We traipse into Pohtana at about 11:00 AM and stash our packs at the first hotel on the left:  Heaven’s Gate.  

But the name should read Outside Heaven’s Gate.  Our accommodations will be primitive:  rickety beds, communal squat-pots, and a single solar-heated shower.  Since this is how I had envisioned trekking in Nepal, I figure I won’t mind.

We continue up the trail, lighter now that we are free of our gear.  I feel like running up the mountain, but instead, I keep pace with J.V.’s steady march; I’ve learned to use him as my leech shield after the ambush this morning.  

The air thickens with fog and I find myself sweating one instant and shivering the next.  We see only a few yards of trail ahead and behind.  A gray Neverland presses in on us.  Claustrophobia prickles across my skin and I feel a sense of urgency to get somewhere–anywhere.  I hike faster.

The trail is endless and anticlimactic after the vivid encounters of the morning:  the spectacular views of Fishtail and Anapurna; the slinking Haemadipsids rooting for blood around our ankles.  Those seem like memories of a different trip altogether, like dreams within dreams.

As if by magic, a restaurant emerges from the fog, nestled in a narrow saddle between two bluffs.  It is a brick and bamboo structure, reeking of garlic.  My stomach stirs at the hissing sounds of boiling sesame oil.  We grab a plastic outdoor table and order egg-fried rice.  I shiver again.  My stomach snarls.  Time drags.

Dad wanders off to inspect the kitchen.  The cook is scraping fistfuls of starchy rice out of a basket with grimy hands–hands that are no doubt covered with E-coli, amoeba, and giardia.  Dad returns and deepens our gloom with this matter-of-fact assessment of our sanitary conditions.

“Well, good thing we ordered fried rice,” I say, “or we’d be sick for sure.  The heat will zap most of the bugs.”

Dad nods.  But after a pause that is long enough to catch me off guard, he says, “Fry the hell out of it–the rice, I mean.”  He sinks into a plastic chair and sighs.

Steaming plates of food warm us, but only temporarily.  The fog wraps more tightly around us and we rub our limbs to stay warm.  Finally, my zeal for adventure evaporates, letting me down abruptly, like the crash of a caffeine high.

“Let’s go back to Heaven’s Gate,” I say, “can’t see anything here.  And we’ll never make Ghandruk in shorts and T-shirts.  Not in this weather.”

I want to see Ghandruk.  In postcards, the city appears to hang in mid air, accessible only by a ropey suspension bridge.  But it is hours away.  

Dad and J.V. huddle against the wind like children, faces blank.  They nod vigorously in agreement when I suggest returning to the hotel, as if they have been waiting all day for me to abandon the quest for Ghandruk.  Their eagerness to turn back aggravates me.  I want them to give me a pep talk, not tea and sympathy.  I almost change my mind out of sheer contrariness.  Almost.

But I am too cold.

We pick up our water bottles, tip the waiter, and head back down the hill, clutching our arms across our chests for warmth.

To my dismay I notice several potato-chip bags stuck in the mud along the trail.  Upon closer inspection, the ground fairly glistens with candy wrappers and small papers of all kinds.

“Did trekkers do this?” I shout back to J.V.

“No…the Nepalis”, comes the sad reply, “Trekkers no giving garbage here.”

I feel both relieved and irritated.  It is nice to know that Westerners are not to blame for littering, but it angers me that the mountain people themselves seem to care so little for the beauty of their backyard.  

It occurs to me that, until recently, the mountain people produced mostly biodegradable waste, like banana peels and corn husks.  The advent of hill-top restaurants, like the one we had just visited, which stocked colorful packages of potato chips and foil-wrapped energy bars, was new.

Maybe they don’t know what to do with this stuff.  Maybe they just offer it up to the earth, thinking it will somehow be absorbed.

How different is that from our notion of a landfill?

Still, I am sickened by the plastic there in the trail, twitching in the breeze.  It is another case of western influence without common sense, something I have seen more than once in my travels abroad, and sadly, more than once at home.

You shouldn’t sell prepackaged crap where there are no garbage trucks, I think.  

Back at Heaven’s Gate, my spiraling thoughts are interrupted by a more organic sight:  a jumble of shantytown buildings; stilted verandas with mongrel dogs panting in the shade, their skin stretched to blue-veined thinness over racks of sighing ribs; chickens sitting atop uneven picnic tables, poking around for scraps, clucking and pooping contentedly among bits of boiled egg and onion.

And I think, maybe I will mind staying here after all.

To be continued…

This story touched me, especially since I’ve been reliving my experiences in Nepal on this blog.  I hope you enjoy this 4-min video.  We have so much to offer each other regardless of race, language, religion, or geography.

The Last Pure Pygmy and His Gift from Speaking of Faith on Vimeo.

I have seen a goddess.  And now she is gone, vanished behind stacks of clouds.  Other peaks come and go in the billowing mist, but I watch them without seeing.  My pupils focus inward again and again, straining to see the twisting ridges of Machapuchre, her vaporous after-image burned on my retina. Looking back, it’s hard to believe the horror I would confront this very same morning, not on the horizon, but at my feet.

After breakfasting on boiled eggs, fried cornbread, and wild honey, we set out for Pohtana.  I am not happy about making Pohtana our destination for the day because it is only an hour and a half up the trail.  We are short on time and I want to get higher, farther, faster.  Our guide, J.V., normally leads three-week-long treks that require slow acclimatization to altitude.  But, due to my busy residency schedule at the hospital, we have only four days.  Despite my pleas, J.V. will make no exception to the rules of acclimatization.

We slug forward.

After forty minutes of steep climbing we stop at what looks like any other pleasant resting place along the trail–with flat grass, smooth boulders to sit on, and small rocks for foot stools.  A cool brook babbles nearby and the ground is mildly spongy.  There is no hint of the squirming hell that lurks beneath the turf.

Sitting comfortably on a stone, I remove my boots and spread my toes, messaging the balls of my feet.

In my peripheral vision, the grass appears to move, like a shag carpet fingering the air in a breeze. But there is no breeze.  Something is off.  I can’t put my finger on it.

I squint and look closer.  The patch of ground at my feet darkens, like an expanding blot of ink. The margins of it are hairy and wriggling.  It expands unevenly, almost spastically, like a hoard of arthritic fingers ratcheting toward me.  I feel a needling rush cascade down my spine, corkscrewing the hairs on the back of my neck into little quivering spikes.  I grab my boots, cram them onto my feet, and jump up without bothering with the laces.

But I am too late.  An undulating mass surrounds me and fear and fascination hijack my nervous system.  I am rooted to the spot.

With curled lips and wide eyes, I watch as a knot of spaghetti-like creatures crawls up my bootlaces.  Caterpillars, I wonder?  No, these move too fast, end over end, like tight-wound Slinkies.

They spring up my ankles, making a bee-line for the warm regions of my socks.  They surge over me like barbarians over a Roman wall.  I feel a pulling sensation as small weights accumulate on my calves.

Dear Lord.  I’m sinking into living quicksand.

“Leeeeches!”,  J.V. screams.

Like a key, the word unlocks me. Leeches. Of course!  But these are nothing like the leeches that cling to rocks in North American lakes.  As J. D. Hooker writes in his Himalayan Journals of 1854, “Leeches swarmed with incredible profusion… they got into my hair, hung from my eyelids and crawled up my back.”

Suddenly, I dance and shake as if I am on fire.  Dad and J.V. do the same.  With flicks and flings and curses, we hop and zig-zag away from the marshland as quickly as possible.  We behave as if we have stumbled into a hornet’s nest.  Our eyes are wild and unfocused.  Our nostrils flare like snouts of horses at a derby.  After fifty yards of flailing, we turn around abruptly and stare back at the marsh, breathing hard, trembling with nervous energy.

“What the !@#$!” I gasp.

Even Dad, normally so cool under pressure, looks disheveled and unnerved.  J.V. simply collapses into a pile of loose limbs, saying nothing.

Haemadipsids–or Land Leeches–are a nasty slice of Nepal’s biodiversity.  This is what I learned in my research after I returned safely to U.S. soil:

“They drop from trees on men and animals and creep through all the openings in one’s clothes, even the eyelets of one’s shoes.  If one tears them off, one loses more blood than if one lets them drink their fill, when they fall off by themselves.  Some of the valleys are infested to such a degree by leeches that one simply cannot protect oneself against them.  The best way of keeping them out is by wearing socks and trousers steeped in salt,” (Heinrich Harrer, 7 Years in Tibet).

These annelids evoke both horror and fascination in me.  They are terrestrial blood-feeding worms of unusual stealth and speed–with an equally unusual biogeographic distribution; found only in the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, Australia, Melanesia, Madagascar, and the Seychelles.  All other leech families are aquatic and have a global distribution. Haemadipsids (from the Greek word Haematodipsia, meaning “a sexual thirst for blood”) are only about 2 inches long, but what they lack in size they make up for in numbers.

“…they swarm in myriads in every wood… it is impossible to take a single step without being attacked… they are on every bush and tree, from which they drop on the head and neck of the passer-by,” (Haekel, 1883 — A Visit to Ceylon).

And if I had read the following sentence before venturing out, I would have searched the world over for a pair of Teflon underwear:

“I counted no fewer than ninety-seven of them on my body, most of them concentrated round my private parts!” (Campbell, 1953 — Jungle Green).

Thankfully, I fare much better than any of these early explorers.  After a meticulous body check, I find not a single leech has gotten its slurping kisser into my skin.

Thank God for small miracles.

To be continued…

A himalayan Hilton–a Mermaid mountain–a 25-year-old memory–and a mirror of another world.

Around the bend and up a small hill is the town of Dhampus, with its celebrated view of the Himalayas.  Even better, it is home to one of the poshest hotels along the Anapurna base-camp route.  After hours of hot and sweaty trekking, followed by a slog through torrential rains, we are eager for some dry clothes and hot food.

When we step into the lobby of our two-story hotel, we immediately feel like tramps.  We are dripping from every crevice.  Muddy pools collect at our feet and spread like oil slicks across the clean tile floor.  A concierge in a red vest looks up from his mahogany desk and asks, “Please, may I be helping you?”

For once, J.V. engages.  He discusses our reservation with the concierge in flurries of lilting Nepali.  The concierge smiles and nods.  I assume J.V. also apologizes for us spattering the floor, because the man makes a sweeping gesture at us with his arm and says, “Not to be worrying, I am cleaning.”

“I hope he doesn’t mean he’s cleaning us,” I say to Dad, chuckling.

A bellman shows us to our room:  a second-floor corner suite with a view, a private bath, a shower, and wonder of wonders, a flush toilet.  How this was built 5,249 feet above the valley floor without the benefit of roads, makes me shake my head for the hundredth time this day.  In my world, it would take helicopters and hoists to build this place and I would have to be a movie star to enjoy it.  But this is not my world.  Here, where the per capita income is $473.00, it’s cheaper to hire hands than helicopters.  And there is no shortage of hands.  The region is heavily settled by the mid-hills tribe, “Gurungs”, who were once the famous Gurkha soldiers of the British Indian Army, known for their bravery and strength.  British officials designated the Gurkhas as a “Martial Race”, thinking them naturally warlike and aggressive in battle, possessing qualities of courage, loyalty, self-sufficiency, physical strength, resilience, orderliness, and the ability work hard for long periods of time.  As British Field Marshal Adian Tormey once observed, “If a man says he is not afraid of dying, he is either lying or he is a Gurkha.”  So, maybe it’s not so outrageous to imagine these people carrying toilets and two-by-fours on their backs all the way up here.  Heck, according to the Brits, a Gurkha would probably still have energy to spare for a friendly arm wrestling match.

I shed my soggy pack and hit the shower.  Amazingly, it is hot.  I change clothes, comb my hair, and emerge looking something like a demur English explorer with my Khaki pants, leather belt, Rockport shoes, and polo shirt.  This is “camping” like I have never experienced it.

Because of the lingering rain clouds, we cannot see the mountains.  I stand for about an hour on our room’s balcony with Dad, squinting into the gloom, hoping to catch a glimpse of the legendary Machapuchre, “Fishtail Mountain.”  Eventually, my eyes ache and I call off the search and walk inside.  Suddenly, Dad calls out, “Marc, you’d better come back out fast, I see a peak coming through.”  I step out, and there, in the fading light of sunset, much higher in the sky than I judge possible, floats a lone craggy peak, dusted with snow.  It looks both nearer and farther away than I can calculate.  My heart leaps and I stammer something hopelessly inadequate like, “Wow.”  Dad just nods, gripping his slack jaw as if it might fall off his face.  Then, as quickly as it appears, it disappears.  Like an apparition in the mist, it leaves us wondering if we have actually seen such a beast, or if it was merely the projection of our starved imaginations.

The mountains remain cloaked the rest of the evening.  Over dinner we compare notes with a couple from Connecticut, Roland and Barbara, who are well into their 50’s and lead an active international life.  Roland is a member of some foreign council that meets periodically in New York (not the United Nations, but he will not elaborate).  The couple is hardy, especially the wife, Barbara.  I spend all evening trying to figure out who she reminds me of, with her eagle nose, coarse mannerisms, quick laughter, and tendency to interrupt her husband.  Finally, it comes to me from the depths of childhood: Diane Hotell, my first babysitter, a face I have not seen since I was four or five years old.

I verify my observation with Dad and then shake my head at the queer workings of the mind.  I find it incredible that I should so vividly remember a woman I have not known or thought of for more than 25 years.  I listen, fascinated as Barbara tells of her glob-trotting adventures with her husband, of shaking Gorbachev’s hand, of meeting the Dali Lama, of scaling China’s Great Wall, and on, and on.

Finally, the lights go out and the maitre-d brings us candles to illuminate the way back to our rooms.

The next morning Dad is up early.  It is twilight but he insists I get up too. “This may be your only shot at the mountains,” he says.  I stagger out of bed and fumble for my jacket.

Outside, Barbara is up too, pacing the porch like a wind-up doll, camera in hand.  Dad is motionless.  A thin wall of clouds stands before us, just barely hiding the massive hulks of Anapurna South, Fish Tail, and Anapurna II.  There are lesser peaks in the mist too: Hunchuli, Madri Himal, Rankarka.  In Nepal, a “lesser” peak means a chunk of rock only 14,000 feet high or so, roughly the size of Mt. Rainier, the highest peak in the Cascade Range–so much for lesser.  As yet we cannot see anything.  Shafts of light from the east warm our backs and creep over our shoulders, while in front of us, directly west, sit three dark and fantastically huge cotton balls, sculpted and teased by wind.

“Man I wish the clouds would move,” I utter.  Dad grunts his agreement and strokes his beard.  His eyes remain fixed on the shrouded giants.

I stand around for a while, shifting my weight from foot to foot.  Then I duck back inside to fuss with my pack.  When I emerge again, nature is staging an exhibition I will never forget.

First, the curtain rises on Anapurna South.  I recognize the same snowy crags I glimpsed last night floating high in the sky–only now they are connected to flying buttresses and hulking supporting structures that reach far down into the valley, freshly dusted white.  Immediately I hear the whir and click of cameras.  Dad and Barbara are like snipers, aiming and clicking, aiming and clicking.  I know they will not succeed in reducing their prey onto crisp celluloid.  The depth and breadth of these mountains is beyond the reach of any lens except the naked eye, and even that seems inadequate now.

Within seconds, an opaque curtain of cloud sweeps back across the mountain, blocking it from view.  Still, we are nearly breathless with excitement at having witnessed it at all, as if it were some rare and magnificent animal we have been tracking for months.  We would be happy to pack up and go home right then and there, we tell ourselves.

But nature is not finished with us yet.

No sooner do we stop congratulating each other on our good fortune, than the clouds over Machapuchre (Fishtail) scroll back, revealing a stunning spire of rock and ice that twists some 22,000 feet into the air.  The uncanny match between this mountain’s name and its shape makes me shiver.  Imagine a mythologic fish, four miles long, diving into the crust of the earth with its tail twisting gracefully into the jet stream, the wind whistling across its silent stony scales forever.  This is Machapuchre.  She is a holy mountain, revered by the local population as especially sacred to Shiva.  Climbing her is strictly forbidden.

Again, the show lasts only a minute or two and then, like a mermaid, Machapuchre turns tail and vanishes.  We never see her again, except in our pale photographs.

We file away from the scene in silent awe, each going his or her separate way to contemplate the meaning of something so massive and beautiful.  I find myself shuffling along a grassy shore by a lake.  The morning sun is high enough now to flood the foothills with light, and in the mirrored surface of the lake, the landscape around me appears molten.  Slant rays ignite every blade of grass, every rhododendron, every stalk of bamboo.  Golden veins of light surge within the leaves, as if they never did contain chlorophyll, but only embers of the sun.

Under the ripples of the lake, a whole world flickers into existence:  temples, mustard fields, flowers I cannot name, rainbow-colored birds flitting from tree to tree, and flotillas of glowing clouds overhead.  The longer I look, the lighter and more light-headed I feel.  It is not even eight o’clock in the morning and already my head is bursting, punch drunk with natural beauty.  I ask myself if this day can reveal any more magic, if I can take in one more pang of longing, one more stunning glimpse of beauty.  There must be a natural limit to this kind of thing, just like there’s a natural limit to how many pints of Ben and Jerry’s Chocolate Macadamia a person can eat in one day.

As if to read my thoughts, a breeze riffles across the water and erases my inverted paradise.  I blink and turn toward the west.  The sky is surprisingly dark.  Great spools of cumulonimbus are boiling up, flattening themselves into anvil thunderheads.

Isn’t it a little early for rain? I wonder.

…to be continued.

A stone escalator–a fern poultice–an official swindler–and very soggy GORE-TEX.

We eat a hearty breakfast of Dal Baht and boiled eggs and set off into the mountains.  The trail is literally a stairway to heaven.  Laid into the precipitous canyon wall are thousands upon thousands of rough-hewn stones, forming an ancient staircase, a belt of stone twisting skyward past ferns and Eucalyptus, past waterfalls and vines, up and out of sight into green mists.  The fact that each stair is man-made astounds me.  In some long-forgotten past, I see wizened villagers with slick and muddy hands planting every stone with individual care.  I cannot fathom how many years it took to build this stone-age escalator.

After an hour of climbing and wiping greasy sunblock off my brow with the back of my hand, we come to a plateau.  The canopy of ferns opens and unveils a small village clinging to the canyon wall–a green expanse of millet fields and squat huts.  Pale curls of smoke rise from a dozen chimneys, seasoning the air with the scent of burning Eucalyptus.

I pause to take in the scene.  Dad and the others keep moving, quickly disappearing into a tunnel of green.

Below me is a drop-away view of the Pokhara valley.  It makes me dizzy and I turn away, grasping at a clay embankment to steady myself.  The wet earth slips through my fingers and I spin and fall backward.  With a soft thud I land squarely on my back in the middle of the trail.  For a moment I am stranded like an overturned beetle by the weight of my pack.  I lay there, eyes unblinking, staring up the hulking skirts of Anapurna South (23,684 ft) and Hiunchuli (21,132 ft).  It is an entirely different view.  Shelves of granite jut from the earth and vanish into a nimbus of backlit clouds. Vast snowfields, cleaved and lathed by time, twist like layer cake over glittering foundations of ice.  A network of ridge lines forks downward, anchoring itself among the soft emerald foothills, like an enormous root system.  It is a vision that both startles and soothes me.  Looking straight up at these massive chunks of rock is like catching a glimpse of a firm and solid lighthouse while lost at sea; it steadies me.  I pick myself up and survey the landscape again.  It is more spectacular than any wide angle shot from National Geographic.  A thrill rises in my chest–I am entering the legendary Himalayas.  This is the real deal.

I run up the staircase to catch the others.  My lungs heave, my thighs burn, and my heart feels the slightest pang of loss over leaving the hanging millet fields behind.

We crest a hill and encounter a trail that is so studded with cow pies, it is like a mine field.  The patties squat in our path, resembling stinking yurts, slick and treacherous to step on.  We walk with care, goose-stepping gingerly over them and other detritus.

The path levels.  We share it now with mountain goats, cows, and prune-faced women carrying huge loads of ferns strapped to wooden frames on their backs.  No one, not even J.V., can tell me why the women are harvesting ferns.  Later, I learn that at least 65 species of fern thrive in Nepal, with both culinary and medicinal uses, everything from tea to cough syrup, from salad garnish to dandruff poultice.

Occasionally we pass a cluster of tin-roofed houses that constitutes a village, and again I marvel at the challenge of having to bring in these building materials on foot.  Some of the houses are even made of concrete and brick.  What kind of people climb over a mile of stairs with bags of lye or bricks on their backs–even once–let alone repeatedly.  I think of their methodical pace of life, which in its own way, is as orderly as a modern assembly line–an industry without revolution.

My thoughts are interrupted by a man who appears to be the Nepali equivalent of a forest ranger, dressed in a khaki shirt and black pants.  He asks to see our “permits”.  We don’t have permits.  We don’t know we need permits.  Not even our vaunted guide seems to know anything about permits.  The ranger’s face is grave and he shakes his head.  He will make us turn back, if we do not pay, he tells us.

We ante up the cash, which amounts to about $40.00 and change.  It is an expense we will regret later.

I feel vaguely swindled and it dawns on me that this is probably a way of life in Nepal.  We have already been told so many different things by so many different “experts” about what to expect on this trek and how much it will cost, that we are no longer sure of anything until it actually happens.  Unreliability and grift are to be expected.  The Nepali postal system, for example, delivers packages almost entirely at random, and postal employees think nothing of pilfering nearly every parcel that passes through their fingers.  It is rare to receive a care package from home (the U.S.) with anything left in it that could possibly be considered valuable or tasty.  Dad and I are learning all this the hard way and it is slowly sinking in.  Having a travel checklist or firm plans of any kind, is almost useless.  You check, check, and double check, and then throw your fate to the Himalayan wind.

Sobered by the unexpected demand for cash, we walk slowly another hundred yards, wondering how we’re going to pay for food and lodging in the next village.  I stare at my GORE-TEX boots, lost in thought.  Then, Bump.  I plant my nose squarely into Dad’s pack.  He has been abruptly stopped on the trail by another Nepali “official”, who motions us to his “office”.  We traipse into a wooden shack where candles, used for light, have scorched the walls and where mouse droppings crunch to powder under our feet.  This “official” also wants to see our papers. Is this the same guy?  It almost looks like him:  same hooked nose; same tobacco-stained teeth. But I don’t remember the felt beret that angles across his brow. Dad explains that we just filled out our papers, signed-in, and paid at the last check point.  Even so, the official insists we go through the whole ritual again, show our passports, write down our names, addresses, telephone numbers, tell him how long we are planning to stay, and pay again.  I am flushed and irritated.

Then the dusty bureaucrat does something that tears through the last of my thinning patience.  He poses for a picture.  He points to my camera and mugs boyishly with a yellow grin, adjusting his beret to an absurdly rakish angle.  He tucks the last of our cash in his shirt pocket and pats it with his blackened fingers.  ”You taking photo?”, he asks.

Fortunately, about this time a thundershower breaks loose and cools me off before I blow a fuse.

It starts with a distant roar.  At first, I think it is a waterfall.  I exit the shack and walk over a bluff expecting to see a mountain cascade, but instead I see a small lake with its surface roiling under pounding raindrops.  It is odd.  I am completely dry, yet not twenty feet in front of me is a thick curtain of water reaching thousands of feet into the sky.  It moves slowly, majestically in my direction, inch by inch.  I walk casually away from the roaring wall as if it is an IMAX imitation, with plenty of time to find shelter under a Nepali verandah.  Minutes later comes the deafening crash of rain bombarding the tin-roof above.

“The rain,” J.V. says, “Every time.  This day.”

“You mean it rains at this time every day?”  I ask, understanding his scrambled syntax for the first time.

J.V. nods.

“Well for how long?”

“Sometime is raining two, three hours.”

For a moment, it is awe-inspiring to stand there in the safety and comfort of shelter, watching a tropical downpour so thick you could measure it in cubic feet per second, but I cannot stand the seismic clanging above my head.  The tin roof sounds like someone is beating it with a hammer, or as if a whole cupboard of pots and pans is falling on me.  I can’t take this for two minutes, much less two hours.

So without hesitation, I step into the deluge.  I walk because there is no point in running.  In five seconds, I am soaked to the bone.  Rivulets of luke-warm water trickle down my calves and into my boots.  Dad’s squelching footfalls quickly join mine and together we slosh up the path.

It takes a few minutes, but we soon hear J.V.’s mournful protests trailing somewhere behind us,  “I am guide.  I am no climbing.  You see, is raining.  You coming back.  I am guide.”

To be continued…

We settle into the plush seats of a lightening-fast twin Beachcraft.  She is wasp-like, sleek and thin at the waist.  By comparison, the large and smiling letters on her flank look chubby, almost quaint:  Buddha Air.

It is 1999 and I have just completed a month in Nepal doing surgery at Sheer Memorial Hospital, a Christian mission about an hour southeast of Katmandu.  Dad has arrived to join me in a four-day trekking adventure to Fish Tail mountain, the holiest of holy peaks in the Anapurna range of central Nepal.

Buddha Air launches us with screaming turbines, up past racks of clouds.  The Himalayas play hide and seek below.  The mountains seem to know we are looking at them; they dodge our attempts to find the one summit we seek most: Sagarmatha, Mount Everest, the highest point on earth.  She ought to be the closest perch to us, the easiest to see.  But she is cloaked, enwombed in sheets of stratocumulus.

In nineteen minutes we flit past eight of the ten highest peaks on the planet.  From Nepal’s capitol city, Katmandu, to Pohkara, a small trekking outpost at the base of the Anapurnas, we cover 140 kilometers of incomprehensibly rugged territory.  The same trip takes 5 hours by bus and traverses a route that flirts constantly with insanity.  I can see the serpentine road from the air, inch-worming its way through stony chasms and green folds in the earth.  I am told it has potholes the size of water buffalo and no guard rails, nothing to stop the groaning Nepali buses from lumbering off into empty space.  Still, flying over this landscape unsettles me almost as much as zigzagging up that road. Not a scrap of level ground anywhere for an emergency landing.  My head falls back on the head rest and I stare at the overhead bin.

We descend.  Abruptly.

For a few sphincter-tight moments, we drop hard and fast from the mountain peaks down into a tight V-shaped basin:  Pokhara Valley.  Suddenly the cockpit door swings wide open and through the pilot’s window, I see what they see:  a wobbly, sea-sick view of an upward-rushing runway, a thin strip of tarmac, honey-combed with weeds.  Two flimsy tin-roofed structures squat off to one side, terminal #1 and terminal #2, I think numbly.

The landing gear digs into the tessellated tarmac and both engines spiral into reverse.  Deceleration is brief and painful.  The lap belt strangles my waist like a noose and I think fleetingly of Disneyland’s Space Mountain ride, but without the shoulder harness (or the reassurance of the happiest place on earth).  The airframe shudders.  I catch a glimpse of dad calmly reading a magazine.  Then we lurch to the left and come to a blunt, hiccuping stop.  I sit there for a few moments, hands trembling.  By the time I unbuckle myself, several passengers have already exited the plane and dad is up rifling through the overhead compartment.  I wonder what annoys me more, the fact that this controlled crash landing has nearly made me wet my pants, or the fact that it hasn’t seemed to bother anyone else, especially dad.  Aren’t we made of the same stuff, he and I?  No, I remind myself, dad is the stoic ER doc, famous for his control under pressure.  I, on the other hand, well I am made of something a little more–volatile I suppose, or maybe something more normal.

Our Himalayan porter, J.V., introduces himself at the gate.  This is the man who will lead us through the high country for the next four days.  He has taken the overnight bus from Katmandu and appears no worse for wear.  He is younger and smaller than I expected, more like a boy than a man.  His smile is toothy and perpetual. Innocent, I think. And he’s gonna carry our stuff? Our packs will crush him. His Nepali accent is strong, which is a nice way of saying his English is poor, very poor.  He grossly mispronounces every third word.  I am too fatigued from our aircraft-carrier-style landing to attempt a conversation with him.  I leave the job to Dad, who seems downright excited by the chance to speak as slowly and loudly as humanly possible.

We walk out of the airport, our shoulders sagging under tall REI backpacks.  Dad also carries a giant green duffle, bulging with sleeping bags and mats.  Our guide has his own large pack.  This troubles me, because I understand he is supposed to be our porter.  How in the heck is this guy going to carry any of our ample gear when he has his own hefty pack to deal with?  But I don’t ask; I wouldn’t understand his reply anyway.

We duck into a taxi, which bounces and jerks up a crumbling road to Pheti, our jumping off point to the Anapurnas, Napal’s most scenic collection of 20K peaks (all of them at least five thousand feet higher than Mt. Rainier).  The journey takes longer than it should.  Several times we are forced off the road, once by a wandering cow, once by a careening bus, and once by a swimming-pool sized pothole with, no kidding, a water buffalo lounging in it, reeds dripping from its slow, side-sawing mouth.

I don’t know what to expect of Pheti.  I peer at it through fingerprints on the taxi window.  The outpost is little more than an open-air canvass tent stretched over a pot-belly stove and a few wooden shelves stocked with mountain supplies.  Behind the stove, a perspiring chef stirs Dal Baht–curried lentils–and arranges dusty bottles of Fanta.  The air in the taxi is thick with dust and fumes and heat.  I fling my door open and a cool mist washes over me.  I look up.  It is coming from a four-hundred-foot waterfall crashing down the canyon wall above.  It is so unexpected and so refreshing I suddenly feel light and springy.  In an instant I shed all the fatigue of our mechanized trek from Katmandu.  From here on out, we ascend on foot, steep and true, into one of the most stunning mountain ranges on earth.

We unload our gear and pay the taxi driver, who overcharges us because he can see we are too hungry to care.  We sink into plastic chairs and order something to eat.  Dogs and chickens walk beneath our table.  A radiator-ribbed mongrel brushes my leg and I jerk away.  Instinctively I raise my hand to brush off the filth, but then I think, I have to eat with these hands. Carefully, I fold my hands in my lap. Salmonella, E-coli, tapeworms; I can almost see them wriggling over the table.  But my squeamishness does not last.  High-altitude hunger has a mind of it’s own and the smell of spiced lentils soon twists my stomach into pleasant gurgles.

I look over all our stuff spread out on the ground and shake my head.  J.V. sits with his spindly legs outstretched, lolling in a shaft of sunlight.  Nepali sherpas are deceptively strong, I know this, but this guy just does not look the part.  I scratch my head.  We’re paying him ten times the average daily wage, so maybe I’m just missing something; maybe he’s the Clark Kent of Katmandu Adventure Co, Ltd., and any second he’ll duck behind a box of Fanta and come back with shoulders like Atlas and calves the size of melons.

A pesky salesman materializes from behind the shelves.  He launches into an animated pitch about how strong his porters are and about how we are obviously going to need them and how we are not acclimatized yet, and so on.  My eyebrows pinch together. Something smells rigged here, I think.  I throw my hands up and gesture towards J.V., indicating that we already have a porter.  But J.V. turns a poker-face to me and says, “I am no carrying; I am guide.”  Air escapes my teeth in a rush.

Exasperated, I turn to dad and say, “Did you hear that?  Our porter is no porter, he’s a guide!  How are we going to get that big duffel up the hill?!”

Dad, who has been sunning himself placidly, turns a sleepy eye on me and sighs.  He scoots his chair back and stands to negotiate.

The sales pitch takes on a sense of urgency.  For a few animated moments it looks as though we are going to be severely swindled.  Then in a flurry of concessions, we settle on a price for a swarthy, robust porter, at only twice the average daily wage.  J.V. looks pleased and mildly sheepish.  He offers to switch packs with me for the first steep ascent to Dhampus.  I purse my lips and decline.  I am too frustrated with him to accept a peace offering.  Besides, I will get to the Himalayas on my own steam.

As if on cue, Dal Baht arrives, steaming and smelling painfully exotic and delicious.  If it were Esau’s pottage and our little wad of money were the last wad in the world, it could not bewitch us any more.  We pay for it gladly and wolf it down like animals.

Halfway through the meal, my thoughts turn to the trek ahead of us.  I am told there is a surprise for trekkers right at the beginning, an architectural wonder, so stunning, it boggles the mind.  I can’t imagine what kind of architectural wonder could be way out here next to a canvass tent and a pot-belly stove, but I have to find out.  “All right,” I say with my mouth full, “Let’s go.”

To be continued…

Sometimes waiting on God means realizing he is waiting on you–waiting for you to face your giants, like David, head-on and full throttle…

Rich stands in the boathouse, massaging his head with a towel as thick as a blanket.  He works slowly, lolling his head in the fabric, twisting spikes of blond hair into elaborate whorls like crop circles.  His towel displays a permanent marker sketch of two swollen hips, a sinuous torso, and a blossoming bust.  “Just something to lay on,” he is fond of saying.  He drapes the cloth over himself like a cowl and his eyes glisten beneath it, two marbles, watery blue and cold.

I pause in the doorway with my question, the question I’ve been practicing all morning.

“Rich”, I say.  My voice sounds thin.  I am embarrassed by the sound of it.

Rich massages his left ear.

I clear my throat.  “Rich.”  My voice splits an octave.  I sway in the doorway, a flagpole on a frosty morning, loose red shorts flapping against gooseflesh.  I am eighteen years old; why do I always shrivel like this, like a child?

“Can I borrow your wetsuit?” I ask.

He lowers the towel over his groin and dries his tan and ample thighs.

“I’m gonna try a deep-water start today,” I say.  I cross my fingers.  I need that suit to barefoot.  It’s the camp’s only padded suit, my only shield against a cold and violent ride behind a competition ski boat, my only armor as I try to walk on water holding nothing but the whip-end of a sixty foot rope.  I imagine myself without it, skipping like a rock across the roiling backwash of the propeller, turning black and blue.  I need that suit.

Rich turns his back to me.  He hangs up his towel lazily, idly, as if laying aside a royal robe.  The coveted wetsuit dangles next to his hand, dripping.  He makes a move toward it.  I exhale, breathing a funnel of cloud into the air.

From the dock, I hear John beep the horn, a shivering tritone from the camp’s newest watercraft, the Ski Nautique, a professional ski boat that leaves almost no wake.  I glance down the dock and wave to say I’m coming.  John nods, kicks his feet onto the dashboard, and pushes up his sunglasses, which he wears every day in spite of the mist and low morning sun.  My eyes linger on the water.  It is placid and mint green, reflecting the tall, spare pines that stipple the landscape everywhere in Oregon’s Cascade Range.  I turn back to Rich, expecting him to be holding out the suit.

“You know”, he says and pauses to look me over.  His body appears to stretch upward, making him too long for his legs, as if he is standing in a fun-house mirror.  I grip the door jam.  The Nautique rumbles to life.

“You know”, he says, “Letting someone borrow your wetsuit is kinda like letting them borrow your underwear.”  He smirks.

My heart sinks.  I bite my tongue.

Then, something inside me shifts.  My nostrils flare.  Blood surges in my ears.  Rich lets people borrow his wetsuit all the time—the right people.  Clearly, I’m not one of the right people.  I never have been.  It infuriates me.  A whole summer of sneers and condescension rolls over me like a dump truck.  A creaking load of social manure with all the dreck of life under Rich’s spell slides onto me in one steaming dollop.

I see myself clearly.  I have never been anything but a pawn to Rich, a passive runt.  And I have never talked back to him.  Not once.

“That sounds rehearsed Rich,” I hear myself saying, “Did you come up with that all by yourself?  Or is that one of Dale’s lines?”

His smirk freezes.  His eyes, electric blue only moments before, dim to the color of steel.  He fixes them on me.  The corners of his mouth flicker and then flatten.  He tires to speak, but the words tangle in his throat, twisting his Adam’s apple into a knotty gourd.

A gust of wind funnels through the doorway, lifting my hair, making me ever so slightly taller.  It buoys me.

“I said that sounds rehearsed, Rich.  You come up with that all by yourself, or did you have to ask your little, whatchyamacallit, mutual admiration society?”

Amplified silence.  Outside, I hear tiny wavelets lap against the dock.  I smell gasoline and pine pitch.  Rich flicks his eyes to stare at the wood knots in the paneling behind me.

“Tell you what, Rich,” I say, “why don’t you take MY underwear and I’ll take your wetsuit?”  I hear the words.  Am I really saying this?  “Unless, of course, your collection of underwear is getting too big?  I’ve seen lots of people in that suit this summer.”

Fear falls away, delicious and alarming.  I realize, with a flutter, that there are no bridges to burn with Rich.  How could I have imagined wheedling my way into his inner circle?  I am free.  It is like putting my hand on a stick shift for the first time.

I pop the clutch.

“Actually Rich, the more I think about it, you probably peed in that thing a dozen times.  Maybe I should just let you keep it.”

His face is a mask and I hit the accelerator.  It’s time to flatten the elephant in the room once and for all.

“I’m going to get my deep water start today.  You know that, don’t you; that’s what this is all about, isn’t it.  God forbid, the windsurfing instructor should learn to barefoot before the waterski instructor.”

I shake my head and suck breath through my teeth.  “I don’t need no stinking wetsuit.”

I turn and walk down the embankment toward the dock.  John waves impatiently.  The Nautique snorts and tugs at its mooring.  The air is crisp and the water is as smooth as a slab of obsidian.  I will barefoot today—I WILL BAREFOOT TODAY–goose bumps, pounded flesh, irrigated sinuses, whatever it takes.  There is an inevitability about it now that didn’t exist just five minutes ago.

Rich stands in the shadows of the boathouse.  I don’t look back, but I can feel his stare boring into my shoulder blades.  He’ll have a good view from there, I think.

“Ready-O,” John asks?

“Ready-O.”  I say.

I leap into ice water.

“Hit it!” I yell.

My body goes rigid, toes pointed.  I float like a plank, arching.  The line twangs and the shock of it drives me down, peeling my eyelids back, shoveling lake and silt into my nose.  I do not let go.  Not this time.

I shed water, like space junk; it falls away and I rise.  Magically.

I am standing on water.  St. Peter.  I am standing on water.  It scours my soles, jet-streams my ankles.

John whoops and signals a turn about.  The shoreline tilts back into view.

And I see Rich standing in the boathouse, watching me.

I just read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story Young Goodman Brown.  Great!

This story really pushes the reader to consider how we run amok when we try to become ultra pure and holy.  We’ve all met people like Goodman who, when they are confronted by the ugliness of the human condition, draw the wrong conclusion and miss the point entirely.

In reaction to sin, Goodman isolates himself on his own little island of holiness–and becomes a complete failure as a human being.  Ouch.  The darkness of the story is its own irony.

Hawthorne seems to suggest that we cannot focus on the opposite of an idea and thereby escape it.  We cannot focus on sin and thereby escape it.  Hawthorne asks the question:  can we find goodness if we’ve trained our eyes to see only badness–in ourselves, in the world, and in other people, especially in those closest to us?

There’s no sense doing violence to Hawthorne’s prose by attempting to summarize the story itself;  it only takes 12-15 minutes to read.  Get it from the library.  Or borrow my copy.  Or download it for free.  Or read it online.

Read:  go forth and be thoughtful.

Click here to read the interview.

The following passage from John O’Donohue’s book, Anam Ċara, made me think fondly of ConneXions and Band of Brothers and all the wonderful small groups that have sprouted up in our church over the last three years.  These are places of belonging, of knowing and being known…

“In the Celtic tradition, there is a beautiful understanding of love and friendship.  One of the fascinating ideas here is the idea of soul-love; the old Gaelic term for this is anam ċara.  Anam is the Gaelic word for soul and ċara is the word for friend. … In the early Celtic church, a person who acted as a teacher, companion, or spiritual guide was called an anam ċara.  It originally referred to someone to whom you confessed, revealing the hidden intimacies of your life.  With the anam ċara you could share your innermost self, your mind, and your heart.  This friendship was an act of recognition and belonging. … In everyone’s life there is great need for an anam ċara, a soul friend, in this love you are understood as you are without mask or pretension.  Where you are understood, you are at home.”

If you’ve joined any of the small groups associated with ConneXions, you probably know what it means to be at home.  From personal experience, I can tell you the most powerful aspect of Band of Brothers is that we intentionally dismantle the poser in each of us, the pretentious part of us that stands in the way of friendship and intimacy, so we can have real dialogs, instead of so many monologues.

Again, O’Donohue speaks to this in his recent interview with Krista Tippett, Speaking of Faith public radio broadcast:

“When is the last time that you had a great conversation, a conversation which wasn’t just two intersecting monologues, which is what passes for conversation a lot in this culture.  But when had you last a great conversation, in which you over heard yourself saying things that you never knew you knew.  That you heard yourself receiving from somebody words that absolutely found places within you that you thought you had lost…a conversation that continued to sing in your mind for weeks afterwards, you know?”

If this isn’t what the body of Christ is for, then I don’t know what I’m doing in it.  Life is difficult.  And doubly difficult alone.  Keeping the faith is, in my opinion, keeping the friendship, the conversation, the intimacy alive.  Fostering it.  Without that, what do we have but arid stoicism?

Listen to your heart.  And to the hearts of others.  Insist on beauty.  Insist on true friendship in Christ.  Insist on intimacy.  It’s worth the trouble.  It’s worth the risk of exposure.  We were made for it.

They will know we are Christians by our love.