Issue link: http://trailridermagazine.uberflip.com/i/1540850
ISDE 2025 ISDE 2025 How to Climb a Fig Tree How to Climb a Fig Tree By Rachel Gutish By Rachel Gutish Photos By Offroadpaparazzi Photos By Offroadpaparazzi 8 Trail Rider www.TrailRider.com The fig is deep purple, s ll warm from the sun. So ripe that as I pull it from the tree, the skin slides off in my hand. I take a bite. It is so delicious that for a moment I completely forget who I am (Rachel Gu sh), where I am (the ISDE), and what I'm actually supposed to be doing (walking tests). My teammates march off into the distance, shrinking to the size of ants as I stand there transfixed beneath the tree. Eventually, I snap out of it, wiping my now-s cky hand across my pant leg and jogging to catch back up. I du fully walk the test and successfully mem- orize it corner-to-corner, as expected, but I just can't get that fig off my mind. I'm not a poet; I write prose. But okay, like now I understand why someone would write a poem. I have been moved. Once back in the team van, I Google whether fig trees will grow in Indiana and a empt to write a haiku in honor of the fig tree. Disappointed in both Indiana's inability to grow figs and my inability to write poetry, my brain moves on to other literary references to figs and dredges up an excerpt I once read of Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar". The cliff notes version is that the narrator has a promising future but is u erly overwhelmed by trying to choose one of those futures, because by default, it means giving up on all the other future lives she could have en- joyed. In her analogy, she imagines herself si ng in a fig tree, staring up at all the different, but equally delicious figs, and starving to death as she sits para- lyzed by indecision. The ISDE sort of reminds me of this analogy, and I decide that this is how I will honor the humble fig tree, standing alone in a farmer's field in rural Italy. I saw the ISDE, branching out before me like the fig tree of Plath's analogy. Near the ground, the figs were underripe and green, edible but sour. Low risk, low effort, low reward. From the top of the tree, ripe figs beckoned me, daring me to climb. Ripe and juicy beyond compare, dripping with the sweetness of victory. But one missed handhold, one misjudged leap, one broken branch, and you land hard on the ground. Here, the figs are wrinkled and black, rot- ng from the inside out. Fit only for the wasps and the slugs. There are so many decisions that must be