Rebeccalou: This Writer’s Life

A friend said to me a few weeks ago, “Imagine if every person in the world had access to fresh water, even just one gallon a day. What a difference that would make.”

She’s right… what a difference.

In the spirit of hoping to make a difference, Pierce and I are headed to Asia in December to help install what’s referred to in developing countries as a MUS—multiple use (water) system. Our destination is the remote village of Majuwa Badahare in the Pokhara region of central Nepal. We’re traveling with a group from Denver, organized by the folks from Montview Presbyterian Church, who have been sending volunteers to Nepal since 2000. Eleven of us will be working under the direction of a team from International Development Enterprises (www.ideorg.org). They’re providing the expertise, we the physical labor. We’ll be digging trenches, mixing concrete and building cisterns. I’ll be leaning heavily on my Lake Wobegon where-the-women-are-strong childhood, and swallowing ibuprofen by the handfuls.

According to National Geographic (April 2010), women in developing countries walk an average of 3.7 miles for water. Nepal is no exception. The people in Majuwa Badahare walk miles for water or use what collects in puddles, jeopardizing their health and the health of their families. The MUS will draw from a natural spring and send water by hose or pipe to the village for cooking, drinking and cleaning… carried of course, but for yards instead of miles. The run-off will be used to water the crops of small-plot farmers in the village, potentially moving them out of subsistence farming into the cash economy. We’ll be working alongside Nepalese people, camping in the village, eating local food and using local facilities, if you get my drift.

This is a service trip. Pierce and I are fundraising our expenses. We just passed the $5,000 mark on our way toward the $7,000 required to cover our airfare plus in-country food, transport, and mandatory evacuation insurance. Many thanks to all of you who have sent donations! If you haven’t yet received a personal note, you will. Your generosity is remarkable. I’m deeply touched… awed is more like it.

I’m making the trip because I feel called to go, although I tried for a month this last winter to talk myself out of it. I’d be away over the holidays, leaving Tony with the family during his busiest season. Asia is a long haul. I have a hard time sitting still — how could I possibly do 21 hours on a plane. There’ll be other opportunities, I told myself. I’m healthy. But my sixtieth birthday loomed, with more years behind me than ahead. I couldn’t get comfortable saying no to a voice that never wavered. Two months go by. The deadline for applications passes. I call the group leader on a Wednesday in January.

“What’s the drop-dead sign-up date for Nepal?”

“The committee is meeting at six o-clock to review the applications. There’s more interest than we anticipated. Anyone who comes in after tonight goes on a waiting list.”

I pick up Pierce after school, invite him to come with me to Nepal on the ride home, complete the forms in an hour and hand deliver the packet at ten minutes to six.

So the two of us are busy preparing to share an adventure on the other side of the globe in a culture that will forever change how we see the world and our place in it. No dad or sister with him, just the mom he acquired at the start of fifth grade, one year before Adolescence grabbed him by the collar and hung on tight for a good, long run. He’s come out on the other side, his sweet, kind nature intact, re-connecting with parts of his self that went into hiding at the first sign of facial hair. Granted, the grades aren’t recoverable but hey, friends who have walked this road tell us there’s a college for everyone. “A journey without challenge,” writes Phil Cousineau in The Art of Pilgrimage, “is a journey without meaning; one without purpose has no soul.” I suspect Nepal will give Pierce meaningful and soulful gifts he cannot name — not at eighteen, perhaps not for many years, but no matter. The groundwork will be laid, the seeds planted.

Our culture of excess will be brought into sharp relief (and disbelief) against the ways and habits of a country ranked the 12^th poorest in the world. I started to write that I’m prepared for the experience, but who am I kidding. Clueless is closer to the truth, for how does one prepare to be laid open, and left raw and unsettled. A friend that has traveled the world, including a dozen trips to Nepal, has shared with me how groundless she feels in that country.

“So why do you keep returning?” I wanted to know. We were parked at a stoplight in Boulder, on our way to a Nepalese restaurant.

“I’m my best self in Nepal, the person I’d like to be all the time. Something happens back here… things get in the way.” Her husband smiled. The light turned green. She’s going back this fall—both of them are—to uncover that best self yet again, and bring her home for another try.

If you feel called to support the work of bringing clean water to the families in Majuwa Badahare, we would so appreciate your support. Your donation is tax deductible. Every dollar brings us that much closer. All funding goes directly to Montview Presbyterian Church, where they’re keeping an account in our names. You can donate online (www.montview.org/montivew-in-the-world/global-mission/nepal-worktrip-2010) or by check, made payable to Montview Church, and sent to:

Montview Presbyterian Church

1980 Dahlia Street

Denver, CO 80220

Be sure to enclose a note, identifying the travelers your sponsorship supports (Pierce Westenhaver and Rebecca Lee). For tax purposes, do not write our names on the check. Any money raised beyond the $7,000 will go into a Hand-Up fund for disbursement to specific projects once we’re in Nepal.

I’ve been reading Rumi on the front porch this summer, showered in early morning light, a cup of hot tea on the flat arm of the Adirondack chair. Rumi is a sufi poet, a spiritual master for whom “everything has to do with loving and not loving.” He writes of the inner life, but with words and stories rooted in the physical world. The lines I read this morning brought Nepal to mind, and the journey that awaits us this December.

Someone who goes with half a loaf of bread

to a small place that fits like a nest around him,

someone who wants no more, who’s not himself

longed for by anyone else,

He is a letter to everyone. You open it.

It says, LIVE.

Thanks for your support, prayers and blessings. We depart on December 18th, returning with stories to tell on the second of January. Until then, I’ll be torturing myself with P90X, building biceps suitable for digging trenches.

He wears thick-soled, heavy-duty hiking boots and a yellow University of Pittsburgh baseball cap. A miniature gnome dangles from the center pocket of his backpack. Most days he’s in long sleeves and shorts, a Makalu trekking pole in each hand.

“Give me a color from the Crayola deck of 64,” he says. “The big box.”

We’re sitting outdoors in the Sacred Valley of Peru, a large umbrella overhead to shade the noonday sun. Someone comments on the hedge of fuchsia bougainvillea. “If the color’s not in that box, I don’t know it.”

This is the heart of Inca land, where stone, stucco and mud-brick houses line narrow cobblestone streets. Small, meticulously tilled fields of potato, beans and cabbage grow alongside the road. We stop at the Inca ruins in the village of Ollantaytambo, and walk through a crowded market lined with Quechua tribal hats and baby alpaca shawls, bags and scarves. The guide leads us to an ancient stone structure designed to transport water. She talks with pride about the ingenious Inca irrigation systems. To demonstrate, she passes her hand across the trough, causing the flowing water to stop. She swipes the channel a second time, and the water begins to run. The guide turns to Dan, takes his hand, tells him about the barrier that’s strung knee-high across the grass, and ushers him to the trough. She places his hand in the cool water then slides his fingers across the stone at the mouth of the channel.

“Whoa, no water. That’s cool.” The guide swipes his hand a second time. He feels the water flow.

“Very cool.”

A tumor cost Dan the sight in one eye when he was three. The cancer relapsed and, at the age of seven, he lost his other eye. The man has climbed the 19,340-foot Mount Kilimanjaro—the highest peak on the African continent—and trekked to Everest base camp in Nepal. He has jumped out of an airplane more than 300 times. To prove he is not without fear, he tells the story of once trekking along a narrow ridge when someone in his group starts talking about the drop-offs.

“Sometimes not being able to see where you are is a good thing,” Dan explains from the back of the van. We’re driving through the high plateau on our way back to Cusco. “You don’t realize the danger you’re in. Once I heard the guy describe just how narrow the ridge was, and how steep the drop-offs were, I was scared shitless.” There are sighs and nods from the group, but no one has a story to top his. We’ve all been on ridges at elevation and we’ve all been scared. We can’t imagine being there blind.

The following morning, twelve of us step out of the van outside the village of Mollepata and begin the six-day, roughly 35-mile trek to Machu Picchu. We are in the Andes on the Salkantay Trail, a route foraged centuries ago by villagers and their horses and mules. The trail opened to the public in September 2008.

Dan’s wife, Teresa, is expecting the couple’s first child, a daughter, in November. She has her physician’s clearance to 12,000 feet, which means she’ll hike with us the first day and again at the end of the trek. On Day 1, a jingling wristband of sleigh bells hangs from Teresa’s backpack. Dan follows the sound and listens for her verbal cues. He responds with the agility of a trained athlete.

“Rock left. Switchback right. Steep down.”

Like hearing lyrics from a song none of us knows, we watch the synchronicity of a well-rehearsed high-mountain dance. For most of us, the experience of hiking with Dan, or anyone like him, is a first. I close both eyes, take a step, then another, trying to imagine his world. The eyelids fly open before I’ve counted to five, so strong is the urge to see where I am going, so entrenched the desire for control.

After dinner we throw on another layer of fleece and step outside into a cool night. “You can only see this when there’s no moon,” explains Jose. “This is our one chance all week.” We look to the sky and there, to the left of the Southern Cross, wedged between Scorpion and the Milky Way, is the sleeping llama, another icon in the lore of the Incas. The animal is tucked into the blackness of a sky splattered in stars, his head folded into a curled front leg.

“Anyone want to borrow these?” Phoebe holds up her binoculars.

“I’d love to have a look,” says Dan, his mischievous grin nearly as bright as the sky overhead. The group erupts in laughter.

For three days we climb steadily toward the namesake of the trail—the Salkantay—the mountain most revered by the Incas, the second highest in Peru. With Teresa waiting for us in a lodge down trail, we take turns guiding Dan, carrying the bells, giving the cues. Where we go, he goes—across crude, narrow bridges, through rocky switchbacks, down muddy slopes. To watch him negotiate loose rock, up AND down, is to abandon all excuses…for sore ankles and throbbing knees, for tired lungs and blisters on the feet. Instead of excuses we feel gratitude, and lots of it.

It turns out this trip was about getting my self back—the wise, lighter self who lives below the angst of ego and responsibility, the self who knew I needed to forget about the rotten economy, trust that my family would manage without me, and go. What I didn’t know about before I left was the man who would open my heart another notch, who would expand my mind and give me that rare gift of humility and self-empowerment. If he can do this blind, well, here we go.

We cross the pass at 15,237 feet on Day 3, celebrating with hugs and photos, piling rocks atop the cairns already there, with blessings for our children and loved ones. With his finger in the air, our guide traces the routes of five international expeditions that have attempted summits of Salkantay, the successful and the tragic. He checks the clouds overhead, promises lunch in an hour, and turns to lead the descent.

The mountain that has held our eye for three days is suddenly to our backs. Loose rock is harder to handle going down, balance trickier as the body redistributes its weight through the pelvis and torso. The lungs find freedom but the joints are stressed and cranky. To a blind man, the descent is a series of steps—thousands of them—into nothingness. Add mud, or wet, slippery rock from snowmelt, and the experience must be terrifying. Dan’s technique is to bend both legs at the knees, his poles out in front like the forelegs of a horse, his trunk upright. The jaw, cheekbones and forehead lock in acute awareness of every step. There is no letting up for the Crouching Tiger, not once. To lose concentration could mean disaster of the worst possible kind.

Three more days of down, and up, and down again, and we walk at sunset into the town of Aguas Calientes. Overhead, in misty cloud-cover, looms the magical Lost City of the Incas, Machu Picchu.

“Was the trip at all spiritual?” asks a friend a month after I return home. We’re sitting outside at a Starbucks on a late August afternoon. No longer under a summer sky, the sun has shifted to cast bright amber light through a hanging basket of petunias. I wonder if the color fuchsia was in his box of 64.

“There was a lot about that trip I found spiritual,” I say, and tell her first about Dan.