the floor writing in his journal.
    “Don’t worry,” he says. “It’s just a howler monkey. They’re not really fierce. There’s something about their throats and the configuration of their jaws that makes them sound like lions.”
    They sound close, but they’re not. The roar travels for miles every morning as howlers call out a claim to their jungle territory.
    I slip out of my hammock and get dressed, modestly turning my back to Wolfgang as I slip out of my nightshirt and into my bra. It’s the only option in our open-air, unwalled platform. Oops. There are two guys walking down the hill in front of me. The backpackers’ trail is not for the modest.
    Heavy morning mist, the melodic songs of unseen birds, and a powerful sense of moving back through time accompany us as we walk through what was once a lush tropical jungle surrounding an ancient Mayan city. Neither of us speaks. I breathe deeply, trying to hyperventilate myself into a hypnotic state. I am about to reenter the seventh century, when Palenque was a thriving city nestled into the foothills of the mountains that surround us.
    Instinctively, we both know this is a solitary experience. Without speaking, we separate. I sit on a rock, staring across the plaza toward the Temple of the Inscriptions, imagining it as it once was, radiating red in the rays of the tropical sun. Squinting, I can see the Mayans moving gracefully through the plaza and climbing the steps of the temple, their bronze skin glowing, their exquisite blue-feather headdresses adding color and character to the scene. In the plaza women are carrying baskets of fresh fruit on their heads, standing around in groups, talking, laughing. They are real people, I can feel them, sense their spirits in this place that still holds their secrets. I close my eyes.
    I wake up two hours later feeling as though I have visited another world. I join the stream of visitors climbing the sixty-nine nearly vertical steps of the temple. At the top, I sit, exhausted from the climb, and once again I imagine the city filled with ancient Mayan people whose brilliant achievements in sculpture and architecture, math and calendars and hieroglyphics have fascinated the modern world.
    Every once in a while I peer down the steps and my heart begins to pound. I am terrified at the prospect of going down. There is no railing and the angle is sharp. I wait until all the climbers have descended and I begin. I realize immediately that I cannot face out; my whole body shakes and I feel as though I am about to fall. I turn around and face into the steps, and, like a toddler, I go down the steps on my hands and knees and feet, from the first to the sixty-nineth step.
    When I am on solid ground again, I wander from structure to structure, fascinated by the stucco sculptures and the sophisticated architecture. What could have happened to these extraordinary people and their culture?
    Along the way I meet Wolfgang and we walk back to the campgrounds together. It’s startling to enter the compound. There is laughter and noise coming from the picnic benches. Nearly everyone staying in the camp is gathered there. It turns out that across the road and over the hill is a cattle farm; and when the rain is