From Himalayan Roads: Epilogue

When I was fifteen I read Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air. In the Nepal I envisioned, the air around Everest basecamp was frigid and the landscape alien. The behemoth soared in the background and was battered by inhospitable clouds. There was a clanging of mountaineering equipment, yells in snowstorms, the laborious and exhausted huffs of climbers as they moved ever onward toward the summit.

It all existed in my imagination only. The Khumbu region was a fantasy world, a fey illusion.

At thirty-three, just months ago, I somehow found myself standing in Everest basecamp accompanied by Lama Tshering Sherpa in full monk garb. The air was as thin as Krakauer had said. It was crisp and dry but the sun warmed us as we took pictures of the Khumbu icefall and of the peaks that surrounded us. There it was, the top of the world. There we were, just below.

At that moment I traced my life back eighteen years and could follow a meandering path of adventure, sacrifice, risk, and resolute intention that had led me to that particular time and place. I saw it all – my time as a peripatetic rock climber in the US; the good friends I made in Peru and our forays into the Andes; that terrible and beautiful sunset in Patagonia; falling in love in Japan; the walks through cherry blossoms and the nights drinking beers in the fisherman’s motel on the coast. I easily recalled sitting in a monastery in Bhutan, the sound of dungchen horns and guttural mantras echoing in the ancient hall. I realized then that time moves quickly and small influences shape the character of a life. It all traced back to a kid who was eager to fill his life with adventure, to live like the heroes in novels, to see the world and learn something from it.

The clock is spinning.

Where would I have been had I said no to those calls toward adventure? What kind of a life would I have looked back on? It was no great feat to have saddled up a 220cc Indian motorcycle and started down the roads of Bhutan, Nepal, and India. And yet, it was an experience that again filled my life with worth and made me proud to have done something that pushed my limits and taught me about the world.

It is important that we have adventures. The form of a life is made more beautiful by such experiences and now adventure has become so much a part of who I am that I do not know what to do without it. Sure, I will “settle down” a bit now as I go off to Montenegro to teach. But I will not shy away from those sudden impulses that pull me to far-flung places. I will heed the calls and begin planning. I will make those dreams a priority because, for me, to adventure is to live. And if I do not pursue these dreams and adventures, I will not be living a good life.

Dreams are a fuel that gives life momentum. Just as a car needs gas to move forward, dreams give direction and purpose to a life. When one dream has been accomplished – like living in Bhutan – the next dream is a refill, saying, “Okay, do this now. There will be adventure, learning, and fulfillment ahead.” As I move from one dream to the next, I realize that I am constructing this thing called a Life, and that my pursuit of these dreams (whether I succeed or fail) gives life meaning and worth.

But I have also been reminded that we do not all get to live out our dreams. The prevalence of poverty and destitution is a reality I have seen all too often in the slums of India, Nepal, and Bhutan. The abject condition of their lives is a reality that cannot be ignored. I am privileged to seek out adventure; it’s a stroke of cosmic luck. Others have simply been born into lives without such fortune.

I have seen so much despair and desperation on this latest journey. This is their Life. The fact that, as a global community, we have let our fellow human beings wallow in these conditions is a sign that we are still in a moral Dark Age. As much as I have seen beauty and kindness and joy, there are stark injustices that prevail.

In Uttarakhand, India, I rode through a burning landfill where families picked through the garbage to find sustenance. Their homes bordered the refuse heap and there were dozens of families there; the children waded into spoiled and rotting puddles and the garbage swirled around their fragile legs as they searched the water for anything of worth.

In Nepal, on the high roads, women wrapped from head to toe in thick wool blankets sat atop piles of stones and hammered at them, splitting them into smaller pieces so that they could be used to expand the roads. Meanwhile tourists walked through with two-hundred-dollar backpacks and snapped pictures on thousand-dollar cameras and complained about the few clouds that blocked out the sun.

On these Himalayan roads, I have gotten to know one more tile in the rich, global mosaic. I have seen the majesty of the top of the world and have rejoiced that such places exist. But I have also seen how we have soiled the earth, choked the air, and polluted the rivers. At the concrete Hindu temples, we offer incense and flowers, and at the blessed Ganges we offer a landfill’s worth of waste. The Buddhist holy places are festooned with prayer flags that patter against the wind while the floor beneath is littered with plastic bags, smelling of rot and synthetic decay. What is this disconnect? Do we not see the irony?

We can do better. We must do better.

In these judgments, I think it only fair that I turn the mirror on myself and ask what it is I am contributing to make life better. Though teaching is a noble profession, these last six months that I have been out of the classroom have been largely selfish and it is time I return to a career that allows me to guide, even in the smallest capacity, the next generation to be more compassionate and empathetic human beings.

This trip has taught me many things that I can in turn teach my students. I therefore think that, as selfish as it was, there is a place for these solitary adventures. One must know how to confront fear and insecurity in ways like riding a motorcycle through the Himalayas so that he can be better prepared to take on tasks like convincing a student who hates to read that it’ll be worth it to pick up the class novel. Perhaps with the lessons I have learned I can help inspire someone to follow her own dreams when everyone else in her life expects her to fail. We all have dreams we want to pursue, we have adventures just on the horizon, but we need to learn take those first steps. In that way, I believe we can live fulfilling lives.

Does this end poverty and pollution? Maybe. It certainly contributes to the fight. We first need courage and faith to believe that we can do the impossible. This is something that can be taught. Then we can take on the big injustices of the world. The all-too-easy excuse claiming “That’s just the way it is” is only for the pusillanimous. We need to believe that things can change for the better and that a small action toward improvement is an action of consequence.

I’m ready to get back into the classroom and devote myself to a career that gives people strength, critical-thinking skills, and the fortitude to rail against entrenched ideologies and “impossible” goals. We must get better. We must be better people for our fellow human beings, for our brothers and sisters now, and for our sons and daughters that will take our place.

Seek out your adventures. Don’t hesitate. Don’t make excuses. Fill your life with adventure as much as you can and reap the learning that comes. But remember to stop and teach. Find goodness in the world and help others to see it. Where it is hard to find goodness, cultivate it. Then the world will continue to be a place that our posterity will be eager to explore, a place that will inspire future adventures and that will give meaning to people’s lives.