Nepal

 List of memories

Hiking on a trail blanketed with rocks, seeing yak and mule prints in the dirt. Days of the gigantic curling ups and shorter, steep downs

Unexpected; coming into square house villages with box like windows hung on the sides of mountains

Walls of gray rocks; rock boundaries between farms, between corrals, between trails, between houses containing goats, mules, yaks, horses

glacial blue water rushing over boulders, around ice floes.  Ice caught in a stopped drip lining the shore. 

The view…Always looking down below at the smallest part of the valley floor.

Looking up, up and up, gray rock, ice walls, shiny snow, blue sky

The cold; going to bed, getting up with it...it becomes a familiar...seeing the acceptance of the Nepali people helps when you walk a hall to the bathroom, finding a window wide open, seeing front doors open to the cold

Hot Lemon tea

To walk, trek, hike as a deliberate action while listening to your heart beat. Taking air in gulps

School children in blue ties and jackets coming home for the weekend, running past me quietly, namasteing me

Five foot tall porters, men and women, carrying doors, batteries, paper wrapped packages with a forehead strap wearing sandals or tennis shoes. 

The sound of collars of bells, on mules, yaks and horses; loud and soft music made to their hooves stepping on the trail.   

Coming into a tea house and sitting down with the group; putting spoonfuls of sugar in welcoming hot tea

Sitting around the nightly warmth of the black stove planted in the middle of the room

Riding a horse over rocks that would have meant being thrown off in the US. Such strong horses!

Dahli and the yaks; herding from the back; seeing her keeping the yaks going forward, so in charge in the set of her shoulders, her effortless looking walk

The army of motor scooters like angry bees inhabiting the streets of Kathmandu. 

Crossing the cobblestone streets of Namche Bazaar avoiding a sleeping yak and goats in the middle of the street.

Looking down from the roof of Hotel Moonlight in Kathmandu to see a rooftop garden flourishing on the top level and then a young boy covered in soap getting a bath on floor down and then an English man wearing a UK headband sitting down on an ancient looking chair in the sun beam and then a window woven through with the loud echos of crowds of people walking, storekeepers calling out on the street. 

Alpen glow, the yellow and pink lashing the mountains with the last of the day's color

The hills of scree; a brown, gray, white mix of rocks and earth that sits like flowing skirts at the mountains feet. 

Tattered prayer flags at the top; a reminder always of the spiritual, God in the midst of beauty

Going up, past limits set by the mind, by the body, seeing patience in the eyes of those holding the ropes. 

Big. Big days. Unspooling memories as I lay in my sleeping bag feeling the comforting warmth of a hot water bottle.