Nepalese Notebook: September 25th, 2014

September 25th, 2014

Besi Sahar 760m.

You never expect it, but the high mountains soon give way to the low, and the day comes when it is cloudy and humid and easy to forget what is near.  Everything simply disappears without importance, and even if we believe in it, have seen it with our own eyes and accept it wholeheartedly, the lapse is too great, change is too certain, and what was once a thousand year old glacier is now the fountain you drink out of.  Now it is only a busy little Nepalese town where colorful buses pass, where street vendors and shops remind you of the growing indifference of what had once seemed normal, and a fleeting sense of accomplishment gives way to restlessness.  Could we have done more?  Having the trek over is short-lived, and looking back upon the hardships of the trail reminds one of a melancholic sort of comfort that creates new adventures and even more hardships before the time it takes your muscles to recuperate from the previous journey.  Pushing oneself to extremes is not something I have ever enjoyed, but it is understandable now; there is something deeper and more profound, and you want to get there, you want to reach that state of full confidence and comfort--but what mountain has it?  What trail is part of it?  We only remember, but that is not enough, and if we try to do it, it cannot come from the effort.

After our taxi service had been reserved to Kathmandu, the long afternoon was for us alone: a shave, a curious look at the shops, and back to the beginning of things.  It all goes in this sort of way, always back to the beginning.  I think of the donkey-drivers from one morning not long ago; they had all gathered out in front of the tea-house and one of them was passing around his whip, which had its wooden handle carved into a flute brightly coloured.  They all took turns playing a few notes, some of them good, some of them bad, all of them laughing and perhaps showing-off, until it was time to gather their donkeys then spread out over the hillside and head on to the end of their journey.  This is the real importance, unattached to anything whether coming or going, being just as it is, coming and going.

Douglas Thornton