Little Steps

 "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" ~Lao-tzu

How do you reach an altitude greater than 3,000 feet above the highest Rocky Mountain peaks?  Little steps.  Each day, you make small leaps in elevation going 1,000 to 3,000 feet higher.  Each physical step you take is spaced carefully apart, slowly, regularly, conserving energy as the oxygen diminishes from the air you breathe to less than half of what you are used to.  Up and down valleys you travel with these small steps. At first, you are in the crush of those heading toward the Everest Base Camp, but after three days, you turn aside toward Gokyo on the road less travelled.

And as you trek, you walk carefully on cliff edges alongside soaring raptors and wander in the shadows of geological giants, following in the footprints of snow leopards.  The omnipresent sound of bells give warning of approaching yak trains all day.  Yak dung coats your pathway and feeds the fires each night in tea houses providing you some measure of warmth.  Its smell is always present, sweeter than your own body odor after days without water for bathing and showering.

Each night you sleep under heavy blankets in rooms with temperatures indistinguishable from the outside frigid air.  You place batteries, devices and water in your bed with you so that some remains unfrozen for the next morning's hike.  You carefully maneuver through the black ice surrounding the squat toilet as you void the gallon of water you have consumed to prevent altitude sickness.   Your room is lit by a dim solar light which fades as the battery charge diminishes long after you have fallen into a deep sleep.  Each morning's bitter coldness is staved off by hot tea and trekking.   You breathe through your nose and neck gaiter carefully conserving your warm moist air as you take each step.  You nod in greeting to those locals struggling under loads larger than you have ever carried in your life as they move from one small habitation to the next, bringing goods and trekker supplies along the way.  Their steps are large as they carry loads of over 100 pounds to places several days' walk from the nearest road or airport, accessible only by foot or by the all too frequent rescue helicopters.

While the way is challenging, the rewards are momentous. Landscapes of Mother Earth's greatest peaks surround you, engulfing your mind, commanding your eyes, and filling your soul.  Your mind, stretched by the surreal vistas before you, can never return to the same state.  You are forever changed by what you see and what you attempt to comprehend. Each little step has added up to the journey of a lifetime and takes one to heights never imagined before.  As you stand at the summit of your journey, you see that it has been each little step of life that has led you to these persons, this place, this time, this peace.

Posted in Namche Bazaar, Nepal.  Images are of our ascent to 17,575 feet in view of Mt Everest; a typical black ice toilet experience; one of many yak dung fires to keep us warm; and one of many views along the trek.

Hurts so good

Our legs shook and buckled as we headed down a short flight of stairs in Pokhara, Nepal, after our first "real" trek.  We have had the opportunity to participate in commercial treks in many of the places we have traveled.  There were the Great Walks in New Zealand, the W Trek in Torres del Pine, and the Inca Trail in Peru.  For various reasons, we either could not or chose not to walk with companies and guides in these situations.  Sometimes price or timing was a barrier; other times, one of us was sick with food poisoning or some other foreign (or not so foreign) ailment. In Nepal, however, we opted to "go for the gusto" and booked with a local Nepalese company to take us trekking.

Trekking, as we understand and define it, is walking significant distances over several days.  There is an

element of weight to carry on one's own back that can make or break the entire experience. As we approached the Himalayas, we were hopeful we were up to the distance and time requirements of our first five day trek, but we knew for certain we could not carry all of the gear we would would need for temperatures varying from quite warm to below freezing.  We have both injured our backs in the past and are limited to 20 pounds of weight at a time.  A commercially supported trek solved this dilemma for us.  While we each carried from 8 - 10 pounds of gear, our porter carried the rest (40 - 50 pounds total) for us.  This included his gear, our sleeping bags and down jackets, an extra change of clothing for each of us, our "pharmacy" and snacks, and toiletries for each of us.  We loved our time with our porter and our guide as we listened to Nepalese songs, learned phrases in the language, and exchanged cultural tidbits and teasing.  Their presence brought us so much more than logistical support.

As we trekked, we stopped nightly at simple tea houses along the route.  Some were more comfortable than others, but all were basic, even by our evolving standards.  Rooms were sparse with the beds consisting of a thin piece of foam on a board.  Some had no electricity at all, not even a simple light.  None had heat. Bedding and a pillow were always supplied, often including a thick top cover to keep out the cold at night, but in colder regions such might be washed only once a season, not day.   We knew we were living the high life when bathrooms were on the same floor and contained western toilets.  Such was a rarity with squat toilets often being a hallway and floor away.  None had toilet paper and few had nearby sinks.  A couple of places had showers if you were hardy enough to take one.  The food was plain without much spice, but it was nourishing, especially the dal baht, a Nepalese dish consisting of lentil soup, rice, and cooked greens.  Drinking water was always available, sometimes boiled, sometimes bottled, and sometimes both!

The first trekking we chose to do in Nepal consisted of walking up, up, up starting from about 7,000 feet to around 11,000 feet.  Sometimes (rarely) there was some relief to the upward slog, and always, what goes up

must come down.  During our initial 5 day trek, we spent the first 3 hours hiking moderate hills feeling pretty good about ourselves and our abilities!  Then we hit the final 3 hiking hours that first day and faced 3,200 stone steps which wound straight up the mountain.  Our days became blurs of steps, either up (which became preferred) or down (which was frequently icy and torturous), often for hours.  The steps here are like those all over the world ---- not created for trekkers; rather, historic trade routes in tough terrain connecting rural, mountain communities.  We were humbled as local people, hustled by us with loads twice as heavy as our porter's or with the intention of walking in hours distances we would need days to achieve.  One reason we loved our trek was the glimpse of remote village life it gave us.  A shy smile, a murmured "Namaste" were gifts given to us as we watched water buffalo and loose lines of mules being driven by us, loaded with goods such as chickens, propane canisters, and building materials.

When we returned from the trek, it took our legs about 3 days and a good Swedish massage to fully recover.  "Hurts so good" was what we said to each other as we tripped and stumbled our way up and down steps around the town of Pokhara.  Our next trek will test our muscle strength and endurance again and especially our ability to withstand the effects of altitude, as we will attempt to climb to about 18,000 feet.  But the rewards include the chance to stare at the "rooftop" of Mother Earth... Everest.

Posted in Chitwan National Park, Nepal.  Images include us taking a break with our guide, a line of pack mules, Sally in our first tea house room, and the view from one of our tea houses near Gorka, Nepal.

The first 48

As we got closer to our date of departure from the U.S., we discussed the comparison of "this time" with "the first time."  When we originally left the comforts of home two years ago to travel to places that were completely unknown to us, we felt fear, hesitancy, and insecurity as well as excitement and anticipation.  We had very little idea of how to "make it work" in places that were completely foreign to us.  As we traveled, often as locals and backpackers do, we met challenges and overcame hardships and by doing so gained confidence in ourselves and our abilities with every step we took.  Preparing for the journey this time, we felt much more confident and were relatively at ease with our abilities.....we knew what to expect.  As Kathmandu was to teach us, we were completely mistaken!

After spending over 30 hours on three planes and in two airports, we found we had an impaired exhaustion as we sought to deal with the world awaiting us in Nepal.  To describe the scene on a Kathmandu street is almost impossible.  A crush of diverse humanity fills the twisted, damaged and unmarked streets.  While Nepalese are supposed to drive on the left, a visitor would never know.  It is a complete free-for-all with each sidewalkless street dominated by pedestrians, pressing each other forward in a wave as the motorcycles, bikes, cars, and busses bellow toxic fumes while drivers press hopelessly on horns and gun their engines to thrust people to the side.  Small shops, with tired-eyed owners wearing grubby face masks silhouetted in dark doorways, line the streets.  And randomly, the strangest sights such as mountain people staying warm with a wood fire built in the midst of this madness or men standing on top of busses pushing aside wads of snarled electric wires play out in front of you.  We were thankful for our own face masks that reduced the acrid burn in our throats.

The homestay we had chosen was with a nice older couple who lived in what one would describe as an upper middle class section of Kathmandu.  Our room in the house was cozy, but a bit on the chilly side when we found the heater did not work.  The bathroom was well equipped, but there was no hot water and the toilet could not be flushed until the water to it was turned on briefly and off before the leak drained onto the floor.  The heater and refrigerator did not work at first, but we were soon to learn that repairing electrical appliances in a city with a possible maximum of 6 hours of electricity a day was not a real priority.  Three hours during the day and three hours at the darkest time of the night are all anyone can expect to have power in Kathmandu.

The following morning, we walked into the city to see what life was like for the rest of the populace in "another big city in a developing country."  We were stunned.  As we walked and watched, it quickly became apparent that we had not seen this level of poverty anywhere else we had traveled.  It oozed out of every nook and cranny; it was a constant companion to everyone we met.  We had a difficult time comprehending what we were seeing.   This is the first country we have visited where cell phones are rarely seen.  Lepers begging and children tugging are a common sight.  The strongest image of our first 48 hours may be that of the cremation site where over one hundred bodies are burned each day.  The rivers in Kathmandu, even the holy one below Shiva's temple, are described as toxic.  The raw sewage, heavy metals, and industrial waste did little to sweeten the smell of burned bodies.  Each day, the ashes of those fires are added to the calf-high sludge.  And as we watched a family mourn, a woman walked below them through the cold sludge, feeling for the coins that might be tossed into the water along with the remains.  Back and forth she moved, trolling for a few cents.  If Kathmandu had been our first international experience when we set out almost two years ago, we would have been frightened by it.  Now, we are fascinated and thoughtful, often cloaked in stunned silence as we attempt to process and understand what we are seeing.

Posted in Kathmandu, Nepal.  Images are of Jess with her facemask, Sally grateful for a bucket of hot water, and a woman searching for coins below a funeral ritual.

Time

Life had reached a crescendo of activity before we sold our home, possessions, and quit our jobs in 2012.  A common phrase to friends and family, if we had time to utter it at all, was "I'll call you later." How many of us have said the same to those we love, care for, and who are important to us?  Yet, so often, the months or even years pass with a few Christmas letters and hugs at funerals and weddings as our schedules keep us from greater investments of time for friends and family.  Our society is a busy one in America. We work hard, encourage our kids to keep busy, and many of us have multigenerational responsibilities that involve significant time with immediate family.

One of the joys of these past two years has been having the opportunity to visit with people.  While some of our international encounters have been well chronicled, we have been quiescent about much of the past few months back in the states. We have loved this special period in a manner completely different than the months of international travel.  We have had time, more than we have in decades, for friends and family.  We have spent plenty of it in just each other's company as we journeyed and camped in "The Mansion", our beloved camper van.  However, we have also walked in deserts, through snow drifts, on city sidewalks, and across sandy beaches beside people we care for and love.  We have packed, organized and laughed with friends in their periods of transition and change.  We have met the newest generation emerging from our families and friends and have tumbled along in their youthful exuberances.  We have had time to visit and listen to rich lifetime stories from senior mentors and matriarchs.  And everywhere, we have eaten well.  Too well!

Our memories from this period of our adventure will be filled with the smells of great meals in the best of company.  The smells of steaming tamales, vegetable soup, fresh flour tortillas, campfire hotdogs, Cajun, Mexican, Indian and Thai will be gateways into memories of conversations punctuated with laughter and/or tears.   While we have been mainly traveling in the southwest, we have been welcomed into abodes all over the country.  In those homes, we have found the time to reconnect to people we love through song, games, concerts, potlucks, and movies.  Rich spicy teas, fun spirits, and strong coffee have been the mortar binding many of these moments into new foundations of friendship and family.

Time.  It is such a valuable resource.  Yet, unlike more material resources, it cannot be saved.  It must be spent.  We are fortunate beyond all measure that it is our most plentiful resource at the moment.  And we have loved spending it with our friends and family.  We know how valuable a resource it is to all of them as well and we are humbled at how many found some to spend with us as well.  We are getting ready to head to Nepal and to explore more of Southeast Asia.  We leave with physical and spiritual strength given the nurturing and love of our family and friends.

Posted in Gunnison, CO.  Images are of wonderful food and fun with family and friends throughout the Southwest and Canada.

How do you choose? Part 2.

Over a year ago in our blog entry "How do you choose?", we sat down to explain our path of personal growth and adventurous travel in a world more than 200 countries strong. In our initial blog postings, we had addressed why we were seeking the adventure of a lifetime by selling our possessions, our home, and traveling like post AARP gypsies with small backpacks and young hearts.  Simply put, we saw an opportunity, a window in time, to answer the question of "how do we continue to grow together?"  We knew that our most significant growth had always been realized when we challenged ourselves. We could imagine no better teachers to challenge us than the 7 billion people belonging to cultures we knew little about and who lived in places with exotic names such as Machu Picchu, Patagonia, Java, Siquijor, Bali, Borneo and Kathmandu.  The window of two years emerged as a reasonable period of time to envision our journey financially and physically.  We feared that Sally's rheumatoid arthritis might not grant us even that window to travel the way locals in third world countries do......packed like human sardines, balanced on hard surfaces or bags of goods, bounced along broken roads, or swirled on dangerous river or oceanic currents.

We have learned so much about ourselves and about the complicated, beautiful, and often environmentally, politically, and culturally endangered planet we call Mother Earth.  We had not anticipated that during these two years, marriage, then shoulder and wrist surgery, would send us back to the USA and nestle us in the warm arms of our Gunnison, Colorado community.  Yet, like every other place we visited, these past two months in Gunnison have been educational beyond our wildest imaginations.

As we venture into the final 8 months or so of our two year "walk-about", we face, again, a choice for our future.  How do we choose where to go for the next 8 months and what should we do afterwards?  We choose as we did before, by listening to others, by listening to each other, and by understanding our values and principles.  We value international travel and can no longer imagine a life devoid of its lessons and adventures.  We value our families and our Gunnison community and understand the importance of nurturing our souls by being present with family and friends.  We want to continue to grow with humility and feel a more stronger need to give, where possible, with grace.  We understand the importance of achieving balance in a world that overwhelms us with tears for its beauty, and at times, it's cruelty.  And we value growing with each other, being humbled each day, and learning every hour.

We "choose" to live these values and principles by continuing, for the next 8 months, our travels, first within the warmer regions of our wonderful country while Sally fully recovers from her surgeries, and then by returning to Asia and visiting Nepal, hopefully Tibet, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and other places we have yet to consider.  As we complete our initial two year walkabout, we plan to spend more time giving to those who want to address some of the environmental, political, or cultural ills of our planet.  There are many people who have put their hearts and souls into projects, places, and ideas that can make a real difference in the world.  They exist in the US and in every country we have traveled.  We have come to understand that our "window" of two years of accelerated personal growth needs to evolve into a physically, emotionally, mentally, and financially sustainable life.  What does that mean to us?  Stay tuned for a blog entry during the next 8 months that illuminates our choices!  As before, we invite our friends to join us along the way.  Below is our tentative, and always changing, itinerary for the next 8 months.


2013/2014 Tentative Itinerary
Early till mid November, front range of Colorado
Mid November till end December, camping in AZ, NV and visiting friends and family
January till end of February, exploring the warmer places in the US
March and April - Nepal, possibly Tibet
May - Cambodia
June - Elsewhere in SE Asia, possibly Laos, Myanmar
July - the beginning of our next adventure

Images are of Sally and Barb Klingman, our hostess extraordinaire in Gunnison, Colorado; a volcano in the Lake District of Chile; and a Pygmy Elephant in Borneo, Malaysia.  Posted in Gunnison, Colorado.

Shutdown

The world continues to be our teacher even while we are back in the United States.  Yesterday, the Philippines were struck with a destructive and devastating 7.2 earthquake.  The epicenter was on a small island we visited last June.  Bohol Island is a place well known for its cute Yoda like tarsier primates and “Chocolate Hills” landscapes.  While we appreciated the natural diversity and the landscapes, it was the people who moved our hearts and won our affection.  We stayed for almost a week at the family owned, small Loboc River Resort.  Some of our favorite experiences with locals emerged from that time.  Rather than adhere to all of the normal tourist trails, we spent time walking through small villages along the gorgeous green river and attending the local band and choir practices.  As we walked, locals would come out of houses to wave at us, greet us, and laugh with us, not at us, at the sight of two tourists walking the back roads rarely traveled.

The people there were generous beyond our greatest hopes, welcoming us into their lives.  We learned how prominent community members mortgaged their businesses to send the choir kids to international competitions and buy instruments for the now internationally recognized youth band.  Filipinos like Zynn and her family believed in investing in the youth of their community as well as opening an ecotourist resort and providing jobs for local villagers.  They were thoughtful about sustainability as they carefully negotiated the challenges and benefits of tourism.  The place was so special we suggested it to our favorite Canadian traveling family, and they arrived there yesterday……just in time for the earthquake.

The resort was heavily damaged.  The heart of the small town was ripped out as their incredible 400 year old Catholic church constructed of local fossilized coral blocks came tumbling down.  People died as structures, including hospitals, crumbled.  The roads buckled and bridges shattered.  The island is so isolated that ferries and planes could not initially reach those in need due to the catastrophic damage.  Fortunately, our Canadian friends and the people we met survived.  But everything is forever changed.  The very businesses put up for collateral to fund the opportunities for their local youth are those no longer standing.  We have no idea what happens next.  The entire island was “shutdown.”

Disasters are always more personal when we are familiar with a place and the people who are in the middle of the event.  For us, not only is that true, but we are abashed as we consider critical needs in the world while observing the current political insanity of our own countrymen and women.  We watch our political leaders reenact the high school game of “chicken” on a global scale.  They are oblivious, or so it seems, to the danger and devastation of “shutdown.”    In a world trying to stabilize its economic future, where individuals such as those on the IslSand of Bohol are trying to realize small gains in the quality of life for their children, our political immaturity is frightening.  Travel is enriching, but it is also sobering.   If one message was driven home every day, it was the reality of how disparate opportunities for advancement and an improved life are based on the one simple fact of where a person is born.  We have so much individual and collective potential in this nation, yet we cannot help wonder how historians will view the fall 2013.  We suspect that historians will recognize that the humility, resilience, and generosity of the Filipino people helped them recover from a tragic and unavoidable natural disaster as they sought to “re-open” their community and economy.  We cannot help but wonder what historians will say about what the people of the United States wrought upon themselves despite our enormous privilege and potential. 

 

Images are of a talented young man playing for us from the Loboc Youth Band, the now destroyed Loboc River Resort, and the 17 Century Loboc church before and after the quake.  Posted in Gunnison, Colorado.

For those wanting to assist the Filipinos as they recover from this tragedy, we encourage three things.  First, consider  donation to the Red Cross in the Philippines.  Second, consider going to the  Visayas Islands, including a visit to Bohol Island, on a future vacation.  Tourism is their life blood and they will need your resources to recover.  Finally, when they rebuild the Loboc River Resort, and they will, consider staying with the special family described in the post.  You can read about their progress at http://www.lobocriverresort.com/

Community

As we traveled the world for the past 16 months, we have found ourselves immersed in a variety of new and interesting communities.  If one describes community as a group of individuals with shared interests, values, and goals, then the geographic boundaries of place become less important than time.    The community of long term travelers is very different than the community of vacationers.  Those who choose to couchsurf or stay in hostels and homestays are unlike people who stay primarily in resorts.   Each country and region within countries had communities of people to teach us lessons about their lives and dreams, aspirations and fears.  While we were often engaging with individuals who supported tourism, we ventured into other elements of distant societies.  We attended church with people, sat down and shared food with natives willing to tell us about their lives, celebrated holidays with families and new friends.  We also, tentatively at first, entered into the global social media community of blogs, Facebook, Pinterest , Thorntree and Tripadvisor. 

So imagine our surprise to find that the most profound lessons we were to learn about community would be back where we started, in Gunnison, Colorado.  In our previous blog posting, “Push Pause”, we mentioned how humbled we were by the offers of assistance that emerged when people learned that we were going to stay while Sally had surgery.  The degree to which individuals opened not only their homes, but their hearts to us, provided the elixir of healing we needed for both Sally’s recovery from surgery and for the weariness that emerges from living from a backpack for a year.  

We realize that coming back to Gunnison reminds us of the first decade of our 23 year relationship.  During much of that decade, we faced the challenge of distance.  It was not uncommon for more than 1,500 miles to separate us for weeks or months at a time.  For us, the distance aspect of our emerging partnership strengthened our bonds.  We experienced the intense joy reunification brought every month or so.  We reveled in the excitement of being present with the person we loved. We had stories of growth, painful and adventurous, to share with each other. And we were keenly aware of the significance of each precious second of time together, knowing that our trajectories would again separate us in the next few days or weeks. 

 Our past few weeks in Gunnison have taken us back to the pleasure and challenge of those distant relationship years.  We are keenly present with friends with whom we often had insufficient time when we worked within our community.  There is a hunger to learn about their growth, painful or adventurous, as well as their hopes, dreams and aspirations.  We have come to recognize the enormous number of individuals living in one place for almost 20 years brings into lives.  We knew, in some abstract way, that we loved this place and people; however, returning from a long journey with the intent of leaving again, has demonstrated the bonds that we share with this community now and forever.  Much like our reunification with each other during our first decade, we know with increasing certainty the community of this special high mountain valley has our hearts.   It is the type of place that comes together in challenging times, as we witnessed when a group of special teens put on a benefit concert raising funds for families requiring assistance from our local hospital’s oncology department.  While we have seen markets in every corner of the globe, none are as sweet as the dozen or so booths of our Saturday farmers’ market where we have been greeted like long lost friends.   We will enjoy exploring new communities and places during the next months of our lives, but it will be Gunnison that we look toward as the place to become rejuvenated as we continue to learn with humility and to give with grace.

Images are of two of our favorite Gunnison community members, Kathleen Kinkema and Rogene McKiernan, Raphael Tomany playing at a benefit for Gunnison's Oncology Department, and Matt from Thistle Whistle Farm at the Gunnison Farmers' Market.  Posted in Gunnison, CO.