Among Flowers Read online

  In the morning we packed. We felt refreshed. We were beginning anew. We said goodbye to Chyamtang and it almost seemed like an act of rebellion or liberation. We were moving on. One of our porters, a fourteen-year-old boy named Jhaba Lama, came from this village. It was so fortuitous that when Sunam was hiring porters in Tumlingtar that Jhaba was there and was only returning home, not looking for work at all, and here was a job that would bring him to his home. The part of Nepal we were traveling in was not the part usually taken on a trek. Trekking paths usually make their way to a base camp at one of the high summits or around one of the nature-preserve areas attached to one of the high summits. So how fortunate for Jhaba that the path that would lead us to flowers went through his village. He was only fourteen, the same age as my son, Harold, and perhaps because I missed Harold so, I immediately singled him out for kind attention. When I told Sunam how touched I was by his presence, this little boy, the same age as my son, carrying sixty-pound loads strapped up on his back, he said of course I would be touched because Jhaba was a Sherpa. He did look like the people who come from Tibet. One day, when Jhaba had carried my bags, out of the blue I gave him a one-thousand-rupee note and I told him not to tell his fellow porters. When we arrived in Chyamtang, he went immediately to visit his family. That afternoon, his mother came to visit the camp and she brought us eggs and vegetables from her garden. She was a very beautiful woman with the same warm brown eyes as his, small and elegant. Sunam, who that time could understand her dialect, said that she thanked us for being kind to her son. Now, as we were leaving Chyamtang, we passed by Jhaba’s house and he wanted us to meet his father, who was a lama. It was clear they were an important family for their house was larger than the others and they seemed more prosperous in general. His father wore a long orange silk robe and had the general air of someone who spent most of the day reading and thinking about things judged to be important. He and Jhaba’s mother, whom we had already met, greeted us with just the right amount of warmth and distance. They made us wish we had met them earlier and so had seen them more, and yet they also made us feel that this was enough. I told them how wonderful their son was and, according to Sunam, they agreed and also said that their son did not like studying. We said our goodbyes and started on our way, down, down, down, on our way to crossing the Arun River for the last time. In Chyamtang we had been at 7,260 feet altitude. When we left the village that morning at half past seven it was seventy-seven degrees Fahrenheit. We crossed the Arun for the last time at an altitude of 5,620 feet. It was the highest point for a crossing we made of this river.

  TWO DAYS TO THUDAM

  Those three days off had renewed us. It is true Dan and Bleddyn had gathered a lot of seeds, but they wouldn’t have gone out of their way to make this collection, what they had collected is the sort of thing you collect on your way to real garden treasure. Bleddyn and Sue, gardeners and nursery people from as ideal a situation as can be in the temperate region of the prosperous world, Wales, were more enthusiastic about collecting in this area than Dan and me. But even among Dan and me there was some variance in satisfaction. Dan, as a nurseryman, has customers in various gardening zones. The collection of seeds he made the day before, when he and I went out together, would be good for some of his customers. He often collects in Chile and Guatemala, and when I see these things listed in his catalogue I simply move on. I know something native to Guatemala or to Chile will only last in Vermont if grown in a clay pot. And it was so with almost everything that we collected above Chyamtang. I could grow it in a pot or as an annual, the begonia, the Strobilanthes, the Osbeckia. Now we were on our way to collecting things I most definitely would be able to grow in my garden zone of USDA 5. At various times we walked by men, and they did not look at us. They seemed very absorbed by the reality of their lives and we were not part of it. We crossed the swaying bridge. Half a mile or so from this was the bamboo bridge where Dan had the frightening experience, and he took us to it. We naturally had our pictures taken at the approximate spot where Dan had been when the naughty boys had scared him. We then began the walk up, for to get to our desire—beautiful plants native to the Himalaya but that will grow happily in Vermont or somewhere like that—requires climbing high. The higher we got the hotter the sun. How glad I was to come upon a place where the now familiar marriage trees, the two Ficus (Ficus benghalensis and Ficus religiosa), were growing. Sue and I rested. Dan and Bleddyn had rested there perhaps fifteen minutes ago; they were, as usual, ahead of us. Three miles or so away from Chyamtang we had lunch, but it might as well have been ten hundred times that distance, for the night before seemed so long ago. The constant roar or sight of the Arun was no longer there. And the other thing was that the mountains, or the hills, or whatever they should properly be called, were no longer far away. We were now really in them. The landscape suddenly began to close in on us. When we began our trek so many days ago, Sunam would point out to me some snowcapped mountains in the distance that were shielding from my sight our destination. Now the shield itself was behind me, I could no longer see the mountains that had been the shield of my destination. If before I had not wondered if I was walking on the ledges of the world, now the thought would most certainly have occurred to me. We walked along the edges of some deceptively gentle sloping cliffs but any misstep would have sent us rolling down to the bottom of a ravine. Sometimes we were in the open and sometimes in thick forests of bamboo and maple, and all the time collecting Thalictrum, Lilium, impatiens, a species of Roscoea, Clematis connata, Deutzia, and the yellow-flowered climbing Dicentra. The forested places were the most wonderful for collecting from my point of view, for I began to see my garden again. Here suddenly we were walking on a carpet of the fallen leaves of Magnolia campbellii, and looking up I saw that I was in the thick of them and a hunt for fruits began. We found many fruits lying on the ground but most of their seeds were rotten. But growing in this area was Paris, and Dan and Bleddyn had found a form that was variegated in leaf. That was new to them and caused much excitement. But they had not found a plant with ripe seed, that is seed worth collecting, so in a frenzy we all began to look for more of this Paris with seed. None could be found. Perhaps among the most annoying things to me all along was that I could only identify plants that were already familiar to me; and then again, sometimes when confronted with a plant I knew really well before, when seeing it in a place that was new to me, I found it mysterious and foreign. And so while joining in the search for the new Paris, the one with the distinctly variegated leaves, everything I saw before me was a mystery and so therefore not important. When, in that moment, I came upon some fruits of Magnolia campbellii, its appearance familiar to me because it resembles the fruits of other magnolias, it seemed to me completely weird, unrecognizable; I remember my brain trying desperately to make sense of it, trying desperately to find a similar image stored so that the soggy, rotting, cucumberlike pods that littered the area around me would lead to some pronouncement of recognition. It was with a sense of despair and resignation at not knowing what was in front of me that I said to Dan, “What is this?” and I was pointing to the much sought after variegated Paris, bearing a handful of fruit.

  Dan and Bleddyn, at this moment two of the most experienced plant hunters in the entire world, were a sight. All our days before, going up and down, meeting the Maoists, placating them, avoiding them, resting for a couple of days in the high-mountain heat, had turned out to be an ordeal for them. What they wanted was to be in the middle of a forest that had the widest selection of gardenworthy plants. What they wanted was to collect the seeds of plants that would make a gardener like me, someone who wanted to know about and be engaged with the world but in the most benign way possible, excited. I have made a garden in a part of the world where the flora is interesting and full of wonder enough. I only have to turn to a page in the travels of William Bartram and there I will find any number of plants (red bud, fringe tree, tulip tree) that enthrall me. But something that never escapes me as I putter abou
t the garden, physically and mentally: desire and curiosity inform the inevitable boundaries of the garden, and boundaries, especially when they are an outgrowth of something as profound as the garden with all its holy restrictions and admonitions, must be violated. The story of the garden, when it is told by the gardener, is an homage to the gardener’s curiosity and explanation of a transgression by a transgressor.

  Sue and I never could keep up with them, they were always at least a mile ahead, in search of whatever would yield up seeds. But this new area was so interesting to them that they lingered in it. They found Paris in its regular form and then, unexpectedly, they found it in a form they had never heard of, they found a form with variegated leaves. The leaves of this plant, Paris, are usually just the color of leaves, green, but the one they found had white streaks and through their experienced eyes they could see that this was not from some deficiency in the individual plant itself; they could see that this was a natural deviation. They were excited. They were very excited. They shouted out to Sue and me, that there was a variegated Paris in this area and if we found one with good seed we would be rewarded. All along, I was so amazed at my very presence in this very place, I was so keenly aware of how ignorant I was in every way of the world in which I was in. I was in the forest but all the trees looked the same and none of them seemed familiar even though some of them I had growing in my own garden in Vermont. I was tumbling about in a tangle of fear, suspicion, and ignorance when suddenly as clear as a newly learnt letter in the alphabet I saw the variegated Paris that they were looking for, the plant, at that moment, they desired so.

  When I declaimed, “What is this?” for by then it was a declamation, I was so ignorant and because of that I was always saying “What is this?” and it went from a genuine innocent question to a whine. “What is this?” came my voice, and I could feel my companions, Dan, Bleddyn, Sue, recoil, my voice being no longer associated with human curiosity but a human dolefulness, something dull and tired, even reproachful. But this time in the forest, under a canopy of Magnolia campbellii and oak and maples, with perhaps the desired variegated Paris hidden somewhere, when I said, “What is this?” both Bleddyn and Dan leapt to the place where I pointed my walking stick, the very one I had many days ago bought in Kathmandu. Dan arrived there first, identified the plant as the much sought Paris with variegated foliage, and a magnificent display of black seeds bursting out of a vivid red fleshy matter. He plucked it and put it in a plastic bag, the very kind I would use to pack my son, Harold, a sandwich for his school lunch. They found a few other plants of Paris like this to make them understand it was something new, but it also made them look back into their memory of other plant hunters’, their contemporaries’, accounts of the Paris. They wondered if they had found something new. They believed they had found something new. They doubted they had found something new. And then they were very happy that this Paris was new to them.

  We walked on and I saw Lilium nepalense, among other things, in seed. We walked and walked and then finally, at around four o’clock we came to camp. Somehow Sunam had found a clearing where there was an abandoned building made of stone, wood, and mud and a stream. Our cook seemed happy by this, but how could I really know? Our campsite looked awfully like the leech field of many nights before, but we were too high and it was too cold for them. I certainly was happy about this. That night Sunam gave back to me my satellite telephone and I called my son, Harold, and now as I write this I do not ask him if our conversation seemed unreal, unexpected, and frightening, but so it seemed to me then. We were in the open air under a sky that seemed domed, curving into a horizon that was not so far away. I had no appetite and could not eat. I went to bed at about seven o’clock and tried to read my Frank Smythe but could not. I fell asleep and woke up from dreaming that I was sliding out of my tent down toward a precipice, which was far away. That dream was not too far from the real, for I awoke at around midnight to find myself, feet first, sliding out of the tent. We were, as usual, camping on ground that sloped downward more than not, and the higher up we went that would be so.

  The mornings were really cold, the now not-so-distant tops of ever-higher-heights covered with fresh snow, but by the time we were ready to leave at quarter to seven, it had warmed up to sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit. We left camp as if it was a new experience, as if we had just begun the journey to find plants that we loved and could grow in the many gardens in our imaginations. That morning, the porters were singing and they seemed to have stayed up most of the night singing. We wanted to ask Sunam if they were singing because they were happy but we guessed he would tell us yes, they were singing because they were happy, just as if we had asked him if they were singing because they were unhappy, he would tell us yes. We knew him as well as that after walking with him for more than ten days now.

  Dan kept saying that today we were going to Thudam. He kept talking about Thudam and after not knowing anything about our other destinations, the village or city or town of Thudam became practically magical and even mythical. I can’t wait to get to Thudam, he kept saying. I had known of Thudam through the book A Plantsman in Nepal written by the great plantsman Roy Lancaster. That and a similar volume he wrote about plant collecting in China are two of the most important books in the canon of modern plant collecting, and any amateur interested in this area of the garden will only be pleased with the encouragement and pleasure that is to be found in them. Lancaster’s name came up often among the plantsmen. Bleddyn, for one, was very disappointed when we did not get a chance to go looking up the Barun Valley. Lancaster had found some wonderful and rare thing growing there, and he said no one had gone to look for plants there since.

  This singing of the porters and Dan’s excitement about Thudam began to make Thudam seem the hot spot of this part of the world. Somehow, an idea got stuck in our heads, not from Lancaster, by then I couldn’t remember exactly what he had said about Thudam, that Thudam would offer us a memorable view of life here. For one thing, from there was a road that led directly into Tibet and people from Tibet came there to trade things. We were hoping that the day we arrived would be a market day. To Thudam then, it was. Walking that day along the usual narrow path, in which it would be impossible for two people to walk along together side by side, concentrating hard so that I did not fall into the many yawning chasms that were a natural accompaniment to the path, I felt gloriously happy. Everywhere there was something that even I could see was worth collecting. The bounty included: Hydrangea robusta, a species of Lobelia, Rhododendron arboreum subsp. cinnamomeum (this was a rhododendron with peeled bark like cinnamon, or like the bark of Acer griseum), Meconopsis villosa, Arisaema propinquum, Rhododendron bureavii, Acer campbellii, and the much desired Daphne bholua. Twice, at two different times, Sunam tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to look over my shoulder, and once I saw a stark white pyramid set against the bluest of skies: that, he said, was Makalu. The next time I saw part of stark white jutting, it was farther away and looked more like a series of pyramids joined together: that, he said, was Kanchenjunga. When we rounded a bend, clambering up and over a series of boulders, he said I would not see them in that way again. At midday we stopped for lunch at a waterfall, a fierce gush of water screaming down the mountain, dashing itself into a natural basin, and we enjoyed sitting in it and cooling ourselves off. The day had gotten hot and the heat as always seemed new and unexpected.

  It was in the afternoon that we really started to go up and would not go down below six thousand feet for days again. Sometimes, I had to get down on my hands and knees to crawl across a part of the path that the porters, carrying our luggage, not to mention our dining table and four chairs, had nimbly maneuvered. It was that afternoon that I saw rhododendrons that were not shrubs but trees thirty feet tall. And it was then I saw the one with the cinnamon bark and it was a revelation. The rhododendron in general is perhaps the most misused flowering shrub in an American garden. It is planted near a house, often to hide the hideous but appropriate ma
terial that is the foundation for a building. They come in perfect colors—purple, pink, violet—and they bloom with generosity, in thrusts. But these qualities, the abundance in color and bloom, plus the ease with which they often can be grown, make them taken for granted to the point of abuse. To see them now, then, to see a rhododendron, with a trunk as thick as a pine and thirty feet tall, and with leaves almost as long as my lower arm, was as magical as seeing the mountain Makalu from a distance. I walked along in a state of complete wonder for I was in a forest made up of these plants—rhododendron with peeling bark, and maple and bamboo. At around nine thousand feet we came upon a stupa and some prayer flags and rested. Then we made a turn going decidedly away from where we had just come and started going down, losing a thousand feet in altitude, going toward Thudam.

  We passed no one other than people in our own party. Above us were huge boulders, and I couldn’t help but wonder what kept them in place. Ordinarily, I never question the ground I am on but in this place of determined verticals, everything seemed delicately perched, waiting for the day when it would come tumbling down. What if that day happened to be the moment when I was just passing by?