Preparing for Nepal

I first went to Nepal in November and December of 2001. I'd just spent a semester studying abroad in southern India. We weren't supposed to go to Nepal-- 9/11 had just happened, the U.S. had declared war on Afghanistan, and Nepal was in a state of emergency.

We went anyway. (I went with a former girlfriend, who is still a close friend of mine.) We took a train to Darjeeling via Kolkata. Our first night in Nepal, we saw a white light hovering above the mosquito netting, and we were convinced that a spirit had joined us.

On the elephant god Ganesha's birthday a few months earlier, I'd had a strange experience where I was convinced that my bedroom in Mysore was filled with chanting monks from the Himalayas.

While trekking in the Annapurnas, I saw what looked like a portal on the shimmering face of Dhaulaghiri, and imagined that another world lay beyond it. While hiking along the Tibetan plateau, we saw a wall of caves which seemed to be inhabited by the spirits of renunciants in deep meditation.

On that same trek, we visited the eternal flame of Muktinath. Saddhus walk from the southern tip of India to see this holy place, wearing nothing but sandals and orange robes (a fact that would deeply impress any ultra-light backpacker).

During a strange and somewhat ill-fated reiki retreat in the Shivapuri Nature Retreat north of Kathmandu, we met a Nepali boy named Raju who was blind in one eye.

When I left, I knew that I wanted to return to Nepal in some deeper capacity. I wanted to give something back to the community, and I also wanted more than just a superficial understanding of Nepali culture and customs. I also wanted to deepen my own spiritual practice. 

Now, with the help of a Fulbright grant, Melissa and I are headed to Kathmandu in September. I plan to learn Nepali Sign Language, to get involved in the deaf community, and to write stories and hopefully a longer work based on my experiences. Over the next few months, we will be preparing for our trip, arranging visas and vaccinations, discussing our hopes and dreams, reminding ourselves that we must be flexible and open to what our experience brings us.

Now, as then, Nepal is facing political turmoil, though the prospects seem much brighter now. The Maoists have a significant role in the government, the monarchy was recently abolished, and while the peace is tenuous, the Maoists and Royal Army are no longer engaged in a war of attrition. The new government, while bulky and bureaucratic, has one of the largest representations of minorities and women in any government.

Now, as then, Nepal remains one of the poorest countries in the world. There are only a few fragile lifelines connecting Kathmandu to the outside world. Because Nepal is mainly mountainous and there isn't enough arable farmland to sustain its growing population, it relies on food and fuel imports from India. As one of the largest sources of potential hydroelectric power in the world, Nepal is literally caught between a rock and a hard place-- both China and India would like to exploit its resources.

Kathmandu lies on one of the world's most active fault lines, and a major earthquake happens approximately every 75 years. The last one happened in 1934. I had to laugh when I added 75 onto that, since Melissa and I will be there in 2008-09. But a major earthquake in Kathmandu would be no laughing matter. The Fulbright Orientation Manual predicts that there would be tremendous loss of life, 60% of the buildings in Kathmandu would be destroyed, and bridges and roads would collapse.

Nepal remains one of the most fragile and beautiful places in the world. The streets and orphanages are full of children like Raju, and as a deaf person myself, I hope that I can provide something unique to the deaf community.

Nepal is sometimes compared to a downtrodden Shangri La, long since discovered and trampled by backpackers (going all the way back to the hippie days of Freak Street). And yet to me, Nepal is still full of beyuls, Buddhism's hidden valleys. There are still spirits in caves and portals in mountains, even as Kathmandu and the country as a whole face the pressures of the 21st century.

Olympic NP

A view of the Olympic range from Hurricane Ridge. The biggest challenge of this hike was "kick-stepping" my way down a steep snow slope, and then having to climb my footsteps back on the return.

A small island on Lake Angeles shrouded in mist. It looked like Avalon. 

Most of the hikes along Hurricane Ridge were snowed in. One regular hiker told us there were more downed trees in the national park than there had been in the past sixty years. Because the Olympic Peninsula gets so much rain, even the biggest giants have shallow rooting systems, since most of the rain is near the surface. As a result, the forests are particularly sensitive to blow downs. Olympic NP is the epitome of a pacific northwest rain forest. Some of the biggest trees in the world are here, draped in thick coats of moss and lichen.

While the east side of the park is in the rain shadow of the Olympics, the west and southwest part of the park is particularly lush. There are some great hikes around Hoh and Quinault Rain Forests.

Glacier NP

Swiftcurrent Lake at dusk. There's a short hike around the lake that leads to both the Grinnell Lake and the Grinnell Glacier trail. This was our first night at Many Glaciers, our favorite part of the park. Other great hikes we enjoyed included Cracker Lake (13 miles) and Iceberg Lake (12 miles), and I enjoyed a solo hike to Bullhead Lake (8 miles) at the base of Swiftcurrent Pass, which was snowed in.

Hiking in the snow to Iceberg Lake. It's 12 miles round trip to the lake. Lovely Ptarmigan Falls is a few miles in, and past that, it was mostly snow and steep slopes. The lake is in a glacial cirque, and there was evidence of avalanche falls all along the slopes above us. This is actually good news, since it means most of the avalanches had already happened. At the lake, a rushing torrent of meltwater had taken out the bridge and I used my poles to scout out a suitable snow crossing.

A view of Two Medicine Lake from Scenic Point, my most strenuous solo hike at Glacier. Though it's only about six miles roundtrip, the ridges are exposed and there's approximately 2000 feet of elevation gain. To the west you get this fabulous view, and to the east is a study in contrasts-- the great plains of Montana.

 On the night of the summer solstice, near Avalanche Lake on the west side of the park. My mother and I did a lovely evening walk among old-growth cedars. We were both feeling inspired by the beautiful scenery and the solstice.

Back on the Blog

I've been meaning to return to this blog for a while now, but over the last two years, I've focused most of my writing energy towards short stories and longer works. I wanted to make the most of my two years in the Hopkins MFA program, and I had a quantitative goal of a thousand pages of new material over that time. It may seem ridiculous to quantify my work, but the entire process of writing, rewriting, revising and sending work out often feels like a two steps forward, one step back endeavor. Now that I'm finished with the program, and trying to make the most of my last ten days in Hampden's summer backwater, I find myself looking back on the last two years in a harsher light than I expected, or even think is warranted.

But as my stepmother astutely pointed out, "You didn't come here for the scenery."

I spent the better part of July going places for the scenery-- a week in Glacier National Park, another in Olympic National Park, before returning to Portland for the first time in two years. And in returning to Portland I also found something I lacked for the past two years: a supportive community, a commonality of interests. I came to Baltimore a little too naive and idealistic about what to expect from the program and from my classmates.

Ultimately, though, I remind myself of what I did find: two years of teaching experience, a place to work on my writing, a few good friends, moments of superlative advice in workshop. Most importantly, I see the improvement in my work over the last two years. Subtle things happened between the first and the thousandth page, things I can't quantify or qualify... and yet I feel I still have a long way to go.

For all its positives, the program encourages, without meaning to, an extreme degree of solipsism. Maybe this is just the nature of living in the ivory tower. Perhaps when a writer plays god, he finds himself giving into his fantasies and shortcomings, or falls in love with phrases or characters because of how pretty they look. And of course, it seems that our little agendas have to be veiled with the requisite ironies and inside jokes, dressed down so they don't appear too naive or sentimental. Our narrators must be 'in the know,' and their wisdom makes them a little world-weary, full of restraint.

World-weary, restrained, ironic... it's a formula we all have to learn to some extent, but I do find myself wondering if there's some way to break free of the rules that many literary magazines live by. I think my reasons for moving away from this formula are mainly personal. The life I live outside writing and reading isn't as meaningful when I adapt these stylistic strategies. I honestly believe that one must live John Gardner's "continuous dream" in order to write it; I'd like both my writing and my life to be authentic. I want my work to follow an invisible moral code, one that is not dogmatic but spiritual, one that chooses fresh eyes over irony. These are the fresh eyes I hope to find in Nepal.