My husband was born in a beautiful and impoverished settlement in the hills of rural Puebla, Mexico. Several years ago I had the opportunity to visit his rustic birthplace, a location he usually refers to as "el rancho." I knew his family had never owned or lived on a "ranch" (the dictionary translation) with cowboys, horses or herds of cattle, so I had few expectations of what this place would be like.

We took a day trip, driving just a few miles from his parent's current home up into the hills, which were significantly greener and lusher than the dry flat plain of his town. Driving into what I would now call a settlement, the dirt road winds past some very modest houses, more like shacks - concrete, wood and pieces of scrap metal or other materials pieced together to create functional spaces for the simple people who subsist in "el rancho." There is no business or commerce of any sort here. Everyone in the rancho knows what house you can go to buy a coke or a loaf of bread, but there is nothing obviously commercial here. I ponder whether this existence without marketing and advertising is actually something of a luxury.

The sky was perfectly blue that day, the air crisp and cool, the sun warming us pleasantly. We took off on foot and went to meet one of my husband's uncles, a slim, weathered man, tanned skin, hands reflecting a lifetime of labor. He greeted us warmly and invited us into his family's simple, wooden house. The closest thing I can compare it to is a log cabin, from the 1800s. They had a separate building for cooking, with a sort of fire pit and comal (griddle) for making tortillas and toasting spices and peppers. Chickens ran around between the doorways in true free-range style. In their open yard area, they had assorted livestock, a goat, a pig, some geese. I was strangely delighted. Growing up suburban, albeit in Wisconsin, known to most outsiders as a land of farms, this was one of the first times in my life, besides a yearly trip to the State Fair, that I had any contact with farm animals.

After a brief visit, which is mostly a blur since my Spanish was really struggling on this particular trip, we hiked on, my father-in-law taking the lead. Heading across a ridge, the green hills dropping off at our sides, the air calm and quiet, my father-in-law spotted a man at least a hundred yards away, and began to whistle. This whistle, in fact, held a specific meaning for these two men, and my husband later explained that it is common practice between siblings, cousins or friends to share a unique whistle to get the other’s attention. In this case, my father-in-law used his whistle to alert his presence to his old friend near the bottom of the hill. The man looked up, whistled something back, and my father-in-law set off in a different direction, without a word. My husband explained that they had just communicated quite basically that they would meet up below. Huh.

We walked on and passed the spot where his parent's newlywed "house" had once been. Today it was just a small field, a few disintegrating bricks barely marking the tiny structure where my mother-in-law had given birth to my husband. We said hello to some elderly neighbors and hiked on to visit another relative on a different ridge.

The home of the elderly woman we met consisted of three concrete buildings perched on a hillside with a spectacular view of a dozen rolling green hills. She kept her own goats and chickens, as well as a small garden. In one of the buildings, red, blue and yellow corn hung to dry, eventually to be removed from the cob, cooked, ground and formed into the most delicious tortillas. Another building housed her fire pit and comal, and the third her "kitchen" and living area.

<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]--> It amazed me that her "kitchen" had an American-style stove complete with an oven and a refrigerator. Inside the oven she stored prepared tortillas and empty serving dishes. The stovetop was equally unused. There were a few items in the fridge, but just about everything the woman ate was fresh from her own hands, her own animals or her own piece of the earth. My husband later told me that several of her grown children work in the U.S. and had purchased the modern appliances. I chuckled imagining some sort of delivery truck bringing this old woman a never-to-be-lit stove down the narrow walking path to her house.

Meanwhile, she gathered some fresh turkey eggs, chopped up some tomatoes and peppers and started preparing a meal of rancho eggs for us over the fire. We sat with her in the dark, smoky room, my husband and her catching up for the years since his last visit. The conversation a blur, I focused on the food, so delicious it was amazing. It oozed the flavor of pure, fresh ingredients.

I spent the rest of the afternoon romanticizing (in my own mind) a life free of the trappings of the modern world. No traffic, no filling up the gas tank, no credit cards, no noisy neighbors, no technology, almost no consumption at all. Perhaps it is a lonely life, but from the look and voice of the woman, one she enjoys – living off the earth, producing for herself, receiving the occasional visitor from near or far.