Among Flowers Read online

  We stopped for lunch in a sheltered part of the valley and the sun was hot, and there was no wind at all, and just as we were congratulating ourselves on how well everything was going a host of black clouds appeared on the horizon and they did not go away. They came toward us and we packed up and walked on. They hovered, not so much overhead but in the background, like some evil omen to come. We then walked along the edge of a landslide; that is to say, what might have been an easy path to walk on had fallen down, and for a short while I understood what was meant by a knife’s edge in the context of people walking on mountains. We walked to Topke Gola and again were in acres and acres of rhododendrons, all low growing, shrubby, and small leaved; and juniper, Salix, and of course Meconopsis (we were seeing it in abundance, the full-of-seed capsules of paniculata), and Arisaema jacquemontii (a plant in seed I found, but Dan had to tell me its exact identification). We walked through such a vast area filled with masses of small-leaved rhododendron that I was sure for a short time that there was no such place as Topke Gola. In this vast area covered with the small-leaved rhododendrons, there were some remains of camping sites, of campfires, and sleeping or outdoor habitation. And I then understood the herds of yaks that I had made way for coming over the pass. I was in the middle of a vast pasture. Everything that was a treasure to us in our gardens in Wales or North America was fodder in the life of yaks and the people who took care of and depended on them for sustenance. We walked through this wide and high valley, the mountains in the near distance (for by now everything far away was nearby and everything nearby was far away) and exhausted as if for the first time, without remembering that we had been exhausted before, and after a while we saw the hamlet of Topke Gola way in the distant. After the two nights spent in the forest, seeing a village with houses, and so therefore people and domesticity, seemed like a gift. And like a gift it held within it surprise, perhaps the essential, wonder, beauty, and mystery. I could see its brown structures, unsullied by paint of any kind, that were the dwelling places, huddled together, as if each one was a part of the other. From above and at thirteen thousand feet, the whole hamlet seemed so nearby, always so nearby, but it took one and a half hours from first seeing it to arriving there, and buildings that from far away seemed so small and insignificant were large and stairs had to be climbed to enter them. Not ever did I get used to this—the deceptive nearness of my destinations—not ever did I become accustomed to the vast difference between my expectation, my perception, and reality; the way things really are.

  When I arrived at our campsite everything was all set up. We were a little village all by ourselves. Sunam, Thile, and Mingma seemed happy, I supposed it was because they had gotten us to Topke Gola safely. Their happiness made me love them, whatever that means now and especially then. It was decided we would spend two full days there. It was an area rich in flora to be grown in various temporal zones, certainly for people who made gardens and were prosperous enough to afford the plants that would be grown from the seeds collected here. The porters had built fires from twigs gathered from the junipers and rhododendrons, which were growing everywhere. It was as if they regarded the junipers and rhododendrons as weeds. But I am reminded again that every weed can be made into a treasure in the right circumstances. The junipers and rhododendrons being burnt for fuel then would be a treasure to many a gardener in the climate I am living in now, it would be a treasure in North America.

  Village of Topke Gola

  Seeing my pitched tent then, it was as if I was seeing my ancestral home, and I laid out my sleeping bag in it and crawled in. We were at three thousand feet lower than we had been at the pass and the whole day just passed not like a whole day at all but like many days, each part of the day so different, as if it were something in a View-Master, that child’s toy-way (at least it was a child’s toy when I was a child) of viewing scenes, every detail in one photograph, every detail contributing to a full realization of the picture, every picture being such a realization of what was real, that the real was always lacking. And so Topke Gola, seen from far away, was like a picture, but then when arriving in it, it had its problems: some people were living there and they did not come out to greet us, and the buildings that when seen from above had been so mysterious and full of promise, now nothing emerged from them. It was as if we had stumbled onto something that had been and yet at the same time was in the present. The hamlet was closed and yet the hamlet was completely accessible. I experienced it so.

  We had a dinner of rice and dahl and potatoes and I had been noticing that over the last five days the potatoes had become impossible to eat. I had thought that Cook just grew tired of cooking potatoes and didn’t care whether they were worth eating or whether they were cooked properly or not, but Sunam explained to me that the potatoes were cooked in a pressure cooker and that the higher we got, the high altitude nullified the power of the pressure cooker to cook food thoroughly. It was just as well, for I went to bed, that is, I crawled into my sleeping bag, just as it got dark at half past seven. In truth, it felt like midnight. I left Dan and Bleddyn and Sue, cataloging and labeling and cleaning the collections made so far. Perhaps I was suffering from the altitude, but I felt nothing so much as tired, physically, of course, but also mentally for I needed one year, it seemed to me, to absorb all that I had seen that day alone.

  Let me recount: I began on the bank of the blue glacial stream with Sunam’s special breakfast, I crossed it, walked up a valley filled with rocks and boulders that were the conductors of rivulets sometimes, streams sometimes, and then we were at the foot of the pass and we walked up that for two hours, making way for herds of yaks that were on their way to Tibet, and we saw a lake, discreetly placed away from the human eye, and then we walked down a ravine and into a rocky meadow, a grazing pasture for yaks, past masses of plants, each of them a treasure to grow in my garden if only they would allow themselves to do so, and then I walked into a hamlet, a fabled place, and I rested there. I went to bed and the next morning woke up to the ritual of all the other mornings: a basin of hot water brought to me by the assistant to Cook, a cup of hot instant coffee. I drank the hot beverage; I gave myself a sponge bath and got dressed and walked out of the tent I shared with Dan to breakfast. It took me a while to realize that my tent was cast on, that I had slept on, and that I was also walking on, an area in which Meconopsis (in particular paniculata) grew wildly.

  After breakfast I did some housecleaning in our tent. The day was beautifully clear, the sun shining, the skies blue and cloudless. And yet there was a chill in the air that did not correspond to the bright sun and the clear sky. It was as if all three things existed apart from each other, one not an influence on the other. The sun could shine as brightly as it wished, in as cloudless a sky as there ever could be, and the air would remain a temperature that was not affected by any of that. I put out Dan’s and my sleeping bags, laying them out on some small-leaved rhododendrons and the juniper and berberis that grew everywhere. I put out also my dirty and worn-up clothes, hoping that exposure to the sunlight and the clean air would make them smell and feel better. I asked Cook to warm some water for me so that I could take a bath. He did and brought me the aluminum washbasin in which all our dishes were washed. He filled it up with water, hot and cold to make just the right temperature for a bath, and I washed myself using a bar of soap that I had taken from the expensive hotel when I had stayed overnight in Hong Kong on my way to Nepal, such a lifetime ago, or so it seemed. That was the bar of soap that we used to wash our hands before each meal, part of the ritual of being served our meals at a table that was always formally set with a tablecloth and knife and fork in their proper place. The soap had come in a blue box with the Tiffany label and the further away we got from anything resembling the idea of Tiffany and the luxury it represents, so did the soap become grimy and slimy from falling into dirt and being closed up in its expensive little soap box. Cleansed with the help of the by-now disgusting Tiffany soap, I put on my aired-out dirty clothes and felt w
onderful.

  Topke Gola, I could now see, was not a village or a hamlet, it was a place. Chyamtang had been a village, Thudam was a trading post, a crossroads connecting one place with the next. Topke Gola was a holy place. There was a monastery there and perhaps a Holy Man was in it. Sunam never said yes or no. He said, though, that in the summer many people lived there, that all the buildings are occupied then, but after that most people leave and only a few of them stay behind. He bought some yak meat from someone who had stayed behind and that night we had it for dinner, the first fresh meat we had eaten since we left Kathmandu. We were at a little under twelve thousand feet in altitude, four thousand feet below the altitude at the pass. Like all the other days before, what had taken place yesterday seemed like a dream. Topke Gola seemed like a dream too. Or perhaps another way of putting it, I felt as if I was looking at things through a sieve, not a transparency, but a surface with small holes in it. I could see the monastery, a small whitewashed building in a sea of brown. How did the whitewash get all the way up here? I wondered, but that was all I could do, for I got the impression that I shouldn’t go anywhere near it.

  In Topke Gola, there was a sacred lake, a mile above the village, a destination for pilgrims who came to the village in the summer. I walked up to it. As usual in this place, I was in awe at the unexpected. How could I predict that there would be a body of water, a lake, not at all like the secret one seen from above the pass, that finds its way to the River Ganges? That lake, the one seen from above the pass, was so remote and it seemed as if it would remain so even if you found yourself sailing on it. It was as if, because it would become part of a body of water that was accessible to so many, it made itself available for viewing purposes to only a few. The Sacred Lake in Topke Gola on the other hand looked sacredly domesticated. A goddess is said to live there and in the temple, a beautiful little open-sided building situated at the entrance to the lake, were the remains of offerings, bone, branches, stones, and a small bottle of whiskey. On its banks were growing many things I desired as a gardener: rhododendrons, juniper, berberis, clematis, and so on. I turned away from this and walked back to our camp, exhausted, not from going to the Sacred Lake but from knowing that it exists. And why is that? Why not have that feeling from seeing the lake above the pass, that lake being a true secret? If someone doesn’t point it out to you, it will be missed altogether. I believe it is because seeing something that is hidden in the natural world makes me think not at all about myself, not about any one thing in particular; that a body of water situated in an area of the world with which I am not at all geographically familiar fills me with the joy of spectacle, the happiness that comes from the privilege of looking at something solely rare and solely uncomplicated. But the Sacred Lake plunged me into thinking of the unknowableness of other people.

  Handwoven prayer rug in Topke Gola

  Later that day, Sunam took me to a weaver, a woman who lived all year in Topke Gola and made prayer rugs by a handloom. I bought one and only after I got home to Vermont did I see that it was somewhat crooked, it had not been evenly woven.

  Those two days and three nights spent in Topke Gola were perfect. The nights were cool and it rained then. The days were sunny, with the clouds dark and heavy with moisture or white fluffs of clouds without moisture, flitting hurriedly to some other destination. Sue and I stayed in camp and cleaned seeds, glad for the days of rest; Dan and Bleddyn went off to the mountains above and came back with treasures of seeds. The porters made fires from the wood of the treasured rhododendrons and junipers and berberis. They sang songs and made and ate their food along with us. I realized then, that I had no idea how or when they acquired or ate their food. They sat around with Sue and me and she taught them how to separate various seeds from their fleshy fruit. They knew nothing. Those three nights and two complete days seemed, even then, but more so now, as if they were the sole purpose of our journey. Everything collected there was growable in a Vermont garden. I was keenly aware of that. When coming down into Topke Gola that very first day, I had spied an Arisaema in seed and Dan had made a big show of it for he had been looking for it. And all the Meconopsis in our area were ones I could grow, if only I would learn to do so. Where I live, this is not the sort of plant you can just throw its seeds on the ground and wait to see what happens. We were surrounded by thousand-foot-high, green-covered mountainsides and above these were snowtopped peaks. Coming out of one side of the green-covered mountain was a fierce waterfall that looked, in its usual way, as if it had been painted on there, so constant was the force of its flow. But unlike the other waterfalls of this kind, the long white foam falling silently into an invisible abyss, this one was so close by its constant roar was unrelenting. Sometimes, due I suppose to some distortion caused by the wind or some other natural element, it sounded like the roar of jet engines. But if I had never heard the sound of jet engines, I do not know what I would liken it to. Those two days were like that, perfect and perfect again, unerring. When we had soup made of yak blood and then a stew of yak meat all in the same meal, it was perfect. When during the night and the next day, our stomachs ached in upset at this sudden change in our diet, which had been high in carbohydrates, it was perfect. No error at all, no complaints. What nights we saw: no full moon lighting up the star-filled sky now, just a part moon, the biggest spot of light in a deep navy blue sky, seeming motionless, wherever it appeared, just the way the earth we’re standing on seems motionless. I marveled again and again at how every time I stepped out of the tent Dan and I shared, I was walking on a carpet of Meconopsis paniculata. And then we left.

  Our leave-taking perhaps began with our arrival. That first morning after we had arrived the night before, Jhaba Lama said goodbye to us and returned to his home in Chyamtang. He had agreed to be with us only as far as Topke Gola and at that juncture of our journey, Sunam had calculated that we would need less help. As things unfolded, he was correct. Sue and Bleddyn and Dan and I said goodbye to him and gave him a tip, a generous one, and we gave him that large of a tip because we thought he would take it home to his parents and make their lives a little easier, especially we were thinking of his mother. Immediately on receiving this large sum of money he bought a drum from another porter and began playing it with the biggest grin on his face, a grin that I took to express his own satisfaction at getting something he really wanted. All along the way, while we had been going to bed early and fretting through the night in one form of sleep or the other, the porters would stay up and drink and sing and dance to music they made. Someone had a drum, a small one that had to be held between the knees, and Jhaba Lama had liked the sound of it and he liked to dance to the sound of it. And so he bought the drum with his own money. He left us and would spend the night in Thudam and then reach his village, Chyamtang, the next day. He would make our four-day journey in two days.

  We left Topke Gola, the place that had ten houses (I had counted them), and a sacred lake with a good amount of seeds, from which would come plants for gardens, at half past seven in the morning. It was cold, thirty-three degrees Fahrenheit, and some new snow had fallen on the mountain up above us. But we were not going up, we from now on would be going down. I did look around me one last time, not so much to say goodbye, for I feel, even now, that I shall go to that place again; I looked around for a last look with the thought that it would not be too long before I doubted that I had ever been in such a place.

  A NIGHT SPENT IN A GORGE

  We left Topke Gola on a Saturday but I had no idea what that meant. When I am at home in Vermont, on a Saturday I do things that I do not do any other day of the week. When leaving Topke Gola on that day I had nothing to remind me that it was Saturday. We set off the way we had done all the other days when setting off. How strange it was to exist with a purpose, with something to do, something to be engaged in, but to have no sense of a time in which to place it. We had a routine all right, we were awakened by someone bringing us a cup of a hot beverage. We then were each given a bowl of ho
t water to clean ourselves and we did so. We got dressed, we ate our breakfast, which often was a delicious bowl of oatmeal and honey and hot milk. We filled our water bottles, we packed up our day bag, and we set off. We stopped for lunch somewhere, rested a little bit, and then we set off. At around half past three, usually we were starting to settle down for the night. It got dark, we ate dinner, and at around eight o’clock we were in our sleeping bags, in our tents reading, or chatting and then going to sleep. That was pretty much our day and our night. That was our routine. And yet there was nothing about it that was taken for granted. The day was always new, the night was always new. Except for the stops in Chyamtang and Topke Gola, we spent each day and each night in a different place. Our routine was constant movement and constant change; our routine was the new. But the new is not a routine. It was unsettling, feelings were sometimes hurt, tempers sometimes got lost. For the days we walked before coming to Chyamtang, Bleddyn complained about the route, especially after he had to pass up a trip up to the Barun Valley. Dan and I complained that our bags were never in camp when we got there and we had to stand around in our wet clothes and wait for the porters. Once the porters had gotten drunk and gotten into camp way after the day had turned into night. Sue never complained. I whined constantly, particularly about the bathroom situation. There was none. Each place we camped, a small tent was put up over a hole that that been freshly dug in the ground. That was our toilet. After we left camp, the hole was filled with dirt and it was made to look as if nothing had taken place there. I almost never visited the small tent with the hole in the middle of it, and I whined about it but mainly to myself.