I had enough cash for the bike because I was carrying all of my money, in cash, on my person. Normally, I traveled with my nest egg in the form of traveler’s checks (remember, there were no ATMs yet). But, I didn’t want my New Zealand earnings taking a double hit - losing money with the unfavorable exchange rate from kiwi to aussie dollars, and the cost of the traveler’s check fees on top of that. I already felt like I was getting robbed by the exchange rate, since every five dollars I had earned in New Zealand was worth only four dollars in Australia. So I wore “the mothership” of cash around my waist, even when I slept, and used a satellite wallet for everyday purchases. Things were going smoothly. Should be fine.

One of my roommates in the raft guide house was from Queensland and would go on and on about Queensland this and Queensland that, so I was curious to see it. Plus, there was the Great Barrier Reef! I had dive certification cards in my pocket from Hawaii and who knows when I’d be on this side of the world again. To Queensland, then!

I got some rope from the hostel and strapped my ridiculously large backpack to the back of the bike. It was sticking out over the rack as well as covering up the so-called passenger seat, leaving me a just-barely-big-enough slot between it and my tank bag to sit in. I carabinered my water bottle to one of the straps, and off I went across the Sydney Harbour bridge in flip-flops, cotton capris and a Kawarau Rafts t-shirt, headed north.

The plan was to do a loop - from Sydney up the Sunshine Coast to Cairns, over somehow to Kakadu National Park and Darwin, down to Ayers Rock in the Outback, and all the way down to Adelaide, Melbourne and around back to Sydney. I reckoned it was doable in the six weeks I had left, leaving two weeks still for Tahiti, before my open ticket on Air New Zealand turned into a pumpkin.

The freeways getting out of Sydney were a lot different than the New Zealand one-lane highways, as these were two and three lanes in each direction with off-ramps and on-ramps. My new bike was big for me, but it seemed tiny in comparison to the “road trains” that I was playing tag with. These huge trucks were going the distance with three trailers in tow, and they created quite the side draft. I learned to expect it and brace, but not stiffen up. Keep it fluid.

I was getting used to the new bike and seeing what it could do. This bike had a lot more power than the farm bike, and I loved the feeling of the acceleration. It was pure freedom. I figured that was keeping me safer anyway, as accelerating out of a situation was now an option. I loved the acceleration so much, it was intoxicating, but when I got up to speed, keeping pace in the fast lane, I would start thinking about terrible things like high-speed wobble and what if my front tire blows out, so then I would inevitably chicken out and slow down. I would slow down so much that I had room to accelerate again, because that was the best part anyway. I must have annoyed the hell out of all those road train truckers, playing what must have seemed like a cat-and-mouse game with them.

I ran into a bit of trouble the first time I stopped for a rest. I was still getting used to the heavier weight and longer turning radius of this bike as I slowed down to pull into the gas station/cafe/store rest stop. By the time I was in the middle of the parking lot, I was only going about 2 miles an hour, so I really shouldn’t have been leaning over so far like in a high-speed turn. When I turned the handlebars to match my lean and try to save it, my tank bag slid to the right and foiled my save. In slow motion, in front of some barrel-chested bikers wearing black leather, the bike went down on its side. Shit! As I was struggling to right the bike, I could hear those tough biker guys poking fun at me. “A Sheila shouldn’t be riding a bike if a Sheila can’t pick it up,” they chided. After a couple more pointless tugs from my end, and chuckles from their end, I said, “Come on, how about a little help, here? You guys look strong.” “Yeah, yeah, I know,” I added in agreement to what they were thinking. I did feel pretty silly, standing there in my cotton capris and flip-flops, and them all in their black leather pants and vests. I thanked them and assessed the situation. Everything on the bike seemed to be working with the minimal scrapes and crunches, with my ego, thankfully, taking the brunt of the incident. I unstrapped my backpack for a much-needed weight distribution overhaul, and also grabbed my tennis shoes, rain pants, and jacket - it was getting cooler anyway, with the setting sun throwing everything into shade. Otherwise, for most of the day it was blistering hot under the Australian summer sun. My only respite was my 60mph breeze, which I controlled with my right hand on the throttle.

I was riding up the Sunshine Coast, but I didn’t see much of it other than sugarcane after sugarcane after never-ending sugarcane along the highway. There were no mountains I could see beyond the sugarcane corridor, so sugarcane was my only view. For hours. For days. There was no point in checking out the ocean, because it was unfortunately box jellyfish season. Tiny invisible predators were lurking in the water, and the sting from just one could kill you. Great. There is no point in going to the hot, sandy beach if you can’t go into the water. I think I gained 10 lbs because instead I stopped at all the rest stops. I would order a hamburger, not because I was hungry, but because I was a little bored and fidgety. In Australia they have many different add-ons for burgers, my favorite being beetroot and a fried egg. Sport-eating between blurs of sugarcane, I was reminded constantly that Australia, indeed, is a big country.

Lulled by the never-changing scenery, I mused about a book that one of my adventure hitchhiking and tramping buddies back in New Zealand had given me. Scott Peck’s The Road Less Traveled spoke about how narcissistic people (my Parental Unit!) viewed others not as their own person, but more like an extension of themselves. It was called narcissism, and it was the first time I’d heard that term. See, I’m not crazy. Growing up I would try to point out to the Parental Unit the errors of their ways, and they would ship me off to a child psychologist to figure out what was wrong with me and why I wasn’t complying and to get me to fall in line. But this time I had an entire book to back me up, and the geographical advantage of being on the other side of the earth, and of course now I was an autonomous 21 years old. So I wrote them a letter, airmail, footnoting Scott Peck’s book, calling them out on being narcissists. They had to have gotten that letter by now. As the sugarcane rolled by I would fantasize that the well-written letter with footnotes was a revelation to them and that they had broken down and were now writing a reply, apologizing, reaching out with loving arms.

Because of all the burger stops, the slot where I straddled the bike between my tank bag and the backpack was getting smaller and more crowded, as I was growing larger. My sweaty baby of cash together with my passport and paper airline tickets was getting increasingly uncomfortable, what with wearing it all the time. I slept with it, sure, but sometimes in the afternoon I would just clip it on a backpack buckle in back, and enjoy the increased breeze on my belly. I would take it in with me whenever I stopped, of course, because it looked just like what it was, a money belt.

Things were going smoothly, maybe even a little bit too smoothly. Maybe subconsciously I was craving more adventure. I might have sabotaged myself - it’s hard to say. I pulled into the Cairns (pronounced CANS) hostel and the unthinkable had happened - my money belt was gone. Fuck!! I checked my waist - no, not there; yes, I remember strapping it to the backpack at the last stop, but that was hours ago. I put my helmet back on and all my rain gear, as now it had started to pour and it was getting dark - but I had to try to find it. After an hour and a half of driving, looking to the sides of the road, I realized it was like looking for a needle in a haystack, if the haystack was dark and it was pouring rain. All I could see were headlights and the reflections of headlights and taillights in the water puddling on the road. I must have been looking at the other side, instead of where I was going, because all of a sudden as I entered an intersection there were too many colored lights all reflecting in the puddles, and I braked, but a little too suddenly, and with too much front brake, and I started to skid out. I locked it up and slid halfway across the intersection wobbling, and then came to rest, upright! thank god!, right in the middle of the traffic exchange. A tsunami of reality washed over me. I took off my helmet and sobbed uncontrollably for I don’t know how long. I was never going to find the sweaty mothership of cash. Let it go.

Cold and wet and completely dejected, I returned to the hostel. I had enough money in my satellite wallet to last four or five days, and the front desk was cool about me not having to show my passport. They cut me a deal and were very understanding of my situation, and said I could stay on credit as long as I needed to sort things out. With a heavy heart I put an ad on the hostel bulletin board - FOR SALE, Kawasaki Z 500, custom exhaust, helmet, tank bag with see-through plastic map cover, $1200.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to say, but I made a very expensive international phone call to my parents. “Did you get my letter?” I asked right off the bat. Silence. “Did you read my letter?” I asked again. “Yes,” my mother said dismissively. “Well, any response?” I pressed. She changed the subject and kept the strained conversation superficial. Nothing?! Crickets!? Denial! After some small talk I wrapped it up - it was an expensive international phone call anyway, always a great excuse - with no mention of money belts, motorcycles, nothing of how I felt. I could see it would fall on deaf ears anyway. I realized at that moment that they were never going to change. That’s who they were, and I was not going to give them an inkling of being able to have power over me because of money ever again. Clearly, I was on my own.

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I was no stranger to New Zealand. At 17, I had finagled a one year escape from my oppressive parents and Stockton by convincing my dad’s local Rotary Club of my worthiness to represent them as an exchange student at Otumoetai High School in Tauranga, on the North Island. I had learned from my Parental Unit how to hide objectives (my desperate need to escape the overbearing regime that I was trapped in) and to create a facade (I downplayed my desperation and came across more studious and ambassador-like) because if I told the truth, I would never have been allowed to go.

The Southern Hemisphere school year is six months out of sync with the Northern Hemisphere school year, so my one year window of freedom was from the last half of my junior year into the first half of my senior year. I lived with three families on the North Island during that year, so I already knew that in New Zealand at least they spoke English, hitchhiking was safe, and bottles of fresh milk with cream on top were personally delivered to doorsteps every morning to go with everyone’s muesli. And that there were only two channels of TV, government run, on which half-hour American TV shows lasted only 20 minutes because of substantially fewer ads, and that both channels signed off at 10 pm by playing the special good-night song to the whole country before cutting to the black-and-white “Off Air” graphic. Also, there seemed to be only one salad dressing that was available, and although there were variations with more or less vinegar, you could tell that mayonnaise was still the main ingredient.

The third red flag with Andy turned out to be more like a white surrender flag, apparent to both of us when we landed in Auckland. I wanted to hitchhike - he didn’t. I was committed to a year of travel - he wasn’t. It was mutually obvious and inevitable, and I think we were both relieved we didn’t have to have “the talk.” We wished each other well and hugged goodbye. I don’t even know how he got home. Did he get off the plane in Australia or Tahiti, now that I wasn’t dragging him around? The only way to check in was to write a snail-mail letter or make a very expensive international phone call from I’m not even sure where, so it never happened.

New Zealand was made for hitchhiking. Unlike in the USA, it was ok to not have a car. Towns were small and I could easily walk to the outskirts, and before I could even stick a thumb out, friendly folks would pick me up. We would be fast friends before the next town, and before you know it they would be insisting that I stay with their aunts or nephews who owned a farm this way or that. Most of the time I had to decline, though. Otherwise I never would have gotten anywhere. I had my sights set on the South Island, specifically, the Remarkables.

I had always dreamed of learning to ski. Stockton wasn’t too far from the ski resorts in the Sierras, but the Parental Unit was so stingy, it proclaimed that I couldn’t go skiing until I could pay for it myself. Plus, I was constantly grounded, so learning to ski had never happened. The Remarkables were a stunning range of mountains visible from Queenstown. I had seen the jagged peaks back in high school, when all the Rotary exchange students from the North Island took a two-week bus holiday and toured the South Island (yes, all the exchange students that were hosted on the South Island concurrently took a bus tour of the North Island). The Remarkables are indeed remarkable, and they left quite an impression on me. I figured that was as good a place as any to learn to ski.

I arrived in Queenstown and hung my hat at the hostel. It was late in the winter season, nearly spring, so I figured I could make do with layering the clothes I had with some rain pants. I signed up for the ski bus and planned to scope out rental equipment and perhaps a group lesson when I got there, so as not to reinvent the wheel. I was so excited I could barely get to sleep in my bunk. In the middle of the night it started to rain, and rain hard, so the next morning I sadly awoke to my shattered dreams: overnight, winter had ended, and spring had sprung.

I wandered around town later in the gray drizzle to check out all the shops and restaurants to see which ones I would be able to afford and ended up in the Kawarau Rafts store. There was a commotion around that day’s river trip, which was displayed in strips of 4x6 prints along the wall. I couldn’t believe people had gone river rafting in the rain, but I guess everyone gets wet anyway. What I didn’t know was that all the rain falling in the canyon catch basin had created a huge increase in the water level and force, which made it way more exciting than normal. I could see in the photos they all had full wetsuits, with some even wearing a splash jacket on top. It looked incredibly exciting. The people who had gone on the trip were just getting back to the store and began buzzing around the photo strips, trying to spot their guide and boat among the others. The stories of near misses, the teamwork, and the wildness intrigued me, and suddenly I wasn’t moping over my unfortunate timing with the Remarkables and the loss of my learning-to-ski dream.

I had also dreamed of becoming a river raft guide, so it was easy to switch focus. As a child I would crouch down on the sidewalk outside our house and watch the rain and runoff from the street flow through the clumps of fallen leaves in the gutter, imagining it was a real river, and I was a giant, moving the clumps around to create the “rapids.” I would place a bay leaf from the tree in our front yard, my “boat,” and set it at the “put in,” and watch it navigate down the length of turns and twists and swirls, around the mountains of wet leaves, until it reached our next-door neighbor’s house or a parked car. I was an avid reader and probably had read a book on river rafting, so it wasn’t like I didn’t know anything.

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I didn’t know it then, but the 80’s turned out to be in the sweet-spot era of budget travel. Lonely Planet had already come onto the scene with the promise of revealing all the cheapest places to stay and cheapest places to eat, but it was still before all those shoestring guidebooks changed the travel landscape forever and made off-the-beaten-path destinations too crowded and not-so-lonely. I worshiped my dog-eared 1986 (first edition!) copy of Lonely Planet’s Fiji - A Travel Survival Kit like a bible. It held the secret to stretch your dollar, take your time, and stay in a place for awhile. It had great maps of all the islands and towns, ferry schedules, phone numbers of backpacking crash pads and campgrounds, where to eat for dirt cheap, and enticing glossy photos for inspiration. I could usually swap out my current Lonely Planet for the next country’s Lonely Planet at the last hostel before the international flight, and usually for free as it’s all anyone used. Trust the chaos. For all the less-than-desirable conditions at hostels, they provide a wealth of information for budget travelers.

“Bula!!” “Bula!!” As soon as we stepped onto the island of Ovalau, we were greeted by everyone we passed in the street, in the stores, everywhere, with an enthusiastic wave and smile. “Bula!!”, we quickly learned to reply with equal enthusiasm. Like the Hawaiian “aloha”, “bula” in Fiji is a welcoming greeting of love, friendship and good health. Could this be the friendliest place I’d ever been?

We met Dick on the first day. It was so strange meeting a man named Dick all the way out on a tiny group of islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, a long way from nowhere. My father’s name was Richard, and I would cringe every time he introduced himself proudly to my friends as “Dick.” Everyone on the island seemed to know Dick. I have encountered travelers decades later who had been to Fiji and had met Dick. He would hustle our campground of backpackers, figuring that if we each had paid $8 to camp in the campground, then why wouldn’t we pay HIM $8 to camp in his one room tent/house. An Airbnb before there was Airbnb. It included constant kava ceremonies (and, of course, Dick). Kava, a liquid made from ground kava root, is used in island ceremonies and looks and tastes like dirty dishwater. For some it’s a narcotic and causes visions. For others it’s like an alcohol buzz, and for still others it’s like a sleeping pill. We would all sit in a circle in Dick’s house. When he clapped the empty coconuts together for everyone’s attention, if it was your turn, you would lift the coconut bowl of putrid brown liquid to the sky, bow, and then chug it. The bowl was then refilled and passed around the circle, everyone drinking from the same half shell. How many rounds you participated in was up to you.

Dick lived near the campground, which hosted a handful of backpackers from around the world, including Andy and me. He was a hustler, a real mover and shaker for this tiny island, before the internet, GPS, and ATMs. Besides turning his “living room” into a glamping hotel, he talked up a big game on excursions to Cangali (pronounced THANG-ali) Island with his friend, Emosi.

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HAWAII

Andy was the cute, quiet type. He learned to be quiet as a child, growing up on, and in, an echo-y houseboat in Sausalito, California with a father who wanted only to see his children, not to hear them. He had perfect curly hair, the kind that would spring back into place like a shampoo commercial after you ran your fingers through it. His soft lips begged to be kissed, and the way they framed his smile so beguilingly would intoxicate me every time he flashed his pearly whites.

I loved the fact he was a literature major and worked at the university library. That was so far outside my allowed curriculum that it seemed exotic. He was also my first “project boyfriend.” I was in love with the possibilities - my pattern clear to me only now, after decades of repeat offenses and retrospection. Someone not living up to their potential? Sign me up! Wounded bird or man-child on the sale rack? I was there to help. Possess talent or an idea but lack the grounding or follow-through? I was like a lifeguard, ready to rescue, and would drop everything to save them from themselves. No surprise, Andy was a work in progress. I approached him with the idea of joining me on my South Pacific sojourn. Mid-sentence his brow furrowed and I panicked. I too quickly blurted out “ok, I’ll meet you halfway with the fare”, to sweeten the deal. We added my half fare, and his full fare together, then as agreed, split the difference. Even so, $675 was better than full fare for such a ticket to freedom, even for 1986. I couldn’t afford to lose him, not yet.

I had done the recon on Maui already as a 6th grader. My grandmother in her final years wanted to tag along on a family vacation. She was paying for it, and that meant we had to do what she wanted, so we all stayed in a rather upscale three-room villa at the end of Front St. in Lahaina, right on the beach. You could feel the air, sweet with seduction. I was allowed to roam freely in the compound and bob up and down in the gentle waves of the bathtub-temp, clear blue ocean with colored foam boogie boards purchased from the supermarket. So I already knew going into this trip with Andy that on Maui you could get mango-flavored anything, and that Lahaina was a tourist town, and that we would be landing - on my birthday, May 5 - just in time to secure jobs and an apartment for the forthcoming season.

As I stepped off the plane onto the tarmac in Kahului, I was hit again with that thick, sweet perfume, almost as delicious as my newfound freedom. I remember the stories of an ex-boyfriend in my freshman year at college, older than me, who had moved to the Virgin Islands for a season. He got a job at a leather store on the main drag and found an apartment, so I knew it could be done, and held onto this can-do knowledge like an amulet. I scoured the local paper and found a simple studio apartment with 70’s wood paneling, louvered windows, and a hot plate right on Front St. I had not factored in the humidity when deciding to spend a summer in Lahaina without air conditioning, but we were only a block from the beach and would seek refuge there often, lazily snorkeling in the warm, clear blue ocean.

Going to job interviews became my hobby. I made it a game to answer all want ads. Nothing was out of reach. The worst they could say is “no.” Besides, we had landed in Maui at just the right time, and advertisers weren’t exactly flooded by my competition. I got us both a job on what locals called the “pork and snork,” an all-you-can-eat, all-you-can-drink half-day snorkel cruise, where our biggest job was announcing, and enforcing, the rule that once the passengers started drinking they were finished swimming. Up to them. Oh, the struggle.

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Call me crazy but, given my predicament, I had nothing to lose.

From the outside my family seemed perfectly normal, if not slightly prudish. Our yearly newsletter boasted of family members’ achievements. I was an honor student and a rising star on the swim team, my young brother was in the Boy Scouts and very creative with his Legos, showing much promise in the building industry. We were members of the local country club. Card tables were set up and candied nuts set out every other week for the bridge club that took place in our large, and otherwise unused, living room. We dressed up for church and my dad dutifully put paper money in the collection plate as it came around. My parents projected this idealistic image of us, somewhere between a Norman Rockwell poster and a Republican version of the Cleavers on “Leave It to Beaver.” We were picture perfect from the outside, but completely dysfunctional on the inside. Surprise, surprise.

I feared no one would ever believe me if I divulged what really went on behind closed doors. My parents ruled the household with an iron fist, and it was all about control. My mother was a textbook narcissist and unabashedly selfish. My father, a passive resistor and procrastinator, was worn out from being nagged to death, his face drooping over the years like a sad hound dog. Punishment would come down from the top after a secret meeting between the two, a joint decision, so I just referred to them both in my mind as my Parental Unit. Most kids cry when they get dropped off at kindergarten, but I would cry when my mother arrived to take me home. She was the youngest of three girls and from the way she treated me, her oldest child, I knew she had been bullied by them - and now it was payback time. Somehow in her mind, she had confused me with her older sisters. They had control over her as a child, but now she had control over them. Only, it was really me.

But please don’t feel sorry for me. In life as in poker, it’s not about the cards you are dealt, but instead it’s about how you play the game.

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I know I am in the vicinity of the promised land, with all these saffron, gold, and maroon monks floating and scurrying about. But I really know I have come home, when a shopkeeper hands me three pieces of candy, instead of six cents worth of rupees, for my change. Hallelujah!

I have returned to the peaceful land, and frame of mind, of Tibet Buddhism. And also (to my inner child’s delight!), the land of candy change. Tibet Buddhism. Brought to you by the letter ‘M’. Mostly.

I had heard of this mythical land, in the North of Norths, where Tibetan Buddhists had settled, after fleeing their homeland and escaping on foot up and over the Himalayas. Monasteries, monks, and momos (Tibet-style dumplings - yum!) are the more familiar monikers of this place, or more accurately, this place of mind. The Tibetans here in India are on borrowed land, but aren’t we all? A peaceful space, where the mountains can hear the chanting of prayers, and the random ~clang~ of a prayer wheel, making another turn around the spindle, another prayer to heaven - for peace, I suppose. Buddhism is a peaceful religion. It’s more of a practice, really, than a religion, but peace, and peace of mind, is a big premise, either way.

An extraordinarily high percentage of clothing and accessories are displayed and are available in the ‘monk fashion color palette’ - maroon Puma t-shirts, USC Trojan football inspired striped Adidas sneakers, yellow and orange Crocs, saffron over the shoulder bags, and golden backpacks, are all within reach, and displayed in shops and street markets. Maroon mopeds and motorbikes must be the monasteries’ version of Henry Ford exclaiming (of the model A), “that you could have any color you wanted, as long as it was black” - it seems the monks can have mopeds (why not?!), as long as they are maroon! Maybe just an unspoken rule, but I never saw monks on mopeds in any other color. Never green. Never blue. Maybe red in a pinch.

I realize ‘monk fashion’ and ‘monk consumerism’ are unmistakable oxy-morons, but the head monks are trying to keep a balance, and seem to be aware of the dangers and pitfalls of the necessary by-product of living within the modern world.

Why shouldn’t the monks have backpacks and satchels to carry their things around? Necessities and accessories like toothbrushes and phone cases? And if so, why not have them be in the ‘monk fashion color wheel spectrum’ - I mean, no one wants to stand out with a hot pink fanny pack. They are monks, not depravity prisoners. So what if the iPhone case is gold. Facebook? Sure, as long as it’s used for communication, rather than a distraction from the present. Wait, did I just say iPhone case?! I tried to confront a newly-made monk friend, with what I thought was the irony in all that, but he seemed to have a pretty level head about it. Maybe he still follows me on Facebook? Hard to tell.

Traditionally, the third son born to a Tibetan family, becomes a monk. From what I gathered, that’s just the way it is. Destiny. No point in protesting or resisting, it’s just the third son’s lot in this life. One round in the round of rounds. An indoctrination into a boys-to-men’s meditation club, so to speak. It’s just one of many lives, so why fight it? Perhaps it’s an opportunity to level up, in the larger scheme of things, and, either way, it will be one step closer to the culmination of everything, whatever that is.

“Alone?”, the monk with the baseball cap asked. “Yes”, I replied. “Only one?, no friends?”, he added.

“I walked with my [new] friends from Pelling to the lake, and from the lake to Yuksom, but they were in a hurry to catch their Airbnb reservation in Gantok (the capital of Sikkim)”, I explained. And to move things along I answered the next three questions India always asks me. “Not married. No children. Fifty two years old.” For the first time ever traveling in India, this monk said, “Oh that’s good. Then you can travel and do as you please.“ Of course he’s the first person in India to be OK with me not being married - he’s a monk.

“No photography allowed inside the monastery” the sign said. Inside there was scaffolding, and three monks were playing chill, chanting music, and painstakingly painting the ceiling from a scaffold. It was nice and cool inside, and I needed a rest anyway. Trying to work my magic to see if we couldn’t bend the rules for me. I said, “What a shame, I don’t know much about Buddhism, and I keep seeing the fat blue dancing guy with skulls surrounding his head. I could use the photo to research it later.” Not buying it, he replied, “You can find him all over the nets.”

I continue on, up and over the steep mountain passes and verdant valleys of Sikkim, on the old ‘monastery trek’ trail. No gps. No real maps to speak of. Only some hand painted guidelines on guesthouse walls that I’ve taken a picture of with my camera for reference. None of the different hand drawn ‘suggestions’ match each other, so I took a picture of each one, and will piece them together like an unraveling puzzle as I go. The perspective is hard to read, and I can’t tell by the crude lines, without topo reference, whether the trail goes uphill or downhill. But I quickly learn that the monasteries are always at the top of the next mountain.

I rushed to start my trek from Pelling with the Spanish couple, in part because he spoke Hindi, and was a scholar of North Indian Religions, which I thought would be helpful, and also because it was auspiciously my birthday. Two years prior, for my 50th birthday, I had to get a knee replacement, and then like dominos, a hip replacement, and sadly another hip replacement redo, all within a calendar year. That’s why I went through almost a year and a half of rehab - so I could do the things I wanted to do. I didn’t want any place to be off limits to me, even it it’s a monastery on top of a mountain. I wanted to test drive my new bionic body, and challenge and push myself on this multi day, ridiculously steep, and who knows how many kilometers adventure. Here in Sikkim, you’re either walking straight up, or straight down. Steps so steep I must turn sideways. “Shortcuts” are even steeper. (I got smoked by a little old lady carrying a load of wood AND a toddler, to keep my confidence in check.)

Starting this adventure challenge on my birthday seemed fitting and auspicious. So, when I learned this Spanish couple were heading out that very morning, I hastily packed my daypack in 10 minutes to join them. Indeed, his Hindi came in handy when asking the locals for ‘the way’, and I was grateful for their company, but they have gone on ahead, their pace a little too brisk for my tastes. I’m on my own now, relying on the kindness of strangers, charades, and some mis-matched hand drawn maps for reference.

The locals tend to favor the new road, instead of the walking trail, in these modern times. It’s more level, easier to get to market in the next town, and better chance of hitching a ride with a passing car or truck. The trail had funneled down to this newly cut, very dusty road, which I didn’t care for, so I check my direction suggestion pics on my camera for an opportunity to re-join the ‘monastery trek’ trail.

To confirm my hunch, I ask “Hongry Monastery?”, with some charades, pointing to what I think might be the trail off this horrible dusty road, to a nice looking old man wearing a vest deconstructed from a jacket suit with lapels, over a sweater. He was an old man by the wrinkles on his face, but his sparkly eyes were still that of his youth. He spoke no English, but he motioned me in for chai, and we joked around and laughed, trying on my hardware store sunglasses, and he proudly showed me his blue house, with yellow corn drying from under the eaves. He had a daughter that spoke some English, and she was instructed by her father, after we finished our chai, to accompany me up the hill, until the switchbacks near the house joined the main trekking trail.

When I got to the Hongry monastery, there was no one around, and the monastery was in ruins. There was a devastating earthquake in 2009 - also damaging the previous monastery, but the monks there were present at least, and busy with rebuilding and repainting that monastery, All the beautiful hand painted walls were being covered up by constructing plaster and cement, so, just like a mandala sand painting -I’m reminded that life is ephemeral.

I had planned to sleep here at the Hongry HomeStay to break up the walk from Yuksom to Tashiding. Even though there is no one around, the door is unlocked, with a mattress and blanket inside, and a covered porch with a view. Now 3pm, and not enough time to reach the next monastery (probably in ruins, too?), and this unlocked homestay seems like a great spot to take shelter from the looming afternoon thunderstorms. I have snacks, but I might be going a little hungry at Hongry monastery, I chuckle ironically to myself. I surrender to the idea that I will really be getting my money’s worth out of this ‘monastery trek’ experience, and will live like a secluded monk for the night. Simple. Just what I need. On a mountain top in the former kingdom of Sikkim, with a million dollar view.

Fasten your seatbelts, as we are headed to the Se La Pass (4172m) on the way to Tawang, near the Bhutanese and Chinese borders! Oh right, there are no seatbelts, so don’t forget to lock your door - sometimes they fly open on the hairpin turns. But, the sun is out, the music is blasting, and I have a window seat this time, (and not in the back!) in this ‘sumo’ (retrofitted Izuzo Trooper shared taxi) for the next 10 hours with my new friend Rekha, a kid about to start boot camp in the Indian army, and a friend of his from college in high heels that won’t stop talking. There are cliffs with missing guardrails, and yaks, and prayer flags all along the way.

Tawang is another enclave of monks on motorbikes, momos, and candy change. Buddhist nuns ladened with turquoise jewelry, wear hats made from yak hair, and sport down puffy coats and active wear shoes. There are donut shops, and ‘Chinese and Indian’ restaurants. It is also home to the largest monastery in India, which is second in the world only after the famous Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet.

Tawang has a really friendly outpost/Chinese restaurant at the edge of the universe feel about it, with the odd soundtrack of Lady Gaga, Pitbull, and random Bee Gees wafting from shops and taxis, and of course, the ubiquitous candy change! The Tibetans are such dear sweet people - I oblige and fulfill my karmic photo duty and pose for everyone’s selfie that asks. It seems the missionaries have gotten here before me, however, and there are baptist revival churches amongst all the monasteries, and strangely everything is closed on the day we arrived, Good Friday. On Saturday, the only thing to buy in the few shops open, was rum and playing cards, both for under a dollar, and a new blank writing journal at a school supply shop with a picture of the Golden Gate bridge on the cover.

Rekha is an engineer from Bangalore, and also a solo female traveler. Quite unusual for both of us, as not many women travel alone, especially from America or India. A chance meeting in the town of Bomdila, half way along the long (24 hour in total) sumo shared taxi journey, and where most travelers on this route rest for the night. My sumo was delayed, the town was jammed with folks trying to catch a glimpse of the visiting Dalai Lama, so by the time I got to town, all the guest houses were full. The college kids crammed in the sumo with me, (we were fast friends after the 12 hour journey) were nice enough to try to help me find a place to stay, since most of the negotiation and bad news on vacancy was in Hindi. On the third guesthouse, and still no luck, Rekha heard my situation from down the hall from her room, the last room available. On the spot she offered to share her double room, and we stayed up all night chatting like school girls at a slumber party. I shared with her my plan to take a rest day, in between the long sumo rides, and she agreed that was a good idea, and we spent the following day on the first of our hitchhiking adventures. Normally I wouldn’t be game, but of course she speaks Hindi, and can talk her way into anything. She even convinced some locals to make us lunch for a small fee, in the middle of nowhere. I was along for the ride, so to speak.

Saturday in Tawang, we spent most of the day huddled under the covers in the near freezing temps with no heat in our hotel room, playing cards and drinking rum. Easter Sunday we decided to go on another hitchhiking adventure. We had heard of a nearby monastery that had brightly colored, intricate paintings on the walls , hundreds of years old. Intrigued, we set out on the winding road down the mountain. We didn’t really think about how little traffic there might be on Easter Sunday, and we had to walk quite a way before we caught our first ride. When we got to the monastery, it was closed for lunch and games. The monks had the day off (fair enough!) and were playing cricket and badminton. This made the prospect of being let in to the monastery to see the old beautiful paintings not very likely. Patiently, we sat to watch the cricket, and pretended to be interested. Then, thankfully we were invited into the kitchen for lunch for typical monk fair - rice, dahl, with some yak butter - wow so flavorful! I smelled it on my hands for hours even after washing up. I’ve finally mastered the art of eating with my hands… scoop with 4 fingers then shovel with your thumb. Our window of opportunity slowly closing, Rykha pleads in Hindi to be shown the inside of the old monastery, and her timing was perfect. The paintings were amazing and worth every effort of ours. We only had a short time, as the monk that unlocked the huge doors with immense round door knockers wanted to get back to the cricket game. We thanked him, and started walking back, hoping to catch a ride and get back home before dark anyway. Our first ride was a government car, complete with white cloth covered interior and lots of tiny little flags mounted about. The second ride was a nice couple, both school teachers, and took us back to their apartment for tea, before dropping us back at our hotel room for the night.

Even just the thought of being crammed into a sumo for 24 hours over a period of two days for the return journey, made us both uncomfortable. It turns out there is a helicopter that takes less than an hour to Guwahati, and only costs $35. I couldn’t find the safety record, but it can’t be any worse than those crazy hairpin turns with no seatbelts or suspension and doors that fly open if not locked, up and over the Se La Pass. The Dalai Lama has just visited Tawang, for the first time since his journey up an over the Himalayas during his forced exile from Tibet in 1959, and the helicopter waiting list was bottlenecked with his exiting dignitary entourage. After a day or so, one spot opened up, and I gave it to Rekha, because she had a train to catch to get back to work and her life in Bangalore. As for me, I will spend another day in this sleepy little Tibetan outpost, have some momos, drink some chai, and hang my washing amongst the prayer flags on the roof, waiting for my spot on the helicopter.

A perfect storm doesn’t happen by itself. It takes a series of bad decisions and warped assessments of reality, piling up and compounding exponentially, to set it in motion. Such was the case with me, buckled into my paraglider, ascending rapidly and uncontrollably, up into the dark night sky at King Mountain, in the heart of Idaho. This can’t be happening, I kept repeating to myself, but in the same breath, the same sentence in my head, I had to admit that indeed it was. I would calm myself down by going over in my head that engineers have spent years and years designing the best shape to sew this thin yet strong performance fabric into, and that if the shit hits the fan, my relatively safe B-class wing performs best if I’m relaxed and keep my hands up, off the brakes, and let it fly, as my various paragliding instructors throughout the years would remind me. It was hours after sunset, and I was still going up and up on an invisible elevator into the starry darkness! At one point I was looking down on the top of Mt. Borah, the tallest mountain in Idaho at an elevation of 12,667 feet. It took me a while to wrap my head around the dichotomy of my situation. “This can’t be happening! But, it is” was on a loop inside my head.

I never should have launched in the first place. I was taking a cross-country paragliding clinic organized by a hot-shot tandem pilot out of Sun Valley, scheduled to start the following day. The weather forecast had predicted rain and terrible conditions during the clinic, which disappointingly meant three days of talking about flying instead of actually flying. I had decided to drive over in my van a couple days early to catch the last of the good weather, supposedly, before being grounded to the classroom during the clinic. I didn’t even learn that I should have called for “winds aloft” information until the next day in the clinic. Had I called that phone number before my flight I would have known that the winds at altitudes of 6,000/12,000/18,000 feet were pumping, and I would have known of the potential wind speeds that were lurking just above the launch area. That wasn’t the only factor contributing to my too-high-at-night-while-paragliding situation, however. I had witnessed other clues but was unable to see through either my belief glasses or my bias goggles, and that’s why, without a cloud in the sky, I was going up and up and up into my own perfect storm.

I couldn’t even enjoy the amazing view from over 15,000 ft, way above Mt. Borah, because I wasn’t supposed to be there. How is this even happening?? I had zipped up my newly purchased down puffy coat and tucked away my sunglasses into my chest pocket long ago, and had settled into my situation. I was so high in the sky I could see a hint of the curvature of the earth. The orange haze of the sunset was long gone, and the stars were out in full force. There was no moon, so I could easily see the lights of farms around King Mountain and Mackay and the lights of the small city of Arco 30 miles away, and the dim haze of the bigger cities (Pocatello? Idaho Falls?) beyond the horizon. My vario instrument, attached to my helmet, measures slight change in air pressure and therefore my change in altitude. It beeps to let me know when I’m ascending (normally the goal because it’s usually difficult to stay in the air), and it was beeping rapidly and constantly. The faster the beeps, the greater the rate of ascent. Normally it’s a great sound to hear, it means you’ve flown into a rising air zone, and the trick is to make some turns within the narrow funnel of rising air, but after two hours the nonstop beeping just above my left ear was driving me bonkers. The incessant noise meant that I was still gaining altitude, and at a pretty good clip. At one point it stopped, and I sighed with relief, but it was only for a moment, and then it quickly resumed and droned on with my constant ascent. I didn’t dare turn it off because I needed to know the truth of my predicament. Would I ever come down? Am I in danger of being run over by a plane?

It has been said that pilots spend a lifetime learning to fly because there is always room for more learning. I’ve traveled to Roldinallo in Colombia, Bir Billings in India, and Pokara in Nepal to continue my flying education. I’ve taken a couple SIV (simulation d’incidents en vol, or flight incident simulation) clinics, where we wear lifejackets and practice “when things go wrong” scenarios over a lake with our instructor on radio, guiding us through full frontal deflations and crazy corkscrew downward spirals, to try to normalize all the things that can indeed happen with the invisible force of active air masses colliding with the (expertly engineered) fabric and strings that I’m dangling from. My first clinic, I splurged on a deluxe one with a great instructor–student ratio, offered by Rob Sporrer and Eagle Paragliding in Valle de Bravo, two hours drive from Mexico City, and it’s where I first learned to thermal. I had paid the equivalent of an entire season’s ski pass in Sun Valley and spent it on that one-week paragliding clinic, to develop the Jedi skills needed to find and harness the elusive invisible thermals, and here I was, in the dead of night, caught in a crazy valley-wide bank of uplift for hours without even trying.

Paragliders have come a long way since their introduction. They were invented in the late 70s as a decent tool for mountaineering in the French Alps. There is a joke among old paragliders shared with younger pilots - in the old days it was paragliding that was dangerous and sex that was safe, but now it’s switched and it’s paragliding that is safe, and sex that is dangerous. Fixed-wing pilots have some trouble wrapping their heads around the flexible nature of our paragliding wings. The soft panels of the wing are sewn together with openings in the front - forward speed through the air fills the rows of pockets, and baffles between the panels distribute the air pressure to inflate and form the shape of the wing, which is similar to a plane wing - curved on top but flat on the underside - creating the magical lift of flight. The wing is designed to collapse when met with the shear wind forces in active air, but then immediately re-inflate, to give it the familiar shape again of lift. Paragliders, which are basically high-tech fabric with some strings attached to a harness that the pilot sits in, have less control than a fixed-wing plane with an engine, but more control than, say, a hot-air balloon. By firing up the furnace, the hot-air balloon pilot can control going up and down, but has very little control over the steering, and is at the mercy of the prevailing wind direction. Paragliders can turn on a dime and can be steered any direction desired by the pilot with body weight leans and pressure on one hand brake toggle or the other but have limited control over ascent and descent, and are a bit at the mercy of rising and sinking air masses. As the sun heats up the earth, and enough lighter, warmer air gathers together, there is a breaking point, and like a lava lamp the glob of warm air breaks free from the ground and travels upward. For every rising air glob, there is another cold air glob rushing in to take its place. The goal with paragliding is to ride the rising air masses like an elevator and then go on “glide” to find the next rising air glob, or thermal. Thermals rise until they reach the dewpoint, where they top out and sometimes form a little puffy white cloud. Competition pilots can do this repeatedly and navigate cross-country like a frogger video game, covering hundreds of miles.

When I first got to The Big Lost River Valley I drove my VW van straight to Rob’s house, as he conveniently lives right next to the landing zone at King Mountain. The place needs some TLC, that’s for sure, and I can only imagine the condition of the inside, as I’ve never been allowed in. He does have an outhouse, however, which is all I need to camp in my van on his property. There was no point in going the few miles farther into the dusty two-horse town of Mackay because I knew there was only one bar, one restaurant, and one supermarket. Calling it a supermarket is a stretch as it was more of a just-ok-market, heavy on the meat and potatoes, and good luck to everyone in the salad and veggie department. It was windy when I got there, too windy to fly, but I had brought books, and I pride myself on being a self-entertained human.

Eventually the wind calmed down, like it usually does as the sun gets low in the sky, and the power to heat the air to make it active (colder air blobs rushing in to take the place of warmer air blobs rising) subsides. Rob and I drove to the launch and met two young, rather brash, speed wingers from Montana, who had also arrived early to take advantage of the last of the good flying weather before taking the same clinic. Speed wings are similar in shape and construction to paragliding wings, but with a very different basic philosophy. Speed wings are designed to be smaller so there isn’t as much lift, and the object is to fly close to the ground, called “proximity flying,” and for added excitement it’s usually too close to the ground to ever deploy a reserve chute, so most speed wingers don’t carry them anyway. Brash. Paragliders are larger and are designed for maximum lift, the object being to get as high as possible to extend the flight time. It’s safer that way - accidents mostly happen at takeoff and landing, close to the ground, so the higher you are in the sky the more recovery time you have if something goes wrong. Plus, we all carry reserve chutes, and practicing deploying them is part of our training. The Montana boys had scored some used paragliding wings and had come to the clinic to try to stay up in the air and go cross country, instead of whizzing along just above the ground like maniacs.

The Big Lost River Valley is unique in the area because it runs north and south. In the fall, the setting sun in the west drops below the mountain range at a perfect 90 degree angle on the east side of the long valley, casting that side of the valley into shade. The valley-long band of shady air is relatively cooler than the west side that is still in the sun. The cooler air acts almost like a spatula, scooping underneath the warmer lighter air, encouragingly, to replace it. This catabolic flow happens all down the valley and results in a big slice of air flowing along, until it reaches the obstacle of King Mountain and has nowhere else to go but up. When the conditions are just perfect, it can create a gentle lift band and what pilots call “evening glass-off.” Of course the faster the exchange, the bigger the band and the steeper the obstacle, the greater the lift. The launching area isn’t too high up on King Mountain. If you are an expert pilot, you can take off at 11 am in the middle of the summer, but the air will be very active and “spicy,” so buckle up. Jedi pilots might “bench up,” and work their way above the tallest peak and fly up to cloud base and take a “cloud street” somewhere. This three day clinic is taking place in the fall, when it’s less spicy overall, and Rob and I have waited until the sun is low in the sky, so the air is even less active than it might be, even for this season. We both laid out our gliders and set up for a front launch and patiently waited for our “goldilocks” puff of wind, as it comes in cycles. If it is too windy for our liking then we wait for less, and if not enough wind, as we need at least some breeze to run into, we can wait for more.

After launching we could only get up about 100 or so feet above where we took off. There wasn’t quite enough overall lift to get any higher, but we could do easy S turns in the narrow band of lift near the hill and keep from sinking easily enough, and “boated” around in the sunset. The Montana boys launched after us but flew too far away from the hill, past the narrow lift band, and would sink out. Not discouraged at all, we could see and hear them fold up their wings and stash them in their backpacks and fire up their Enduro motorcycles and easily drive back up to launch to try again. They launched, and again they didn’t hug the hill enough and sank out. Rob and I shared a radio channel and chuckled to each other that they certainly were very confident for not being that good.

The next day after breakfast we walked over and checked the windsock in the landing zone, or LZ. It was too windy to even consider a morning flight. If the windsock is completely inflated and laid out like a horizontal cone then it’s over 20 mph. The ground speed of my safe B-class wing is only 26 mph, which means with a 25 mph headwind I would at best barely make headway or at worse be parked at a standstill. I wouldn’t be able to “penetrate” the air and with each gust above and beyond my standoff with the headwind I would get blown backward. When thermalling just above ridgetops and mountain peaks you never want to fall behind the ridgeline. That’s the region of the invisible rotor monsters, I like to call them, and is to be avoided at all costs.

The Montana boys were camping right at the edge of the landing zone and needed to take a nap, as they had stayed up late drinking the night before. Rob was going to go catamaran sailing on the nearby reservoir, and I was going to play house in my van and read some books and maybe write and a nap didn’t sound half bad. Rob lives here and can fly whenever he wants, so of course he didn’t want to blow his whole Sunday waiting around to maybe fly. I, on the other hand, didn’t want to miss what would be the last chance to fly at King Mountain before the classroom the next day and all the bad weather forecasted. We all went our separate ways and did our own thing for the day.

About an hour and a half before sunset, Rob wasn’t back yet, so I walked over to the landing zone myself, carrying my paraglider just in case. I wasn’t very hopeful, as it seemed pretty windy to me, even before I could get a look at the windsock. The Montana boys were charging about their camp, 20 feet from the windsock, futzing with their motorbikes and playing with their paragliding gear. “Uh, really? You don’t think it’s too windy? Look at the windsock,” I said. Their enthusiasm was unmatched. “We might as well go up to launch and wait. It’s a better view from there anyway to watch the sunset if we don’t fly,” they snapped back. “Are we bringing the cooler?”, I suggested, because I didn’t think the wind would die down enough, and if we were going to sit up there and watch the sunset, then we might as well have a beer.

When we pulled up at the launch, it certainly wasn’t as windy as it had been in the landing zone. I squinted, but there was no way I could see what the windsock was doing down below, so I didn’t know if it had calmed down at the LZ or not, but I wanted to believe that it miraculously had. I trust Rob more than I trust these guys, so I was going to let them go first as my guinea pigs. I was still a little sketched, so I didn’t want to unpack my glider and prep it for flight just yet. By the time the boys had laid their wings out, attached the harnesses, and buckled their helmets, the wind had died even more, to about goldilocks strength, and they both launched one after the other. As I pondered whether to go or not, the breeze switched the other way and dangerously flowed down the hill. To inflate the wing you must run into the wind, so now launching was impossible and I had hesitated and therefore had missed my window of opportunity. I looked at team Montana: they were way up there, and they were very close to the hill. When I looked at them, I guessed they had learned from all the failed attempts of the previous day sinking out, and now were in the lift band really close to the mountain. Were they showing off? What I couldn’t see was that they were being blown back into the mountain, and getting so high that they were reaching the ridgetop. All I saw when I looked at them, higher than me, were some newbies from Montana showing me up. I saw them doing “bunny ears,” which is when both ends of the wing are pulled down and the outside 3 or 4 baffles are put out of commission, decreasing the power of lift. What I saw were some brash boys that had seized the day and were experimenting and playing with new maneuvers that weren’t available in their speed wing sport. I couldn’t see they were in trouble, desperately trying to lose altitude. I just saw them flying, perhaps even taunting me, and I was on the ground, wishing I was in the air.

After a little bit, and a little pep talk to myself, I decided to take a page out of the boys’ playbook and spend the effort to unpack my glider and lay it out, just in case. I decided to give myself 10 minutes of “para-waiting.” If the wind switched back, and I got a magic puff of breeze, then I would take it, it was meant for me. If it didn’t happen, it wasn’t meant to be, and I would pack up my glider and harness back into its backpack, and crack a beer, watch the sunset, and drive the truck back down to the landing zone, saving the boys a motorcycle shuttle, and I could be the hero. I held the red A lines in my palms between my fingers and thumbs, with the rest of the different colored lines draped across my forearms, and gently turned my head from side to side so my ears could feel the nuance of the delicate wind changes. About 5 minutes into the wait, it happened, the perfect puff from the perfect direction. I waited a bit, to make sure it was sustained and not a fluke, and it seemed solid. I wasn’t going to let hesitation get the better of me again. I brought the glider overhead and ran down the grassy slope into the wind for a textbook launch, secretly wishing the Montana boys could have seen it. There was lift immediately, and all of a sudden I was 30 feet above the truck. It was there I was met with winds over 20 mph, not sure exactly how fast, but I could see from my relation to the ground that I was barely making any progress in the forward direction, but boy was I making progress in the upward direction. I didn’t dare turn left or right, not even a crab, for fear of being blown backwards into the mountain. Keep it straight! Soon I wouldn’t be so close to the ground so I could consider using the speed bar, to eke out a couple more miles per hour speed over the ground. I looked over my left shoulder searching for the Montana boys, because only then did I understand their predicament, as it was the same as mine. They had migrated left, down valley past the saddle to the next peak on the ridge, the last time I spotted them was when I was setting my glider out, but now they were not there. Omg they have been blown back behind the mountain! With paragliding we are pretty much on our own. Yes, we can have radios, but I was not on the Montana boys’ channel. I don’t even know if they had radios.

Rob, who was just getting back to his compound from the reservoir, and who I was still on the same channel with from the previous evening, came on the radio: “Where are you? What are you doing?”

I don’t have a fancy voice-activated radio, so in order to talk I need to let go of the brake and steering toggle (maybe even put both toggles in my right hand?) and then with my left hand push a button on the ham radio clipped to my shoulder harness near my left ear, waiting a hot second before talking, so it’s not for idle chit-chat. I usually just listen, and I rarely actually talk on the radio, as I like to keep my hands on the brake and steering toggles at all times, thank you very much.

“Shit, I just launched!”, I confess immediately, as I want to get my hands back to the steering toggles as quickly as possible. Keep it straight! Turning is lava. “Why did you launch? It’s way too windy!” he chimed back.

I paused the conversation to concentrate on keeping the glider pointed directly into the wind, adjusting my direction to match the variable wind direction. Finally, brave enough to take my hand off the left brake again during a relative lull, I alarmingly replied, “Yes I see that now, but it wasn’t windy on launch. What the hell is going on? I keep going up and up! It’s not stopping! My vario won’t shut up!”

“You’ll have to just ride this out. You’ll be fine. You warm enough? Do you have a snack handy if you need? Water?” he asked fairly nonchalantly. There’s a radio code among paragliders - no matter what the situation, the cool kids keep it very chill on the radio, which now I can fully appreciate. Rob can talk, I’ll just listen. He could hear my vario beeping when I occasionally felt brave enough to push my radio button to reply.

“Hey, can you bring your truck to the landing zone and light the runway with your headlights? I think it’s going to be very dark by the time I land!” I said loudly and clearly over the beeping of my vario. From my altitude I could make out his house in the dusk and I saw him turn on the truck that was parked outside his house and head toward the LZ. The headlights bounced as the truck bounced along the potholed dirt driveway. Relieved a bit when I saw the terrain of the landing zone side-lit with his headlights, something to aim for, and relieved to have Rob’s calm voice on radio, I settled in for the journey. Engineers have spent years designing my flying machine. It’s just fabric and strings, but it’s a flying machine. It’s not magic, it’s science. My flying machine. Let my flying machine fly.

“Hey, where are you going?!”, I panicked into the radio as I saw the headlights drive away from the LZ back to the house, all in miniature far below. Is he abandoning me?

“I’m going back to the house to make dinner, you’re going to be up there awhile. Let me know when you stop going up, and I’ll come back to the LZ”, he replied matter of factly.

My vario kept beeping, and I kept on going up and up. The sky turned to black, and I was floating up to the stars. It seemed like soon I would be able to reach out and touch them. The headwind had subsided, so I could do S turns to break the monotony of trying to keep it straight. I didn’t want to go too far into the valley, because when it gets late enough and cold enough the windsock in the LZ switches direction. I knew from dusk landings at King Mountain in the past that the bottom layer of cooler air starts to flow down the mountain into the valley and creates a headwind the other way when trying to make the landing zone from too far out in the middle of the valley. I did S turns and circles to stay relatively over the landing zone. I was just 15,000 feet too high, that’s all.

I was so glad to finally not hear my vario beeping! “Hey, it finally stopped! Drive your truck back please!” “Oh wait, fuck, it started up again.” “When is this going to end?! How can this even keep happening?!”

Apparently there is a story about this extended ridge-lift phenomenon that happened to some other paragliders, but we all had brushed it off as a myth, or at least an immense exaggeration or a story lost in translation. Martin and Martinique were a Czech paragliding couple that lived like gypsies, living their best nomad life. One evening here at King Mountain, as the story went, Martinique got caught in the same freak valley-wide bank of updraft and didn’t come down until 1:30 in the morning!

I guess I can consider myself lucky that I landed safely at 10:30pm. When the wind finally stopped, and my helmet stopped beeping, the quiet still of night was so peaceful. The relentless lift bank evaporated into the night sky, and I slowly drifted down to earth. I was so glad to tell Rob to warm up the truck and bring me a beer and that I was on my descent, finally. I could see Rob’s headlights return to the LZ and he purposefully faced the headlights directly into the wind, opposite what it was before, to communicate which direction I should land. I knew as I floated down I would have to endure the shear between the layers of different temperature air masses, going in different directions, and it was violent and scary, so I tried to pretend I was a relaxed sack of potatoes with my hands up to let it fly, and it was over soon enough.

Good old terra firma! Quickly I was told to throw my wing in the back of his truck because we had to go look for the Montana boys. They could be dead, or mangled, and they were definitely stranded as being blown back over the mountain put you into no-man’s land. Rob’s truck is 4x4, so we could take the jeep trail up and over. Rob hates this part about living next to the LZ, always having to be on rescue detail, not knowing what condition the lost pilots will be found in. Around the next corner, we couldn’t believe it but two headlamps came bobbing and bouncing along the road coming from the other direction! Walking with paragliders on their backs like they were on a leisurely hike, still full of adrenalin and in very good spirits, celebrating their narrow escape from what could have been lethal. I was certainly relieved they were ok. Rob couldn’t decide if he was glad to see them because we didn’t have to do any wilderness first aid on them or mad because it was a preventable misadventure. We didn’t get back to Rob’s compound until 11:30pm, so we all went straight to bed, as the paragliding class was bright and early the next day. As I drifted off to sleep in my van it still felt as if I was still floating, like a spirit high above, watching over the sleepy farms in the big valley.

Incredulous and impossible as it seemed, I told my story the next day in class. The organizers of the clinic encouraged me to, and it inspired an in-depth discussion on how easy it is to look at a particular situation but not actually see it for what it is, and how I might have let my ego and competitive spirit and wishful thinking get the best of me. It was a great reminder to look at things objectively, to see what’s really going on without letting what you want or what you believe get in the way of seeing the truth.

As Matt, one of the other Jedi tandem pilots that was facilitating the clinic likes to say, “Fly the day, not your expectations.” Words to live by. Amen, Matt, Amen.

“Hold well!” “Hold well!” FerasTheBedouin warns from below. This can’t be the way, I scream to myself inside. All I can see before me is rocks, and mountain, and, oh yes, some steep rock steps carved out of stone that seem to lead to nowhere. I hang on for dear life as Monica the Mule whips a surprise! 180-degree turn in these switchbacks of impossible steps, up and up the never-ending mountain. Monica likes being first, the lead mule, and is a “good walker”, FerasTheBedouin reassures me.

The weather closes in, and it starts to rain. Do I hear thunder?? “No, no thunder. We can see Israel from here. We can also hear Israel. They practice their bombs,” says FerasTheBedouin. “The border very close”, he adds nonchalantly. I think I would prefer the sound of thunder over the constant drone of bombs in the distance. “Do not worry, be happy,” he reminds me.

I found FerasTheBedouin on Airbnb, while researching places to stay at the last minute in Petra, Jordan, an ancient city dating back to hundreds of years BC, all carved out of stone. He runs The Indiana Jones Cave, INSIDE the UNESCO World Heritage Site, with his wife and two adorable children. Inside the shared guest cave are Bob Marley and Che Guevara wall hangings (hung backwards, because Arabic reads from right to left, I’m guessing), amongst some Bedouin-style fabric, somehow adhered to the rock walls. No toilet, though. When I asked, he said, “pick any empty cave.”

“Hold well!” he keeps saying, like I need to be reminded. Believe me, I get the picture. “Monica knows the way,” he reassures me again. I think Monica intuitively knows that I have no idea of the seemingly impossible path, and that I’m a softy, and that, clearly, it’s my first time on a mule. So far, I’m in complete awe of how strong and sure footed these animals are. Monica and the other mule don’t seem to mind carrying us, my cameras, some tea and water, some shisha (a very large bong used to smoke flavored tobacco - double apple seems to be the going favorite, but I think it tastes more like licorice), my snacks, and of course some bread left over from breakfast that we will warm over the fire after we boil the sage tea, right below Aaron’s tomb.

I obviously didn’t pay enough attention as a child in Sunday school, because I’m just now learning that Moses had a brother, named Aaron, and he apparently is buried beneath the green satin cloth covering the big-enough-for-a-body stone box in the stone room with a dome, on top of this very tall, very steep, mountain.

There are only a handful of other tourists in Petra, during these still-waning covid times, and I’m surprised to see another donkey way up here on top of this mountain on this cold and blustery day. No tourists, but we did meet Mohamed. Many Bedouin have two wives and can make very large families, Mohamed included. Family homes (outside of the Petra caves) are multiple stories, with cousins and offspring and spouses and children flowing between rooms and floors.

Odds are that if you meet a man here in Jordan, or much of the Middle East, his name is probably Mohamed. Kind of like John, or Mike, back home. This Mohamed’s job is to take care of the tomb and keep it running as an active mosque. There were prayer rugs folded up in the corner, like yoga mats at a studio, and a freshly lit candle down the steps in the small tomb.

Mohamed lives down the mountain on the other side and travels every day by very small donkey. FerasTheBedouin says the small donkeys are the strongest. Today, he has his second youngest son in tow, so the four of us shelter from the storm in a small cave. The boy is instructed to gather wood, and the men easily build a fire. Once the water boiled in the teapot, Mohamed measured tea and sugar, and threw in some fresh sage for the finishing touches on the delightful, traditional Bedouin tea. I shared my snacks - before I left Amman, I bought some dates, candied nuts, and spicy pumpkin seeds - and the last of the almonds from Costco back home were a big hit. Chunks of charcoal were left on the remaining fire and, when glowing from heat themselves, were used to power the shisha. The intermittent bubbling of the shisha being inhaled from the table-tall bong creates the sound of being underwater and reminds me of scuba diving under the Red Sea.

I’ve always been more afraid of going down than going up, I confide to FerasTheBedouin. “Hold the rope in the back” (but should my other hand hold the chain reins or the easy grip handle - which I really appreciate - on the front of the saddle frame, I wonder). “And do like this” - he motions to his feet in the tied-by-string stirrups - “hold like this, with your fingers.” I understand he means toes, and I’m going to cut him a break on the slight misuse of the English language.

These Bedouins impressively know about five languages, apparently gleaned from trying to hustle mule and camel rides and trinkets and scarves to tourists from all around the world. A guess is made on nationality, and the hustle begins…. “Madame, where you from?” The answer determines which language the sales pitch will be in. If the question is ignored, it will be repeated in Spanish, French, German, Russian, etc., until an answer is produced. On a very cold, rainy day spent wandering around Petra, I was invited to tea by every shopkeeper on the way to the Monastery. I had all day, and it’s bad luck not to accept, so I obliged. While chatting and warming ourselves by the fire, other passing tourists were asked the same question, the opener. Just when I thought Rose, the shopkeeper, would be stumped by one nationality - Hungarian - she rattled off what sounded like some pretty confident Hungarian. The Hungarian gay couple and I were equally impressed and flashed each other an incredulous look. It’s always a different language, but the sales pitch is the same, I’m sure. “Only one dinar! ($1.40) Please support us! No tourists now. This shop supports 21 families!” (insert number between 15 and 23) - perhaps they mean 15-23 family members, and not whole families, because with second wives and an average of 6 kids per wife, that would exponentially translate to hundreds and hundreds of people that each shop of dusty trinkets and scarves and kitchen magnets would support. The sales pitch continues. “How much you want to pay? From your heart. You support me, and God will support you.”

“Hold well! Hold in back!” FerasTheBedouin reminds me again, as Monica has chosen a path apparently straight down the mountain. I review all these things that are rattling around in my head. Lean back. Hold the rope going from beneath the semblance of a saddle (really just a metal frame with some blankets thrown over some macrame woven saddlebags). I really should have taken my pinky ring off - gripping the chain reins is killing me. Try to keep the stirrups on my toes (I should have bought some better shoes in Amman before I left), and lift my feet in the stirrups out front, to avoid the huge boulders, thigh high to the mule, passing by very closely that could rip me off balance. Monica is indeed a “good walker”, but sometimes the concept of a wide load seems beyond her grasp.

I hear the bombs again, but this time it’s thunder. It starts to hail. I guess that’s better than rain, as it takes longer to get completely soaked. I struggle to pull my rain-jacket hood over the Bedouin scarf tied around my head. My over-the-shoulder camera bag keeps it from staying put, especially with spontaneous mule trotting dislodging everything. I give up and decide to “hold well” instead.

We stop at the cave of FerasTheBedouin’s parents to have some tea (of course!) and warm ourselves by the fire in the cooking tent. There is always a never-ending cycle of bread making. Dough is kneaded, then it must be covered to let rise, then it’s baked either on the open fire or in a gas oven. This Bedouin bread is seriously some of the best bread I’ve ever had. Especially warm right out of the oven. It’s worth spoiling your appetite for dinner. Fluffy inside, a little bit crispy around the edges. Perfection.

FerasTheBedouin’s mother shows me her old coins, which they are able to find after the rains, with some strategic digging. I use my monocle necklace (at this age I can’t always have my reading glasses handy) to inspect the centuries-old roman inscriptions, double-headed profiles and ancient Nabateaean markings. These tiny coins were more than likely used on the Silk Road trade route, as Petra was an epicenter of one of the first civilizations. I imagine myself coming into Petra on the “Roman Street'', perhaps in a mule or camel caravan, with a bag of these coins in my pocket. Perhaps I’m wearing some coin jewelry as a backup savings account? What would have I been in the market to buy? Some lamp oil? Some food for us for the continuing journey? Maybe a visit to a blacksmith for some new shoes for the mules. Some perfume? What would I have had to trade or sell? From where on the Silk Road did I come? What is now Egypt? China? Iran or Yemen? Would I be carrying spices? Salt? Or perhaps some turquoise? The Egyptians would grind up turquoise to make blue paint for the ceilings of the tombs, before painting them with stars, to make the journey more familiar for the dead.

Sometimes I lie awake at night, wondering what my past lives might have been like. How many (if any?) lifetimes have I spent in this region of the world? Civilization started here, thousands of years ago, so there has been ample time for a couple cycles, I’m sure. For me, there is nothing more exotic than camels and desert life in caves and adventures beyond the horizon, but at the same time, it’s eerily familiar to my core. The dichotomy is somewhat unsettling, yet comforting. Exotic, yet like coming home, for my soul.

I ask FerasTheBedouin to re-tie my headscarf - I can’t seem to do it myself as well as him - and all dry, and too full of bread again, we set out on the mules in the cold rain, to return to his cave.

Soon we will be home, where his wife, I’m almost certain, will have some homemade bread at one stage or another, and there will be a fire, with some steaming hot, bottomless Bedouin tea. I don’t even have to steer anymore, because we are close to FerasTheBedouin’s family cave, and Monica is on autopilot. Once the mules are tucked away in their own cave, fed and watered, and I am already cozy and dry again with the wife and kids playing games, with the neighbor kids stopping by to charge their devices off FerasTheBedouin’s dwindling battery connected to solar for their TikTok, instagram, Facebook, and games, Feras proposes another adventure.

Instead of transporting the mules to the desert, like he does for “fancy people with not time”, we shall take the mules straight from the cave at Petra, and go up and over the mountains, out the rocky canyon on the other side?, and through the dunes to reach camp. His camp? A cousin’s camp? We make a camp? Not quite sure. I’m not even sure of the route, or where Wadi Arabia is, but the lure of adventure has already hooked me, and “I’m in!” I try to be cool about it, as we have not yet negotiated a price for this custom adventure. It’s just me, as I doubt any other tourist would be crazy or foolhardy enough to embrace so many unknowns.

I check my phone for the weather forecast, and I propose to wait a day for our “weather window”. I’m not crazy about setting forth in the freezing hail on such a long journey, and I want at least some sun for the view to make some nice pictures, and some stars to gaze at during the night. One of my least favorite things in the world is camping in the rain. The day and night after next looks perfect.

The following day, as promised by my phone, the storm had passed. The sun shone through the spotted clouds and warmed the red rocks towering above us. The mules were packed up with saddle-bags carrying bottled water for me, jugs of water for tea and shisha bongs, some leftover bread, olive oil, cans of sardines, tomatoes, onions, tea, sugar, some Happy Cow cheese in triangle foil packets, bedrolls and blankets, and don’t forget the shisha bong itself, and some double-apple-flavored tobacco, and a Bluetooth speaker to play that proud Bedouin sing-along song, over and over. Along for the ride are his best friend, Magid, on the young mule, and Ahmed, FerasTheBedouin’s eleven-year-old nephew on a donkey.

We started with the familiar route, past his parents’ cave (his family has been in that cave for over 600 years!), where we had to politely decline an offer of breakfast, and passed to the south, below Aaron’s tomb. I could see the white dome of the tomb and now, the mosque, glistening in the sunlight in the distance over my right shoulder. Then up to the top of the next mountain, to the south, more impossible steps, along the narrow ridge, cirquing our way around to the next row of mountains, and down the other side.

Even though Monica likes to be the lead mule, I made FerasTheBedouin go first. Impossible steps going down are even more unnerving than impossible steps going up. On skis, all covered in snow, I would have no problem with this kind of terrain. On the back of a mule, stepping over loose rocks and small boulders, I’m terrified. To comfort myself, I try to imagine what ski run back home in Sun Valley, Idaho, it would be most like - Fire Trail? Easter Bowl? I try to coax Monica into a less steep route, to follow FerasTheBedouin’s path, but Monica “knows the way”. I’m realizing it’s not “the way”, but more like “Monica’s way”. And she is one confident mule! I must simultaneously let go, but also “hold well!” This must be what the sound of one hand clapping smells like. She is a good walker, as FerasTheBedouin constantly reassures me, and chooses carefully - just not always where I would think would be the better route. But I relinquish my worries to the fact that Monica is in charge of her own footing and knows her own abilities best. Just as well, as she chose more impossible steps down, down, down. “Hold well!”, he reminds me again, as if I’m not still hanging on for dear life. At one point the steps really are impossible and, relieved, we all get off, to let the mules negotiate the loose rocks on their own. Then back on (really?!), for more impossible steps into a narrow rocky canyon and more impossible steps out of the canyon, the way water would flow, along the rocky river bed. The land opened up to the sky, and walking became easier. The Bluetooth speaker came out, and the men sang along to the proud, catchy Bedouin fight song? dance tune? that they played on repeat.

We stopped to rest and make tea. Well, me and the mules and the donkey rested, while FerasTheBedouin and Magid and the boy gathered wood, made fire, prepared tea, and smoked shisha.

We continue. Flat expanse reaching to the horizon. Some roads. Some tomatoes growing. Power lines. Road signs, and some forgotten garbage carried by the wind. Dunes in the distance.

It’s Ahmed’s first time on this journey, and I can tell he's been brought along to learn the ropes, and to keep me and Monica in check. He brings up the rear, if Monica isn’t insisting on being the lead mule. It’s a long day, so we’ve got to keep a good pace, especially if we want time to rest, make tea, and smoke shisha often. Ahmed wants to do a good job, and he’s interpreting a “good pace” as somewhere between a brisk walk and a steady trot. It’s like being stuck between second and third gear. Ahmed sees Monica stopped in protest, or just to test her rider, me gently tapping my feet on the underside of her belly. He makes the clicking sound, by squeezing air between the outside of his teeth and cheeks, the “giddy-up” sound, for Monica to understand it’s time to get a move on. Often he would do this preemptively, just in case Monica was even THINKING of sauntering. But he would do this without notice, even when Monica was walking at a brisk pace already, and I was balancing my camera or phone in my hand. Surprise! Spontaneous trotting! Hold well! To the device in one hand, and either the reins, the rope in back, or the handle on the saddle, with the other. Choose wisely. I finally learned to announce when I was going to have only one hand free - “Ok, everybody, I’m getting my camera out, nobody excite Monica! Please! Shukran!” (thank you in Arabic).

Ahmed would also try to tell me which direction to go, like I had any say in it. There is no trail, so I would, for the most part, let Monica choose her way, as long as we were generally following FerasTheBedouin and Magid through the open terrain. “Go left!” he would always say, but I think sometimes he meant right? He hadn’t quite mastered the full spectrum of English, and left meant left and right equally. Puzzled at his direction, I would just point whichever way I thought Monica should go and ask, “this way?” to get things straight.

By the time we reach the dunes, I think Monica must be exhausted, especially with all the ups and downs and impossible steps and brisk pace. I look back to the mountain range we crossed in the far distance, and I can’t believe how far we’ve come in just a day. The sun was flirting with the horizon, which cast beautiful shadows on the waves and troughs of the sand dunes.

I announce again, “I’m getting my camera out! Nobody excite Monica!”, but she starts to buck! FerasTheBedouin says she is so happy to be in the sand that she gets very playful. Even after the long journey and heavy burden (me)? “Are you sure she’s being playful? It seems she wants me off her back!”, I anxiously ask. We trade mules, for a spell, while Monica gets her playfulness out with FerasTheBedouin. He has more blankets for his “saddle”, anyway.

We stop again for gathering wood, making fire for tea, and lighting charcoal for shisha. Finally! Camp! My butt is slightly relieved, I think to myself.

I’m surprised when after tea and pouring out the shisha bong water, the mules are gathered and start to be packed again. We continue on, through the dunes, through one of the most tranquil, magic hour, after-sunset dusks, and head towards a now rising full moon, gliding skyward between magenta and turquoise color bands, floating magically above the horizon.

Back on Monica, I’m mesmerized by her constantly floppy ears. They are extremely long and pointy, even for a mule, and twitch about in sync with her steps. Does it just happen accidentally, like a child inadvertently sticking out his tongue while trying to grasp a crayon? Or is it more deliberate, like large white furry antennae, pivoting and fine tuning, searching the airwaves for signals from outer space? I come to notice no one else is lucky enough to have mule ears that dance in the moonlight, and I think that’s the exact moment I fell in love with a mule named Monica.

When the sky opens up, and releases the power and the glory and the gift of a monsoon storm, it's nothing short of spectacular. Umbrellas and raincoats become an exercise in futility, just like the villagers’ laundry hanging on the line, going through a perpetual rinse cycle for days.

I always wondered what it was like to experience the monsoons - so, here I am. Cherrapunji - "the wettest place on earth!" the guide book exclaimed. I thought that was pretty boastful, besides, weren’t there other places (uh, Kauai?) making the same claim? Turns out, the monsoons were early in 2017, and met me head on as I poured out of the overflowing taxi, into the middle of the street (which was also a small river), in Cherrapunji. I would be miserable about being completely soaked, and all my things, with no chance of doing laundry - ever - if I wasn't so seriously impressed by Mother Nature. Wow. I have never seen it rain so hard. In. All. My. Life. Buckets were falling from the sky. Raindrops the size of small peas. Thunder and lightning striking at the same time - for hours on end! This meant that the monsoon storm army wasn't passing through, instead it was in a holding pattern, stuck up against the first mountain plateau in it’s path since marching across the Bengal Sea. The rest of the world be damned! It seemed the monsoons' tactical mission was to encircle, and unleash the relentless furor above our heads - those of us that are sleeping tonight on this mountain plateau, perched on the rim of a magical waterfall canyon. The rain has nowhere to go, other than down. It rushes and gushes down into the canyon below, spontaneously erupting and bursting into waterfalls and rivers that flow to the sea. We are witness to the creation of it all, in real time. Too bad we couldn’t see more than 6ft in front of our face.

Maybe I should rethink this? The ridiculously thunderous cacophony from my tin roof was unnerving. It’s a little ominous to pack for a trip down into the unknown, when it sounds like a drunk high school marching band is stomping it out on the roof. It also sounds like frogs are falling from the sky!? The only way to get my pants dry last night was to go to bed with them on. It worked - in the night under a thick blanket, my body heat dried them. But then I was all dry, and I had to go to the bathroom, and it’s an outhouse, a ‘toilet not attached’. I scampered there in my underwear before the light of dawn. Skin is easier to dry than clothes. Also, it’s easier to remember your umbrella when it’s raining.

I would kick myself from here to eternity if I chickened out, being this close, so I shake out the ants clinging to my still damp socks, put on my plastic garbage bag skirt and everything in my daypack in double ziplocks. As I climbed down the 4000 mossy steps, I felt like I had slipped through some sort of Stargate portal into a timeless parallel dimension. The villagers have been shaping suspension bridges from the trees, growing plentifully and conveniently on the banks of the rivers. Called ‘living root bridges’, they are an engineering marvel, and span centuries of generations. The rubber tree roots are encouraged into a hollowed-out palm or betel nut tree, then acquiesce and follow along, over time, until they take anchor on the other side of the river. Sometimes they are woven in halfway and finished off with knots (now resembling hard crusty macrame). It’s mind-blowing that the bridges we all walk on here down in the canyon are alive. I’ve slipped down into a magical world of waterfalls, rainbows, and real giving trees. And rain. Don’t forget the rain.

Moist. Damp. Soggy. I can’t get these three words out of my mind. And dank. I guess that’s four. And the constant reminder from the Master Monsoon, to ‘let go’, my little “grasshopper”. You can only be brave if you are scared. What was I scared of? Getting wet? It’s just water. Once you are drenched, you can’t get MORE drenched. There’s a ceiling to it all. I take off my raincoat, speaking of futility. Even with the latest Gortex, I realize my high tech coat locks in more moisture than it keeps out. What’s more moist than a monsoon when it’s raining? A monsoon when it’s NOT raining. That’s right! The air swells and swells with moisture, thick and wet as a cloud, just hanging around, oppressively, until finally, the release! Yes! The release is a relief, as it knocks the humidity down significantly. But not so much as to, you know, dry anything out. Have I mentioned my socks are always damp?

You have to just let go - and give in to it. Water! Life! Creation!!! The beginning of time - and the end of time - at the same time! A wormhole of waterfalls with giving trees. Have I aged a lifetime? Or was I reborn?

They all SAY they are in love with me, but I’m finding it hard to believe. It’s more of a first crush, “download-a-GIF-of-a-blossoming-rose and cut-and-paste-a-cheesy-poem” kind of love. Or, as in the case of the Jordanian taxi driver, a very pragmatic, panicked-sense-of-hope kind of love, for this apparently once in a lifetime chance encounter with an American single lady traveling alone.

More than half of Muslim men are named Mohamed - about one hundred and fifty million - and counting, and with almost as many different spellings. For me, when I meet someone named Mohamed, I’m delighted, because it makes it easier to remember, since I have trouble with names, especially in the Arab world. For the sake of this story, and to protect the innocent, I have changed all the names of the men that professed their variously motivated love for me and/or proposed marriage to me to Mohamed, and denoted the different men with various spellings.

I travel with my soul on my sleeve, so to speak, but the collateral damage of doing so was leaving a wake of broken hearts. Or so they said.

Dear Mohamed in Jordan

“Welcome to Jordan!” must be the only English phrase that all kids learn in school. Did the tourism board instruct every Jordanian in the city to tell all tourists this? While walking down the street, I am waved at, yelled at, and “Welcome to Jordan!!”-ed at, with over-the-top exuberance. I brush it off to post-covid excitement. The world was getting back to a new kind of normal, international borders could be crossed with proof of negative covid test within 24 hours, and even though masks were still required for supermarket entry we were all “free range”, so I figured Amman, Jordan was just happy to see anyone, not just a single woman traveling alone.

Mohamed was a cabby in Amman, and wouldn’t take no for an answer. “No money!” he said for the eighth time, through the open passenger window of his taxi, matching my stride, almost at a stalking pace, down the very steep hill from the famous black and white mosque on the other side of town. He just wanted to talk. You know, practice his English.

Once Mohamed realized I was older than I seemed (age is always the second question), he seized his window of opportunity. His dream was to spend either one week or ten days (oddly very specific) in Hollywood, where he could meet some movie star cowboys, like James Dean and Clint Eastwood. The fact that I’m from Idaho, where real-life cowboys roam and the local high school even has a rodeo team, did not faze him. His sights were set on Hollywood. I didn’t have the heart to break the news to him about James Dean.

Since I was “age-appropriate”, he quickly proposed. If we got married (he wasn’t interested in sex, he confided), we would then have the obligation to pool resources. With the seriousness of a heart attack, he disclosed his willingness to pull out his life savings (I checked my phone and calculated dinars to dollars, and it was about $4,500), and together with my life savings, we could take a trip to California and meet some “real cowboys”.

My fallback escape plan in these scenarios is to gush about how much I love the snow and playing snow sports, and how beautiful the frozen world is. I gloriously detail an Idaho winter to these desert men wanting to merge their lives with mine. Bla bla bla, brr brr BRRrr. The thought of ten feet of snow piled up outside “our'' front door for months makes the break-up pill easier to swallow.

“Well, if you hate the snow, then I don’t think this is going to work out”, I quietly say to myself in my head what we both know is evident. Works every time.

We had reached the chaos of downtown, and had come to a halt up against bumper to bumper traffic, so I seized my opportunity. “Good luck, and thanks for the ride,” I said sweetly as I hopped out and disappeared into the crowded sidewalks of downtown.

Dear Mohammad from Yemen

The dear, sweet young man who makes my breakfast every morning at the guest house in Petra, Jordan is from Yemen. Mohammad sends a portion of his wages back to his family, struggling to make ends meet. They can’t work because of all the bombs. With his eyes welling up and in broken English he tells me of the airstrikes back home. As punishment, the governments have cut off all internet in the entire country (I’m unclear on which country did the sabotaging - perhaps Saudi Arabia?) so he hasn’t been able to communicate with his sister or daughter to find out if they are still alive. He still lovingly made my hummus and yogurt look like a flower, and carefully arranged my tomatoes and cucumber with what seemed sacred geometry, and now with both of our eyes welling up, I wished him a good night’s sleep. He is also the night watchman and goes to bed after making my breakfast. “Yemen is finished”, he said. “In Shaa Allah”, (which roughly translates to “as God decides” or “it’s in Allah’s hands”), I replied to try to console him.

Although very “love naive”, their innocence is endearing. Mohammad said he’d like to find an American wife. So, I said I would see what I could do. I made a Facebook post on his behalf…”Single ladies in the house! Mohammad said he’d like to find an American wife. Limited English, but you don’t have to be Muslim. He said Christian ok! He is an expert hugger now and will make your breakfast so pretty every morning. There might still be a culture gap, because I think he just asked how much an American wife would cost?!” We got some bites from some mature ladies in Canada, but nothing serious.

He professed his love for me in a sweet letter run through Google Translate, which I was instructed not to open until after I had left the guest house. He was all of 23 (already with a child and divorced), and the shy and formal nature of his note brought me right back to high school. Mohammad had the biggest crush of his life on me, so I was as gentle as I could be with him for the let-down on our WhatsApp thread. False hope is a cruel sword.

Dear Mr. Mango in Zanzibar

He’s Masai, and he’s never been to school, yet he’s learned English, French, and Italian just from talking to tourists. I’ve been trying to learn a couple key phrases in Swahili - “Maisha marefu” means “cheers” or “long life”, and “asante sana” means “thank you very much”. The English word “maybe”, especially here in Zanzibar, is translated as “yes”.

The beach boys of Zanzibar sell beaded trinkets and hustle tide-pool tours. When I met Mr. Mango, I knew that wasn’t his real name. They choose “beach names”, surprisingly fun-to-say names that might make you chuckle, and then that’s their foot in the door. I also met Lincoln, Happy, Lucky - all cover-ups for their traditional hard-to-remember, hard-to-pronounce Swahili names. For the sake of this story and because I’m pretty certain Mr. Mango isn’t Muslim, I'll refer to him by his chosen beach cover-up name.

In the Masai culture, cows are everything, so Mr. Mango expertly uses “cow currency” to pitch the idea of marriage and secure our hoped-for union. It’s happened to some of his friends, he recounts - one friend married a Swiss woman and another married a French gal, so it’s not impossible. Any encounter is worth pursuing, and it never hurts to ask. Mr. Mango turns on the hard sell, as I’m one of the few travelers here just after the covid lockdowns. Well, his dad is keeping his cows for now. Well, actually, they are not his cows per se, but if he does get married, then he will be gifted some cows from his father. These alleged cows are wandering around somewhere on the mainland in Tanzania, near his family's village. Purchase some beaded body jewelry? Sure. A lifelong commitment? I’ll have to sleep on it.

Dear Muhamad in Morocco

Muhamad told me lots of things I wanted to hear, for weeks. But, in the end, they were only the things he thought I wanted to hear. I am not like other women.

I think we were in love but with different perspectives of love, and how this possibly romantic road trip could play out. I, on one hand, was in love with the idea of playing king and queen with my handsome and sexy Moroccan lover, floating around villas nestled in the blonde dunes of the Southern Sahara, wearing long, beautifully embroidered silk house coats, and drinking mint tea. He was in love, on the other hand, with the idea of me, and the chance to marry me, with the end game of being able to move to America, as it turned out.

In the beginning it was like an old-fashioned courtship. There he was, sitting right next to me, for days on end, being all handsome and sexy and confident in all of his four or five languages, making things happen on the phone, and treating me like a queen. But no touching - partly because of the overbearing and oppressive Muslim culture, and partly because of the client/guide nature of our relationship.

That line had been blurred from the start, though, as we became fast friends, conversing and FaceTiming, plotting and planning, months before I even entered Morocco. We had an unusually great connection, and I could feel a push-me pull-you magnetism. I found myself thinking about him but was repelled when I found out he smoked cigarettes, and then was attracted again, until I found out he had a 6-year-old daughter and figured he was married with baggage, so backed away, and so on.

Everyone was forging into new territory in the post-covid era. Old rules broken! New rules made! Everyone on the planet was just trying to figure out, collectively, this “new normal”. My romance lines were being blurred, too. Normally I am “hands off!” Muslim men - the culture gap is just too wide for this independent and free-spirited woman. But Muhamad did his best to assure me that he was open minded and forward thinking. He even revealed some tattoos hiding from his “bad boy” days.

We talked about love, and being loved, and we talked about sex. Sex changes everything, and not always for the better. I wanted to go back in time, to before sex, when we would steal sweet kisses on the windy cliffs over the Mediterranean Sea, when he still treated me like a queen. But after sex, I was just his bitch.

There were warning signs I didn’t heed, I admit, in my unwillingness to let go of my dream honeymoon adventure with my Moroccan king. Maybe we were in love, maybe we weren’t. What’s love anyway, but a checklist of synapses and pheromones chemically convincing the old brain to mate with the other person in order to have offspring with well-balanced antibodies, or however love uses your heart to trick your brain into making bad decisions.

Bad decisions like agreeing with Muhamad to rent a car and drive with him down through Morocco to Western Sahara, or Western Morocco, as he referred to it, since he was from the south and therefore had a different perspective than the map makers. He said I would be the first American to have road-tripped from the northern tip of Morocco in Tangier, all the way to Dakla in the South. I doubted that was the case, but I took the bait, nonetheless. I only heard what I wanted to hear. I wanted to have the honeymoon without the hassle of planning a wedding.

I think I fell out of love on the train to meet him in Casablanca, because insane jealousy is a real deal-breaker. And when I say insane, I mean completely irrational and unhinged. I’m sorry I didn’t pick up my phone on the very first ring, and no, I’m not having an affair with the other remote workers clicking away on their laptops on the rooftop terrace in Fez, now visible on our FaceTime. All the way to Casablanca on the train I pleaded with him to let it go, but about 5 or 6 beers on his end (I’m guessing) into the now exploding text thread, I knew I would never marry this man. However, I couldn’t seem to let go of my attachment to my dream honeymoon southern Morocco road-trip adventure, so I tried to pretend it didn’t happen, and I gave him a “once in a lifetime” get out of jail free card. I chalked it up to the beer overindulgence (hey, I went to college once) and made up some excuses why I didn’t have to let go of my honeymoon dream trip. With a big gust of hope in my sails, I gave him a cash deposit to rent a car for a month, knowing full well this road trip had trouble written all over it.

I realized I had made a terrible decision coming on the fateful road trip each and every day. He is so reactive to anything that threatens his ego and clearly has anger issues. I’m walking on eggshells. He came absolutely unglued when I said I didn’t want to sell my condo in Sun Valley, to buy a villa outside Marrakech, with money to spare in order to bail out his extended family. That was the straw that broke the single American lady’s back and popped my bubble of denial. The road trip was not living up even in the slightest to what I had built up in the hope lobe of my brain. That trip was perhaps playing out in some parallel universe somewhere, but it certainly wasn’t happening here among the Southern Sahara rest stops. And since if I can’t stand up for myself or call out bullshit, then I can’t say anything at all, the northbound return was 4 days of painful silence.

Dear Muhammed in India

When I booked the 5-day private camel safari in Rajasthan, I explicitly told the tour company owner that I didn’t want any “funny business”. It was risky to be alone, just me and the camel driver, camping out in the desert for 5 nights, unless I made my point clear. Muhammed was Muslim, so we visited all the Muslim villages within 5 days’ camel walk of Jaisalmer, India, near the Pakistan border. He didn’t drink, but I did catch him chewing opium on our afternoon nap in the shade on the first afternoon. The first night he proposed in broken English. He said, “If you want ‘touch’, I can ‘touch’. If you don’t want ‘touch’, then I ‘no-touch’.”

I was flabbergasted! The high level of direct communication from what I was assuming was a very childlike and naive sex and love culture was refreshing. “I’ll take the last option, please!”, I replied confidently. “The ‘no-touch’ choice, thank you.”

Not another word was spoken on that subject. We slept between blankets on the sand, and he would respectfully let me choose my spot on the big ground cloth, and then he would set up his blanket, on the other side and off axis, so as not to even be close or to tempt.

Even though Muhammed wasn’t trying to get into my bank account, I included him in this story because I admire his straightforwardness. Ask a question of me, then listen (I’m only saying it once), and then respect my desires? I wasn’t expecting that. Now that’s something even Western men could learn from.

South by southwest. That’s the heading I must keep on my little ball compass, just in case I get sucked into a cloud. Good to know. I have come to India, this time, to frolic in the rising air masses meeting the Himalayas, or at least, to learn how to NOT land in the landing zone, so close to the launch.

The town of Bir Billings, (or “Bir” as it’s known amongst the worldwide paragliding community), is a half-Tibetan, half-Hindi enclave nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas, oozing with ramshackle charm. A very high percentage of Tibetan monasteries in a tiny town, means monks are everywhere. As expected, there are many glimpses of maroon-robed men chanting prayers while walking clockwise around prayer wheels and stupas, but also living day to day life - buying necessities at the corner market, cramming themselves into a taxi, and filling up the tables in the local restaurants next to all the paragliders, eating and enjoying.

This monk per capita statistic gets challenged twice a year, with the influx and inundation of paraglider pilots from around the world. For 6 weeks in the fall and spring, the conditions are favorable enough to create a gentle lift, a helping hand if you will, for pilots to glide and soar effortlessly above terraced rice paddies and golden temples.

The cool kids (more experienced pilots from all over the world) would nonchalantly boast over dinner that they, too, had flown to Dharamsala AND BACK. On a paraglider. With no motor. I’m in awe. I can’t get out of the ‘sandbox’, which is what the locals call the ‘safety zone’ - a triangle between launch (halfway up the foothill), the red temple a couple ridges over (also about halfway up the foothill), and the huge landing zone (with a very convenient, and therefore alluring, restaurant) - which was accessible, in theory, to all pilots ‘sinking out’ within the sandbox. Venture outside this sandbox area, and who knows where you could land. The daring French and Italians next to me were plotting their next vol bivy (French for ‘sky-camp’) adventure with headlamps, GPS points, and a real map. These sky ninjas were planning to go to what I called ‘no man’s land’ - up and over the back of launch into the snow capped peaks looming between Bir and Manali. Weather dependent, of course. One of my great paragliding instructors said, “Fly the day, not your expectations.” If you land out there, you better have about three days worth of food for the walk out - there are no roads, and even fewer cars.

I’ve come to India to learn to fly. One could argue, since I’ve been paragliding for 10 years now, that I actually already know how to fly. But I would argue right back that learning to fly is a life-long endeavor, and I will spend the rest of my life, learning to fly.

In the early years of my non-motorized, collapsable-winged, flying machine education, I did a lot of sled rides. That’s when you fly when it’s really safe, in the early morning before the sun heats up the earth and gets things ‘active’, or close to sunset, when the sun’s influence on circulating air masses releases it’s grasp, and the flight can resemble a smooth invisible sled ride, until, ….boop! - I metamorphose back into a land-based creature with a gentle touchdown in the landing zone, right next to my car. With a quick, yet careful, fold and a tuck, the wing, the lines, and harness (and reserve parachute!) gets tucked into a backpack, ready for another flight. Everytime I land, I think that somehow I have cheated. I shouldn’t be able to do what I just did, fly around like that and see who has swimming pools and who doesn’t. I thought those ‘sled rides’ were ‘flying’. Until one day, I managed to catch a thermal, an invisible elevator of warm air, and rose 1,000 ft above launch. “Now THIS is flying!” I ah-ha! to myself. Here in India I want to do more than just circle above launch, I want to NOT land in the landing zone. I have come to Bir to learn to fly cross-country.

Part of the allure of flying cross country, and leaving the comfort and security of the familiar landing zone, is the element of adventure and the unknown. Throw the India wild card into the mix, and it’s a triple word score bonus round. Pro tip: already harvested rice paddies are the best to land out in (otherwise you owe the farmer $5 in rupees), and try to be close to a road for the walk out. After landing safely, the day’s adventure is only half over. Now the other half of the game begins, sort of a reverse treasure hunt with a dice roll, to get back home.

In the air I was quite distracted with all the golden temples gleaming in the sunlight, until I realized they were getting closer and closer in my field of view, and I had better start looking for a place to land. Close to road. Big enough area for small margin of error. Away from power lines, but near enough to houses and a village. As my landing gear comes down (I take my feet out of my sitting harness foot strap, and prepare to run a couple steps on the ground), a little boy shouts “do you take chai?!” while running beside and below me on the ground. “Yes, of course!” Seems like an odd question - I supposed it doesn’t matter which country I’m from - all that matters, really, is whether I like chai or not. Still pondering this random survey question from a child, I position my wing for easy folding in relation to the light wind direction, and start to unbuckle my harness. Before I even can step out of my harness leg straps, this same child has happily thrust a hot sweet milky glass of chai into my still occupied hands. This place is magic! Another round of “Which your country?”, and village folk that want to practice English with me, can, and wouldn’t you know it, the farmer’s brother/cousin is a taxi driver, and can take me to the nearest bus stop. What luck!

Or, you could be dragged into the farmer’s house for chai, or you could have a very long walk over very steep rice paddy ledges, or you could be hanging on for dear life while wearing a paraglider on the back of a motorcycle.

It takes a week or so after arriving in Bir, limping around with a quickly deteriorating hip, yet still nonchalantly boasting at dinner about my upcoming Sun Valley ski season pass already in hand, for it to sink in. Instead of skiing, I will be lining up a hip replacement at the home zipcode hospital, all from the convenience of clicking a few buttons on my smartphone. Heavy sigh. In the same moment I also give up the hope of NOT landing in the landing zone. Beyond the ‘sandbox’, with steep rice terraces to climb down carrying 35 lbs of paraglider, and an unknown distance to public transportation, just made it too risky.

I really shouldn’t be flying at all, but Valentine offered to carry my glider. Valentine was a tall drink of sexy, even if he was French. We laughed in broken English (and un poco Spanish) - the French despise the Americans, and visa versa - but we had managed to break through the stigma without any effort. Valentine was a jedi pilot extraordinaire, an instructor and guide from the Swiss French Alps, and would fly to Manali and back with the Frenchies for a warm up. He would come back from his hundred mile adventures, and swing by the ‘sandbox’ and look for my purple, blue and black wing, usually struggling to ‘bench up’, and ‘scraping’ along the ridges, getting closer and closer to sinking out. I refuse to listen to their radio channel - it’s all in French which wouldn’t be helpful at all - so Val couldn’t talk with me using the radio in the air. All of a sudden he would appear, and with a whoop and a holler from the air, would show me the way to the lift, when to circle, and when to hop to the next ridge. And he did it all while flying backwards to keep an eye on me. I think my heart grew ten times the size that day. He also invited me to ‘top land’ on a ridge top to hang with what I called ‘International Team Rasta’. Some fellow Frenchies, a Belgian, a Swiss, a Dutchman, and another that always wore a fuzzy music festival hoodie with built in ears, that I affectionately called ‘Rasta Bear’, made up the motley band of dreadlocked pilots. No pressure. They land first, I see how it works, and if I ‘feel it’, then I can make a pass and attempt to land on the ridge top.

It wasn’t perfect, but I didn’t die or mangle myself. I got to be ‘in the club’. International Team Rasta, Valentine, and me, sharing some snacks and passing a joint. I was trying to keep my cool, but inside I was giddy. We all launched off the same ridge top, which was technically within the ‘sandbox’ safety landing zone area, but the harder I tried to get some lift, the sinky-er I got.

As I packed up my glider, and scrambled down the rice terraces, I knew this would be my last time ‘landing out’. My hip that was scheduled for replacement was having none of my foolish antics. The only time my hip didn’t cause me excruciating pain, was when I was cradled by my paragliding harness during flight. Walking, sitting, lying down, and standing was painful and exhausting. I resigned myself to flying within the sandbox, landing in the landing zone, and taking a ridiculously short taxi ride back to my rented apartment. Valentine would carry my glider to a taxi in the morning before the drive up to launch. Then, at the top, he would carry it the final hundred yards uphill to the official launch area, leave it waiting for me, then go hang with all his French jedi pilot buddies. I could saunter up the trail, stopping at the tea house for chai and biscuits, and launch at my leisure. I would endure some awkward painful jogging steps before…ahh, the bliss of pain-free flight.

My last day there, I recognized the wing of my pilot friend from Sun Valley, who normally goes on big cross country excursions, but also plays in the sandbox. He guided me up to the top - making lots of circles in invisible rising columns of air, both of us working our way up ridges, until we got so high we could see all the snow capped peaks of the Himalayas from Bir to Manali, and I got to kiss a cloud. We landed on the restaurant side of the huge sandbox landing zone, I had my ‘usual’ - butter chicken masala and a chai for desert- and watched the other colorful wings, suspending pilots from all over the world, glide over the rice paddies in their landing pattern, before plopping down safely on terra firma.

Just because you are a headhunter does not mean you are a cannibal. These fierce warriors only decapitate their fallen enemies (not eat them). You know, for trophies. However, since being converted to Christianity, they no longer practice this tradition. The last time someone lost his head was around 1960.

Traveling in India is like playing a board game. You roll the dice, draw a card, and it will say something like “Public transportation strike today! Please rely on the kindness of strangers and spend 700 extra rupees to reach a new destination to catch your train. You have 4 hours. Go!” This time I’m playing the travel game in the remote corner of Northeast India, trying to plan the best route to Nagaland, where I’ve hired a guide so I can talk to the elders of the Konyak tribe.

Alit, my trusty Konyak guide that I’ve hired for the week, can speak a myriad of languages, but the most important being English and the local Konyak dialect, so I can find out the scoop of everyone we meet. He amazes me in the first 10 minutes of arriving at the first village by catching a butterfly with his bare hands - without harming it! With the flap of the butterfly’s wings timed perfectly, each wing ends up swiftly and softly held between the knuckles of his lightly fisted hand, delicately frozen in mid flight. Clearly Alit is either a magician, or a super ninja, and I wonder how many other secret talents he possesses. That reminds me, I need to ask him to stay away from the frogs and piles of ants I’ve seen for sale in the local market, since he is procuring my meals.

Another offer of marriage! At least this time, it didn’t involve any animals. The old warrior that lost his wife needed a new one, and then the other headhunters chimed in and said they’d like to take on a second wife as well, so they suggested I bring some of my unmarried friends over from America — they could learn English, and the American single ladies could learn the local dialect, and, you know, hang out for a long time. I learned how to say ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ in the local tongue, then bid my farewell. Uh, we were just joking around, right?

Well, photographically, this first village is a bit of a bust. Everybody has ‘gone modern’, and is wearing flannel pajama pants printed with Santas and sailboats, and colored Crocks. I mean, that’s weird, but not weird enough to make a great photo. When we met with the king and chief they were just smoking opium, and one of his buddies tried to sell me tourist trinkets. It’s raining water buffaloes, so, for the moment, we are stuck. They haven’t had power (or enough sun for solar) for months, and my iPhone battery is shit. Quote from my guide: “sometimes you get the wrong information from the googles”. Haha! I realize my clothes stink.

I bought the last good umbrella at the shop-in-a-shed and dressed up in plastic. Alit and I put on our ‘four-wheel drive shoes’, and headed out into the downpour anyway. When we got to the village on top of the next ridge, we quickly learned that the chief king had passed away, and, therefore met with the next in charge, his eldest son, wearing a green Benetton t-shirt. His friends were smoking opium, but he was clean. This young man in his early 20’s seemed very reluctant to carry the ‘throne’. I mentioned this to Alit, and he later filled in the gaps. He has a wife, but the village is looking for a ‘queen’ from the ‘royal family’ for him, so his son can carry the ‘throne’. He presented us with bananas (I’m thrilled at the offering because I forgot my snacks) and black tea (sorry out of sugar). I told Alit I wished I’d brought some supplies or something they could use as a gift! But he said gifts must be permanent - to remember. The young chief king presented me with a beautiful cloth and an old bell! Caught off guard, I proudly presented the only thing in my bag besides my camera and my water bottle - my plastic bubble bear - which I relied on to charm the children of wary villagers afraid of my ‘black magic photo box’, or camera. I have my guide translate. I show the boy chief the magic of the bubble maker - just squeeze the bear’s belly, then gently blow bubbles for the children. Repeat. Use shampoo or soap mixed with water (wink!) to replenish. They have never before seen anything like it. Magic! I also threw in some zip lock bags (with the zipper!), and a little cash.

The villages are built on ridge tops along an arbitrary international border. One side of Longwa looks toward India and falls within the Indian border, and the other side looks to Myanmar, and is technically within the country of Myanmar. But it’s really all tribal land, for now. The chief king’s house is on the Myanmar side, so that’s the Myanmar’s prime minister’s framed photo, right next to the flying fox hide pinned to the wall. They practice slash and burn, but rotate every nine years, so it’s sustainable. The ‘village people’ (I crack up a little bit inside every time my guide says this but it would be too hard to explain) really like my IceBreaker mints from America, and mix it with their red frothy betel nut chew in their mouths. Alit has great taste in music - last night our homestay hosts turned on the inverter for half an hour - and he played Dire Straits, Guns and Roses, and Deep Purple. Then our hosts played some old American folk (from the 40’s?) and gospel.

Coming back from the trek to a neighboring village, we rested next to an old headhunter, also resting from carrying his heavy load the other direction, and I surprised him with a Polaroid. He had never seen anything like that! His eyes were unfortunately closed, so I took another, and again when magically the image had appeared, he had blinked. The headhunter confessed to Alit in the local dialect, that he was also disappointed he wasn’t wearing his big bone earrings (too heavy for work) for the Polaroid. Alit promised we’d find him at home and give him a chance to proudly wear his traditional bling. Alit explained this all to me in English, after our new friend had gone on his merry way, and I was giddy! Behold, the power of a Polaroid!

The town of Longwa is home to about 500 households. How will we ever find our friendly headhunter, now that we, and my camera, have been invited? My clever guide had taken a pic with his smartphone, so after church the next day, we showed villagers his phone, and asked people “where this man might live?” - in no time at all, we arrived at his front porch. A group of headhunting mates were gathered around the fire, and when they learned I was from America, asked me some insightful questions. I settled a long standing debate amongst the men - yes! In the middle of the day here in Nagaland, it’s the middle of the night in my village in America! Some had heard of such a thing! Some thought it never got dark in America! Then I explained how the earth actually takes a journey around the sun (which takes a year - while spinning - and each spin takes a day). They were surprised again, but I could tell the more astute headhunter was having his mind blown, as I could sense that he was intuitively ‘getting’ this wildly different concept from what, I expect, were the anti-science/faith concepts that the Christian missionaries were peddling. While I’m deciding whether or not to let this concept simmer, or expand and introduce the theory that the entire solar system is now surmised to be hurtling through space, and actually creating a spiral shaped trail, my bubble is popped by another question. They had also heard the people in America live to over 100. Indeed, my grandmother lived to 102, but that is rare - so rare that you actually get a birthday card from the president - but average old age is 85. They wanted to know how many households in my village, so I showed them a picture on my smartphone from the top of our ski mountain, with our ski village all covered in snow. Wow! They had heard of snow, but had never seen! Amazing! We also talked about how sad we all were about how plastic doesn’t go away, and then they asked about whether there is going to be an end to time and the world. If we can make it through the next four or five generations, we should be good to go. Also they ask if America was friends with Japan (not so much in the 1940’s, but recently yes more so ganging up against North Korea). Then I had to explain why North Korea and South Korea don’t get along. Then they asked about Pakistan. Then I started listing all the countries we were bombing, and my guide chimed in with “Muslim countries!” It seems the Christian missionaries had taught the headhunters and the village people to hate Muslims, included with teachings of scripture. Seems to be a lot of that going around. In my opinion, only an insecure religion would teach it’s congregation to hate others that worshiped the same god, but differently. Your dogma just ran over my karma.

These are interesting times. As we load up in the sumo (uncomfortable shared SUV taxi filled to capacity plus a couple more with luggage tossed on top) with my guide to return to Mon, I feel as I’ve missed the boat already. Yes these headhunters have face tattoos and huge ear plugs, but they are also wearing Adidas sportswear and cheap polo shirts made for the worldwide fashion industry (made in Bangladesh - right next door!). Once these guys die off, though, that’s it. I realize I’ve met the dwindling few - the last of the headhunters.

In the back of the sumo are some of the new generation of warriors. Late teenagers or early 20 somethings, wearing flat brimmed quilted hats that say NY -gangsta style, playing a video game called “War” against each other using bluetooth on their smartphones. I could hear the drone of non stop machine gun fire, interspersed with hip hop music I had never heard before. I metaphorically slap my own forehead. I hadn’t missed the boat. I was in Nagaland with the Konyak people at exactly the time I needed to be, for my front row seat to this tribe in transition.

I was warned not to expect the familiar, but this Muslim wedding I was photographing wasn’t even close to what I wasn’t expecting. It wasn’t so much a wedding as it was a village feast and somber goodbye party for the bride - before they sent her off to another village for an arranged marriage to a groom whom she had never met before.

I had come to India to learn to fly. I had planned to meet my paragliding buddy and once-neighbor Dave, his new paragliding Russian wife, and their rambunctious toddler in the New Delhi airport, and all together take the first domestic plane to Kanga, then arrange taxis with all our paragliding gear for the final leg to reach our paragliding mecca. Dave knew the ropes and was kind enough to take me under his wing.

The combination of laissez faire parenting, being cooped up in a flying tin can, and disruptions of time zones made for one very spastic Tasmanian Devil of a child. Also waiting for a flight, but into Kashmir, was a young American family with 3 kids, the youngest being of the same temperament. But then, miraculously, all the kids started playing together and sharing toys, and it was beautiful. Both sets of parents, and me especially, were so grateful for the respite. The other couple were Christian missionaries of sorts, which would normally get my prickles up, but they were so interesting, had learned to speak Urdu, and were bringing up their small family in Srinagar. I had to give them credit, they weren’t pushy about it, but instead just kept quiet and lived by example. It’s dangerous to be too vocal about opposing faiths in a predominantly Muslim area. Their plan was just to live a good life and get folks curious, I guess. Srinagar and Kashmir sound so exotic, and they have been on my list for 30 years. We have completely different lives, but I really connected with Emma, the wife, so we exchanged emails before catching our respective flights in different directions.

I planned to spend a month living in Bir Billings, the paragliding capital of the Himalayas. Dave would help me find an apartment, and I would share taxis up to launch with other paragliders that I met at breakfast. I heard the Russians would always be game for one more to make the ride cheaper. Dave was a great pilot and would go off on his adventures far and wide, where I was more of a baby pilot and was left to play in the “sandbox” - the safe zone from where you could still make it back to the large landing zone on a coast with no lift. The weather wasn’t always optimal, so I was glad to have a month to practice and get more comfortable with cross-country flight in this world-renowned spot. The day after I put a deposit down on an apartment, I was dismayed to learn that the World Cup for cross-country was going to be held in “our” little town of Bir - for a week! - during my month-long stay. The best pilots from all over the world show up to compete, and they launch one after another in the “launch window” before the start, filling up the sky with hundreds of paragliders, so many they look like colorful butterflies or jellyfish spiraling towards heaven. But, for liability reasons, they don’t allow non-competition pilots to clog up the already crowded sky above the launch. Especially baby pilots playing in sandboxes.

I hatched an escape plan. Since I was “in the neighborhood”, I would visit Srinagar and Kashmir. I just loved the way they rolled off my tongue. I knew nothing of the place, other than that cashmere sweaters are soft, and a postcard of houseboats I saw 30 years ago that had sparked my interest and was somehow still seared into my mind. Even if you can’t call a taxi ride, an overnight government bus to Jammu, and then a 12-hour SUMO (most likely an Izusu Trooper retro fitted to carry 11 or why not more passengers plus luggage and animals) to Kashmir “in the neighborhood”, this is still the closest I will ever be to Kashmir in the foreseeable future by a long shot. I must seize this serendipitous opportunity.

Plans were discussed among the non-competition pilots over dinner. The jedi French and Italian pilots were going on a vol-bivy (fly camp) expedition. Some others were spending a couple days trying to get a glimpse of the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala. When I told the group my plan they thought I was crazy. Even seasoned travelers warned me that was Muslim country, and that I was asking to get raped. What?! I explained that I was not an idiot, and that this wasn’t my first rodeo, but everyone firmly insisted.

Was I crazy? Was I taking my life in my own hands? I didn’t want to get raped, that’s for sure. I called Emma in a panic. I had already bought my night bus ticket, and it was too late for me to make any other plans. My heart was set on Srinagar. She said it would be fine, but I should definitely fly the final leg rather than take the potentially dangerous 12-hour SUMO ride with all the government checkpoints. The round trip flight from Jammu ended up costing only $60 and gave the most stunning bird’s eye view of the intimidating mountains as we approached the Srinagar airport.

My new best friends connected me with a small cabin-like houseboat that I rented for $23 a day. It was tucked behind a larger houseboat group on Dal Lake, with a nearby bevy of workers instructed to protect me and to keep me safe. This houseboat cabin used to be an actual personal home, until this friend of the family decided to move his own family to the mainland. I could see that commuting by boat every day would get tiresome in bad weather. The houseboats in front of me were much larger and designed for large groups of tourists. This buffer row of empty houseboats kept me off the main channel, and away from the relentless touts and jewelry salesmen prowling around on their own boats, pouncing on those in full view.

It was mid-November and my houseboat cabin was dark and near freezing inside. But it did have an electric blanket and a space heater, and I snuggled under the weight of 3 blankets with my puffy down coat still on to the sound of rain falling on the tin roof - which is one of my favorite things in the world, so I slowly warmed up to the place. The next day - more rain - and the little rowboat promised to me with the cabin/houseboat was 2 inches underwater. No problem! No problem! A boat boy was fetched and this young pimply-faced lad glided up in a shikara, the indicative boat of Dal Lake and Srinagar - and the boat from the old postcard! It looked like this shikara hadn’t been painted in about 30 years, so that’s about right. He paddled me around in the rain - me, under the canopy looking through shabby curtains over a carved wooden bow, and him, with a poncho out in the rain. Once I realized that all the paddles on Dal Lake were heart-shaped, I could not help but fall in love with the place. The next day I tried my hand at paddling my own boat, but it’s a lot harder to keep the boat going straight with only one heart-shaped paddle than the Kashmiri boatmen make it out to be. My goal was to paddle to Nigeen Lake, but after 4 hours of zig-zagging I wisely decided it was prudent to turn around, not even halfway there.

Like the 30-year-old postcard in my mind, Srinagar is all faded glory - left out in the rain, colors muted, and a little worn around the edges. Think shabby chic, but without the chic. The struggle over the Pakistan border, and the political strife, and the age-old Hindu/Muslim conflict has kept most tourists away in the last 20 years. A Hindu government clashing with a Muslim population, and squabbles with Pakistan, together with a heavy military and police presence and riots and stone throwing, and you can get a glimpse of why this postcard of a place has faded.

Behind the faded glory was an irresistible charm. I borrowed the rowboat the next day from my protectors, this time with a proper kayak paddle even though all the locals laughed at me, and explored my abandoned houseboat neighborhood. Houseboat groups were a thing, and additions were obviously named to theme. Most were downright hilarious. I paddled by Hollywood - Young Hollywood, Texas, Honolulu, Almost Heaven, New Heaven, and Heaven Super Deluxe. It continues, even though it’s water-logged and rotten - Miss America, Jamaica, and The Dawn Group: Happy Dawn, Lucky Dawn and just Dawn. Next door is Mughal Sheraton, Cosmo, Cultural Palace Super Deluxe, Holiday Inn, Hilton Kashmir, and the Zum Zum. Next to a small wooden dock was New Fashion Tailor, sharing a ramshackle building with the Paradise Dowry Jewelry Shop.

Back in the day, groups of friends or large families would rent these grand houseboat mansions with carved balconies, chandeliers, private chefs and a full staff. But now these deserted divas are all seemingly neglected and abandoned. I was the only white person on the night bus, and the only white person on the airplane. I am clearly the only international tourist (that I saw), and every evening I would take a water taxi to the mainland and choose between the many, but completely empty, 100-seat restaurants in a row along the Esplanade. On one hand, I always had a personal waiter. But on the other hand, the power normally ends up going out, so now it’s just me and the waiter alone in a huge dark room. “Light gone” he says, and a candle is lit, and placed at my table so I can eat, but now I can’t see the waiter lurking in the dark. Is he just watching me eat by candlelight? Just in case, I kept my headscarf on throughout dinner, which turned out wasn’t a sacrifice at all because it was so cold. I also am wearing all of the clothes I brought with me, in layers, with a puffy on top.

Emma called to check in and see how I was doing and also to apologize because she was going to have to cancel our dinner plans for Wednesday. They were obligated to attend a village wedding high up in the mountains. I confessed I was actually a wedding photographer by trade and suggested the bride and groom could have professional wedding photos, for free. I didn’t care about the missed dinner, but I really wanted an invite to this wedding! It worked! Turns out the village was thrilled to have a professional photographer from America to document the festivities. Emma had some extra appropriate-for-a-wedding outfits with matching head scarves that I could wear and with barely enough room in the minivan with all the kids and sleeping bags, we road-tripped a couple hours north into the Pir Panjal Mountains, towering above Srinagar.

I try not to have assumptions about anything, but clearly I’m not perfect. I falsely imagined it to be sort of like the movie Monsoon Wedding, but with way fewer flowers. I imagined there would be an aisle for some odd reason, with guests sitting in chairs at simple tables. I would expertly capture candids of the bride and groom happily together, and everyone would be thrilled. I knew not to expect the level of lavishness I see as a Sun Valley wedding photographer, where the budget for just the flowers can reach over $30,000, but I was at least expecting the bride and groom to be seen together.

First of all, women and men were completely segregated. That meant I hung out in the room for women. For hours on end. My hip was hurting (arrangements had already been made for a hip replacement when I returned home), which made it very difficult to sit cross-legged on the floor, so it made it very difficult to be polite. My outstretched leg was always pointing rudely at someone. Every so often I would excuse myself and escape. I wanted to take pictures of the men - outside - with their henna’d beards and unusual hats. But after only a couple pictures I was told to go back with the women. Seems even with my covering up with traditional dress and headscarf, the men still couldn’t “be themselves” and felt more comfortable without me there. It was a fine line, and I pushed it every chance I got because of my “official photographer” status. Surely they appreciated pictures of the men, too, I insisted. Wedding candids are my specialty, I reminded my liaison officer.

I was briefed by the only person in the village who spoke English, an unofficial mayor-type figure in his early 30s named Abdul. He was pretty hip and knew a bit about Western/American/Christian weddings. For all the differences I’ve seen photographing weddings in the past 20 years, there is still a common thread. Whether they’re under a chuppah, or at an altar, or in their parents’ backyard, the bride and groom basically face each other and exchange rings, shout to the world and their god that they love each other, and then have a party. This “mayor” or “wedding photography ambassador” explained to me that at no time would the bride and groom be in the same room, or even see each other. What?! How am I going to shoot this wedding, now that I’ve promised to cover it? After a momentary panic, I realized I was just going to have to do what I loved to do most, and that’s to let life unfold, and try to capture the moments, whatever they were. He told me that when it was time for me to do “my job”, he would come tell me. It will be interesting, I thought, to see what those “required events” would be.

The first day was spent in the large green room with all the women in the village in the largest henna hen fest I’ve ever experienced, the first “required event”. I speak no Urdu, and they speak no English. I get by with heartfelt charades, laughter, and some translations from Emma. Henna is not for just the bride - everyone is invited to get the intricate henna tattoos on their hands. The whole room was involved, and the kids even did henna on each other. The bride was sequestered in the corner by the window, holding court. This was going to be the last time most of the village would see her, perhaps. I quickly learned that there is no such thing as a happy Muslim bride. A bride must be sad, because she is leaving her family and friends. Even if she is happy, she must pretend to be sad. My job was becoming more challenging with every turn.

The bride has never seen her husband to be. In this modern age, however, people have at least flip cell phones, so she actually has had some conversations with him. Innocently, the 25-year-old groom had sent her some “romantic” videos he had pulled from the internet, complete with pics of budding roses, cheesy poems and screeching music, which we all gathered around to watch.

I’ve been summoned by the mayor. My ticket to escape the green room! The required event? The making of the salty chai. The informal ceremony is an art, made in special pewter pots. The men make the fire inside the pot’s center column to brew the salty mixture, and then expertly and patiently fan the embers with plates. The salty chai is consumed with very dry bread, which, for me, created a thirsty feedback loop.

There were no flowers. There were no theme colors. There were not even any tables or chairs. To feed a whole village is no small undertaking. First the men are served. Separately, of course. A runner is laid out for the tablecloth between two rows of cross-legged diners on the ground, and then big plates of rice with lamb balls and kebabs that have been cooking all day are placed in the middle. It’s designed so that 4 people share one big plate, and everybody eats with their right hand. It’s extremely rude to reach over anybody else’s food. Eat what’s in front of you. When you want more balls or kebabs with your quadrant of rice, you flag down one of the servers. Only after all the men (and boys) were done eating, and the plates cleared and washed, could the women sit down to eat. The men eating was another “required event”, so the men couldn’t complain too much that I was there floating around taking pictures.

Here comes the groom! The only flowers I saw were the plastic ones stuck to his car. He looked stoned or shell shocked - one of the two - and had to be led by his friends - groomsmen? - to a pink room in a separate house, designated solely for the men. The local videographer was sure surprised to see me, an American?!, and wondered where on earth I had come from and how did the village find me? We worked together and panned the room at the same time, so I got the shots without being in any of the videos.

Now the “required events” are happening simultaneously. I rush back and forth from the green room to the pink room. I barely catch the important event of putting makeup, oddly, on the groom. Back in the green room, the bride goes through the envelopes of money from guests and puts the bills in her purse - that will be her dowry.

The women stay behind, and only the men hop in the back of a waiting truck for transport to the groom’s nearby village. The groom is then ushered back to his car with the plastic flowers on the hood to be driven back to his village, following the flatbed truck full of men, where festivities will continue for many more days.

The mother and father of the bride lead their daughter, shrouded head to toe with a full black burka, to a separate car, where she will be driven to her new life. She had to fake her “cry” to be heard from under the burka - I could tell.

I’m not sure when they will be allowed to see each other. Maybe the heightened anticipation and mystery creates a level of intensity that otherwise wouldn’t be there for someone your parents chose for you to be your husband.

I’m quite touched and humbled that this village let such an outsider (me, 50 years old, never married, no children - why not?! - they can’t quite wrap their heads around that - and a kafir, a non-Muslim) - into their lives. For that I will always be grateful.

And just like that, my job was over. The bride and groom never saw each other. The main event was a segregated feast on the floor. And men and women could not mingle. Weirdest. Wedding. Ever.

Check out my wedding photography channel on instagram.com/thiakonigweddings to see the weddings I’m used to shooting in Sun Valley and destinations worldwide. I wondered if my photography would be too ‘candid’ for the family of the bride, but I heard from Emma after I got back home that they were very pleased with the results. I had done all the required family portraits and events, and they were the only village to have candids, taken by an American photographer, for miles around.

So, if skiing is my church, then this ski road trip with my 1989 VW van (and my cat) was my holy pilgrimage. Everyday had a purpose. Every moment I was reminded to live in gratitude. I was newly recovered from my 4th bionic operation in 3 years, so I was lucky enough to be skiing at all, let alone on a 2 & ½ month, 5,000 mile journey to all the ski resorts in the West on my Ikon pass, having the time of my life. The freedom was both delicious and intoxicating. Like Warren Miller said, “If you don’t do it this year, you’ll be one year older when you do.”

I didn’t throw three pairs of skis into the passenger seat, top off the antifreeze, load up the cat, and then just go. No, I had to learn some things first, pay my dues, so there is some backstory I feel I must share.

Prelude Part 1 - The high cost of free skiing. I swiped right on some baby blues, and thought I had met my powder soul mate. I joined him the next winter on a PNW, Vancouver Island, Canadian Powder Highway ski road trip in his motorhome, but it ended up being a 5 week divorce trip, ending with a very silent 14 hour drive from Kicking Horse in British Columbia, all the way home to my doorstep in Ketchum Idaho. That’s the thing with crazy people - they don’t know they’re crazy. But I did learn some things - mostly that this ski gypsy way of life is possible. There is a roving #vanlife community doing the same, all in their own way.

Prelude Part 2 - After the above fateful road trip (suddenly and yet not soon enough) ended, I lamented at the thought of being ON the powder highway, with more powder coming, and having to abandon everything. Arrrhhhh. Great concept. Poor execution. It took two weeks to ‘winterize’ my van and convince myself to return, to do it my own way, but this time WITH propane heat, and WITHOUT the crazy. He let me keep the passes he had bought me, so I headed back up to the powder highway through Big Sky, Fernie, Banff, and Lake Louise in Canada. I didn’t want the trip to end, but in true dirtbag fashion, I returned to slide into a dog sitting position arranged months prior. That dog sitting money paid for the gas and supplies, and, there was no turning back - a skibum gypsy was born again. Another pilgrim in the church of the open slopes.

Ski Pilgrimage Road Trip - Spring 2019 - This was not only a trip that fed the soul, but one that fed the body as well. I also engaged in earthly delights, as I ate, laughed, and loved my way around Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and California. Thank god I had purchased those snow chains the day before I left. They came in handy at midnight on the first day, in order to make it all the way up Big Cottonwood Canyon, to Solitude, Utah, in a blizzard. I didn’t know exactly where I was going to poach a parking spot for that first night, but I was comforted by the fact that wherever that was going to be, it would be under a huge down sleeping bag spooning with my cat, Maxwell Catswell. On really cold mornings (like that morning I ran out of propane in Steamboat Springs with single digit temps!) I would let Max sleep in, nestled under the mound of down. My faithful companion kitty burrito.

You wouldn’t guess I was a dirtbag if you saw me walk into the hotel lobby at 6:15 in the morning. I’m that good. The key to being a stealth ninja dirtbag, is not looking like one. I stop at all consignment stores (that I want to), and have an overflowing accessory bin. That’s the beauty of a one-van/one-gal/one-cat scenario: anything goes. I sleep in basic black fleece, so I’m a blank canvas. After ‘rolling out of bed’, (and with keen Angelina-Jolie-spy-movie fashion sense), I pick out an appropriate hat and parka for the hotel, and stroll into the lobby -in my pajamas- accessorized like I belong. Not with an attitude, but like I belong. I mean them no harm, and I pick up after myself like a good spy. With Jason Bourne-like instincts, I scan the lobby - a genuine smile greases the wheels - and I split-second navigate to the bathroom for my morning chores. In my cute little suede backpack there is a toothbrush and toothpaste, and water bottles to fill for the daily supply. (Any water collected the night before will probably freeze - then what?) My Ikon Pass is only good for 5 days at each resort, so by the time anyone could catch on, I’ve flown the coop. The fur hat I bought half-off-we’re-going-out-of-business sale in Steamboat Springs, CO was a crowd favorite. More than once, the first thing out of the desk clerk’s mouth was “nice hat.”

My food situation, however, was several notches above dirtbag. I would rate it a solid “gourmet yet frugal old hippie delux picnic” in the scheme of things. My top-loading Engel fridge is plugged in (with a DC bypass switch) to an auxiliary deep-cell marine battery, which is fed by both the main engine, and solar panels on the roof. On a winter road trip, keeping food cold isn’t the problem, it’s sometimes keeping it warm (enough above freezing). My workaround trick is choosing foods that can porpoise in and out of freezing without worry. Sealed gourmet boil-in-the-bag dinners served in a paper bowl create blissfully no clean-up. Panang curry is my favorite. If I bought precious produce, then I would put a thermos of hot water in the fridge (sounds crazy), to protect it during the nights it would dip well below freezing. Every morning, usually well before 7am, I had a fabulous rock star parking spot at the ski resort, and would leisurely make breakfast and get geared up for skiing. I would put on tunes, and dance, while I made tea, and chai, and chugged a warm EmergenC. “The usual” was scrambled eggs with feta cheese and tomatoes and maybe broccoli with Siracha sauce and himalayan salt on my little gas stove. I’m usually on the chair by nine, unless there’s a good reason not to be (like spring conditions the day before - duh). Then back to the van for breaks to say hi to Max, turn on the heat for him and warm up my toes. Lunch included some old school European style picnics with fancy cheese and salami, nuts and dried fruit. One of the most important lessons I learned on the divorce trip, was to never underestimate the importance of having a snack drawer. Mine was organized, but ridiculously bountiful with all sorts of lovely Trader Joe treats.

I told myself that if I could manage to make most of my own meals, and not succumb to any $5 coffees, or any other silly expenditures, then that would leave room for some special splurges along the way. I fell into my first splurge because thank god I was lost in a snowstorm.

It was still dumping from the night before, so what should have been the final hour to get to Steamboat Springs, instead took 2 hours. My map with the blue bouncing ball on my phone didn’t match all the friendly signs pointing the way from Main St, so I got a bit scrambled. I used a motel’s pull through to execute a 180 without a threepoint turn (clever/not clever), but they hadn’t plowed the parking lot yet and I actually needed to be pushed out by three strangers. Ug! Sorry! Thank you! Slightly panicked about finding a place to become legally stuck in a legit parking place on this ever growing powder morning, I kept pace with a walking local, and pleaded with a smile for the local parking beta. The main lot was back the other way (so that’s out of the question), and the other option was to park just up there in The T-Bar’s lot for $15 a day. Score! All by accident I had landed slopeside at the best apres party in the West. I came for the parking, but stayed for the five star cuisine?! Wait! What? No joke. The T-Bar (get it?) bills itself out as a five star dive bar, and I can’t think of a better description. I’m sure everything else on the eclectic international menu was as good as the five things I had for dinner each night. Two of them being the best bowl of ramen I’ve ever had in my life. It was the place to be, and there I was, a fixture. Every night I would make new friends, and when they would catch wind of what I was up to with my epic road trip, (it seems it’s everyone’s dream, but I’m doing it with a CAT?! In a VW?!), they would want to come meet Maxwell Catswell. “How is this possible?” they wondered. Well, Maxwell is old, (about 85 in people years), and at this point, pretty chill. I would give ‘van tours’, but only two people at a time could fit.

I almost had a heart attack when my bill came from my St. Bernard (Taos, NM) exclusive gourmet-multi-course-served-family-style-on-a-silver-platter splurge, but it didn’t matter. It included foods I had never tried before and desserts on fire. The second course fondue was the best I’d ever had in my life (sorry, Sun Valley Roundhouse!), and to accompany the whole quails drizzled in a tangy reduction sauce, the very French chef had placed perfectly done medium-boiled quail eggs in a realistic looking nest made of fried turnip and onion shreddings. The consensus at the table was not to peel it. I cut it in half, and popped it in my mouth. The egg shell was so delicate and light, it tickled. The dessert incorporated ice cream, liquor, and dancing blue flames, and when no one else at the family style 8-top wanted any, I took some for the team. Ice cream bowls are like waves - if you don’t eat them or surf them, they just go to waste.

Riding shotgun are three pairs of skis, a set of expandable poles, a new resort pack (I’ll explain later), a backcountry pack (just incase…), antifreeze, oil, snow scoops and brushes, newly purchased snow chains, and a covered kitty litter box sandwiched between the driver and passenger seats, (which also made it very awkward to connect my seatbelt). Max could access his trap door by stepping over my shoes, and through all my parkas hanging on a bar I installed during my ‘winterization’ process. I cleaned the kitty litter box by going out and around and sitting in the driver’s seat. This insulating bank of coats kept the heat (mostly) in the main compartment, while leaving the front seats more like a ‘cold entry’ and my ‘garage’. I also made a swath of fleece fabric ready to flop down from the ceiling with magnets to seal off the ‘garage’ at night, which gave me a ‘stealth-mode’ advantage when I was camping under the radar. If I don’t turn on the somewhat noisy heater, or run any of my LED lighting, I can be barely noticed - parking late and waking early - in a nice safe neighborhood.

The first day at a new ski resort is always orientation day, especially if it is snowing and I can’t see anything. I would ride all the lifts to see where they took me, study the map, and ski boundary line to boundary line. I would say ‘namaste’ to the mountain, and explore each drainage, one by one. I would make a pilgrimage to the trees off trail on either edge of the resort, where I could really be by myself, for some morning reflections and a moment in gratitude. I lift my goggles and close my eyes, so that the sun can reach my face through the cathedral of trees. The wizard trees of the Pacific Northwest, seem wise beyond their years. The aspen trees of Utah and Colorado are noble and sublime. The towering giant redwoods of California, well, they really do make you feel like you ate the ‘pill that makes you smaller’. The last day at a resort is always super gratitude day. I thank the mountain gods for safe passage and all the time spent dancing with the universe at that particular resort and mountain range.

For the love of skiing and everybody who loves it with me! There is a common elemental thread that unites the congregation of skiers. Nothing else matters. We all love skiing. Everyone I meet has made an effort to be here, only because they love skiing as much as I do. My skiing brethren. Normally I can manage to avoid the crowds and chatter (shhhhh! I’m skiing with god!), but I made an exception at Solitude, Utah. I called him Stan Stan the perimeter man, and he loved giving tours to gypsies such as myself. Stan’s story was a riches to rags one, a fall from grace, so to speak. He pulled himself back up out of the dredges, and now for his community reparation, shares out of bound powder stashes to visiting pilgrims. The mountain manager even gives him pins to hand out, so he’s pretty official.

I’m not much for a man in uniform, unless, of course, we are talking about ski patrol. They are my angels of safety and information. Saviors for a gal on her own. They are kind, knowledgeable, and don’t buckle under pressure, and are great resources for local snow conditions. They give me the confidence that I can go to church without the walls caving in - how sexy is that? They also have crosses on their shoulders, and have many things in their pockets in case things go awry. I asked the handsome patroller at the ski shack at the top of Polar Peak chair in Fernie, BC, where there might be some good, secret, winter snow left (after the spring conditions the day before had melted, and then subsequently froze, most of the mountain). Think soft cream cheese with a bean bag filling - accidentally left in the freezer overnight. Pretty bulletproof. The only hope is that it will corn up again soon. Fernie is a series of 5 bowls, or cirques, which create many aspect possibilities. The little slice of winter heaven was down the other side of the next bowl over, called Corner Pocket. From the top I made the high traverse through the snow ghost trees, then followed the ridge down till I saw the first gate. Once through the notch, I then lowered myself down with a rope over tires embedded in the snow (had it not been for the 10 year old kid who did it before me, I would have chickened out). This aspect of Lizzard Bowl was always in the shade, and laid out the offerings of a soft crud-oasis, and was my playground for the rest of the day.

“Not too tight - but not too loose either!” my (then)powder husband barks at me. It seems my day-1 ‘immunity challenge’ was to learn how to roll a joint. My day-2 immunity challenge was to learn how to roll a joint, while sitting in the passenger seat - as we are driving. “Don’t spill! Come on!” Wow, so insistent, and again with the micro managing. Relax readers, we have crossed state lines into legal weed territory - we are beelining it for the prophetic powder at Stevens Pass, Washington.

I thought we were half suffering in the motorhome with no central heating, but I willingly took the compromise to have dry mittens and boots in the morning. For electric heat, my powder husband would have to wrestle with the heavy generator out back, dig a snow pit to minimize the relentless noise, and then bring it in again for fear of theft. We would only run the heat in the tiny bathroom to run the boot warmers and dry out all our soggy mittens and neck gators (essential! thank you!), but shut the door to the main cabin - to maximize the heating capacity of a small space. Sadly and ironically, the motorhome was too big to heat. He would also insist on wrestling with the generator in the morning to make his coffee. “Why not use the gas stove and use a french press? Or a Pour over? Or a stovetop espresso?” I innocently ask. The steam from the coffee maker would mix with all the moisture in the motorhome to create some sort of weather vortex - dew points and inversions would collide to form a thick mysterious cloud, halfway up, about chest high. All I could do was to keep quiet, and tuck my bright ideas into my bonnet to be used later, if I ever was to venture out and attempt such a thing on my own.

The divorce powder highway trip is also where I learned another very integral winter vanlife lesson - the importance of having good snow management. Control the snow, and you control the moisture. I couldn’t agree more! It’s a very good idea to keep brushes by the door and banish any snow off anything coming inside - it will collect, warm up, and melt. It’s hard to get the earworm ‘moist’ out of your head if you’re #vanlife-ing it in the Pacific Northwest.

By the time we got to the luke warm snow vortex of Mt. Baker, I’m not sure what number day it was, but I needed a break from the confines of the cold (literally and metaphorically) motorhome. The temperature of the parking lot was my least favorite temperature in a snow storm - a grumbling 33 or 34 degrees. The ‘snain zone’. Pacific Northwest (and Canadian!) gals are some of the hardiest souls I’ve met on the planet. They have to be. Case in point when I met three women living out of one pickup truck, covered head to toe in REI gear, and while huddled in the rain, were blissfully unaware of the misery and discomfort that was possible. (I was cold, and I was dry.) The king cab contained three large matching blue and yellow Ikea bags, each with their respective belongings. Lift the plywood they were sleeping on (lined up like puppies under the shallow cab roof) to reveal preplanned measured compartments: three pairs of skis in one slot, three pairs of boots next, and three helmets, with some poles, and no room to spare. These gals had skills! But, wait! Wouldn’t that all freeze later in the night? In this climate? How would they dry it all? They must know what’s coming - clearly they are pros, these happy, soggy, pilgrims. Then a divine lightbulb appeared above my head just like in the cartoons… if these gals can do it sardined into a tiny pickup truck, I could certainly do it because I already owned a whole van. With snow tires! And propane heat! These three women had placed the seed of possibility in my mind. This changed everything. If I didn’t ‘need’ my powder husband and his cold motorhome to be a ski bum gypsy queen, then there’s a lot less that I will tolerate.

I can’t very well write a story about a ski road trip with religious references, and not talk about faith. Faith is about believing in something. We are presented with opportunities to trust others, and, if we are lucky, moments that test beliefs inside ourselves deep down, as well.

I had to muster up quite the pep talk to un-pucker myself when I realized I was in a bit over my head, on a knife-sharp ridge along the alphabet chutes at Big Sky, Montana. I arrived the day before, giddy that my VW van had actually made it to my first ski resort on my way to Canada. With only a couple hours left on this rare blue bird day with spring conditions (first clue), I set out to see how many lifts I could ride to get to know the mountain. On my first chairlift I got the scoop: if the line for the tram is not oozing past the entrance, then it’s less than half an hour wait, and should be considered. From the tram line, I look up to my left, and a whole array of beautiful chutes towered above me. I take a pic of the cascading S-turns (still room for freshies!) with my phone and hit ‘send’ to my ski buddy in Boise to make him jealous. He bounces back with, “Which track is yours?”. Oh god, he’s so right! “First things first tomorrow morning!” (second clue), I tell myself. In line I talk with my neighbors, and find out that I must head to Challenger lift, and be prepared to walk. I pointed to the widest and most manageable-for-me couloir, and was told that was Parachute - they are all laid out alphabetically. All the other chutes were very narrow - so I surmised then I had to find my way to ‘P’ in the alphabet. I had no idea how STEEP they all were until I got up there. On the first stage of the walk, I noticed that everyone else had smart little backpacks and were attaching their skis to carry them hands and shoulder free (third clue). Hmmm. I’m not scared of a little discomfort, so I keep switching my skis from one sore shoulder to the other. Even though I live at 6,000ft, I’m gasping for air while trudging up this steep climb at nearly 11,000ft, and let everyone go ahead of me. But that was only the beginning. Once the traverse started, I could see why everyone else had backpacks piggybacking their skis. Where it was really steep and treacherous, there was a chain to hold on to, but super dicey trying to manage a pair of skis on my shoulder and poles dangling from my wrists. Each footstep was uncertain whether it would be icy and slippery, or supportive. In each direction there was a “do-not-fall-danger-horrible-death” scenario. I didn’t think I could keep going on this terrifying traverse - maxing out my cortisol like this, so I took a peek at the first chute - ‘A’ chute - NOPE! Narrow, steep, and very thin with rocks poking out - definitely beyond my ability with three hip operations. I want to stay out of the hospital. ‘B’ chute wasn’t any better. Nor any of the letters along the first two thirds of the alphabet. The only viable option was to press on through the alphabet to ‘P’. The safety chain ran out, and I was left to navigate icy steps with only slippery alpine soles on my boots, and balancing skis and one pole over a shoulder that was starting to seize up. “What am I doing here?! - ug!” I ask myself. I fantasize about turning around and bailing. When I actually tried to turn around, I could see that it was physically impossible. I turned forward again, and with sewing-machine legs, resurrected the deep-down faith and belief in myself, and gave my brain that pep talk from my soul. “Only ten more letters to go… it’s the only way outta here.” “You can do it! You HAVE to!” “There is no other option.” ”You will triumph!” In my mind I put my big girl panties on, and pressed on. Carefully. Gingerly. Finally, I made it to ‘P’ for Parachute! It was still a bit steep, but wide enough to get a second chance at a turn if things got awkward. I took a proud selfie, tested the waters with a slow solid survival turn, then let ‘er rip. I emerged from the soft crud section at the top, and made my own cascading S-turn through virgin powder, all the way to the bottom. Indeed, triumphant! Can you hear the angels sing? “See?!”, I tell myself encouragingly. I took a photo of the tracks coming out of the chute on my phone, sent it to my friend, and casually claimed my line - “lookers right skiers left”.

I should really call this van my zen car. I have no choice but to have lots of patience. Driving up these Colorado passes, I’m down to only 30 mph and second gear. Now I know why they call it ‘white knuckle’ driving, when semi trucks are passing me in the fast lane. Good lord. Felix (the van) also teaches me to not have attachments to schedules, either.

No woman is an island, especially when driving a VW van. Only once was AAA summoned, but again, it was more like divine intervention. The guy next to me on the lift at Winter Park, Colorado, said that if I was serious about chasing powder, then why wasn’t I headed to Purgatory?, (because that’s where the winter of 2019 that would not end, was now headed.) This wise man’s forecast had moved the powder mecca to Southwest Colorado - Purgatory to be exact. I immediately skied back to the van, and not lost on the irony, entered Purgatory into my GPS. With an estimated 7.5 hours of drive time (so about double for the little van that could), there was no time to waste. Late that night, all of a sudden, the oil light and buzzer start blaring, and I witness from the side mirror a huge white cloud of steam?smoke? exploding from the rear engine. Evidently, the best and safest way for me to descend the Wolf Creek Pass (for my two-wheel van), was tightly secured onto the back of a flatbed tow truck. This pass is so treacherous, there is a folk song by CW McCall singing of it’s lore. Divine intervention is the gift that keeps on giving, because if it were not for being holed up in Pagosa Springs waiting on a water pump for several days, I never would have met Mike and Lisa. They were fellow ski bum gypsies and likewise chasing prophetic powder, but were driving a 4-wheel drive Suburban, with two large dogs in tow. Their invite to join them made the side journey up to Wolf Creek Mountain possible, and while it’s not on the Ikon Pass, and has only a handful of lifts, it’s legendary for being a snow vortex. My van wouldn’t have made it up that pass in a snowstorm, even WITH a water pump, so I was grateful for the serendipity. The three of us remain best of friends to this day.

Everywhere there is opportunity to trust others, and if my instincts give me the nod, I will. I was reviewing this policy in my mind as I was hanging by my fingertips on a 4-pitch 5.7 climbing wall, called Corrugation Corner, in the Sierras, on a first date. I had overlooked the crazy hair, and focused on the trustworthy smile, his obvious passion for the outdoors, and a well-worn baseball cap with ‘guide’ written on it, and swiped right. The communication was easy and straightforward, which led to me to take a small detour between Squaw Valley and Mammoth Mountain in California. I’m a screamer, but apparently not loud enough, as I was yelling “I can’t make it! Pull me up!”, but he thought I was saying “slack!”. We sorted it out, and there’s nothing like putting your life in someone’s hands to really get to know each other (and yourself). We finished the down climb in the dark with no headlamps, and, safe and sound on solid ground, I let him fix me dinner. His plan backfired, and after our arduous adventure in trust and vertical puzzles, all I wanted to do was to be held in his arms. Maybe that was the plan after all? Maybe there was no plan. We had a second date, a rendezvous with his camper and my van, in the Owens Valley, with short sport climbs by day (where we could see and hear each other), and secret hot springs at night. I’m glad I overlooked the crazy hair in his profile, because a lasting friendship was made. To top it off, the name of the climbing area is Lover’s Leap. (no joke! You can’t make this stuff up!)

Why embark on such a journey? Well, simply put, Warren Miller made me do it. It was 2018, and Warren Miller had passed away just months prior to my return to the Powder Highway by myself in my VW, his spirit and soul fresh in my mind. Every day I would ask myself “What would Warren Miller do?” before any pivotal road trip decision. Should I drive 40 km out of my way to check out a little dinky family run area called Kimberly on my way between Fernie and Banff? It was on my pass. Yes of course I should. That’s what Warren Miller would do. If his iconic voice hadn’t taunted and teased me as a high school student, stuck in the flatlands of Stockton California, and planted a ski bum seed inside my malleable brain, I may never have puttered up high Colorado passes in a van named Felix, or lived like a dirtbag rock star in ski resort parking lots, skiing pow and dancing with god, drunk on freedom. So, 38 years later, thank you Warren Miller. I think you would have been proud.

Out of a student body of 600, only 60 had entered the contest for a free trip to Siberia with the California Siberia Photographers Exchange Project. Absolutely thrilled that I was one of two Brooks Institute of Photography students selected, I conducted an informal survey as to why more students had not jumped at the opportunity. Most had thought that if the first prize was one month in Siberia, then the second prize was most certainly two months in Siberia. As a child, I have to admit, I too used to assume the ultimate punishment was to be sent there in exile, to freeze to death with no one knowing. But I found more to this vast land than frozen tundra, long bread lines, dysfunctional elevators, and red tape.

I had been to the USSR before in 1989, backpacking in the Tien Shan mountains with some Ukrainians, so I knew going into this trip that we would find a sense of brotherhood independent of politics. But everybody in the sparsely populated Krasnoyarsk Krai(territory) was so much more welcoming than I ever could have imagined. I found a soul in the air that seemed to go right through me and shake my heart around. It was a huge eye-opener to realize that the people of a country are not the government of a country. One week after we left, the coup tore the Soviet Union apart at the seams; our photography exchange project turned out to be an unintended glimpse of a nation’s final days.

Everything in Siberia is exaggerated: the space, the people, the circumstances. The land is immense, covering 11 time zones, and most of the forest, or taiga, is impenetrable except by helicopter or sleigh. I was amazed at the contrast between the drab gray streets and the glum facades that people wore in public, and the overwhelming warmth and hospitality I felt while in their homes. In the subways and in the town squares, the black cloud above everyone’s head was palpable. But once inside their houses, it was a complete 180 degrees. Ironically, in the place my father had told me I should be the most scared (better dead than Red, he would preach), I felt the most warmth and conviviality of any of the 14 countries I had visited by then. It was like running into a twin sister I never knew I had, separated at birth by accident. There was an eerie, basic similarity but an alarming difference in life experiences, which we both could feel. I thought the hardship and unfairness of fate would have hardened people’s hearts, but here, the less fortunate ones were also the more generous.

Russia is a gift-giving culture, and the people live the true spirit of Christmas every day. I wanted to give, not receive (in part because my backpack was getting heavy), but no matter how hard I tried, I was always outdone. And it’s considered rude not to accept a gift. At a nickel factory in the northern industrial city of Norilsk, I hung behind while the group moved ahead and then played charades and laughed with a female worker with cute-as-a-button dimples. “Glipa cresiva,” I said - pretty close to the Russian for “pretty smile” - as I took some pictures of her. For thanks, I handed her some perfume samples from the mall at home (great gifts for women because they are light and small). She motioned me to wait as she went to her locker and rummaged for an exquisite pair of hand-carved earrings, which she presented to me as she said “for remember.” How could I forget?

At the end of the Cold War, Americans (or at least the idea of America) symbolized freedom to the people but were still a threat to the government and status quo. American capitalism was making its debut, and McDonald’s seemed to be the trojan horse for the behind-the-enemy-line culture war going on - Capitalism vs. Communism. Whoever lives better, wins! Our photography hosts from Krasnoyarsk had met us in Moscow, and some of the guys asked if I’d like to go to McDonald’s, which had opened the previous year. I politely declined, but the spectacle was not lost on me. Another professional photographer from Colorado had gone - the line circled three sides of a long city block, but it took only thirty minutes to get to the front and then everybody, in order, received what they ordered. Revolutionary!

The vast Krasnoyarsk Krai - the western half of Siberia - had been closed for decades. Think “the Midwest of Russia - friendly vibe, but with way more time zones and covered in taiga”. Most people never thought they would see any foreigners, let alone Americans. When I introduced myself as an American, most people looked as if they’d seen a space alien. They stared in disbelief. Then as I handed them a souvenir penny - “kopek Americanski,” I would explain - disbelief turned to wonderment. Then kisses, hugs, and tears as I was dragged back to their home, arm in arm, not taking no for an answer, a friendly kidnapping, for celebration. This photography exchange project was turning out to be more of an eating and drinking tour of Russia. People would bring out a year’s worth of rations of meat, caviar, and vodka for me, and there is no such thing as a half-empty bottle of vodka in Russia. A few times I had to decline, because I was already drunk and full from their neighbors.

The Russian photographers who hosted us lived a bit on the fringe in Krasnoyarsk, a million-person city where we were based for a couple weeks. They tried to introduce us to everyone they thought would be interesting to us. They were an adventurous and creative lot. You had to be to survive at the end of the Cold War. They couldn’t just order camera parts - they had to engineer and make them by hand. They went backpacking without velcro or plastic bags. Sasha used to work as an engineer for Aeroflot, so his backpacking hip buckle was fashioned from an airline seatbelt. They went rock climbing with cut-at-the-ankle galoshes tied up with string, with just a rope tied around the waist for the harness belay, if you were lucky.

Very early one morning, I and the other Brooks student, our official interpreter Marina, and one of our photographer hosts were all hitchhiking out of the sprawling city, in order to meet some ultralight pilots at an airfield that our hosts had introduced to us the day before. “The Americans want to photograph from the air!”, is what I’m guessing was relayed in Russian. Excited, the pilots had all promised us rides if we could get to the airstrip before dawn. At 5 am, a man in a small Polish jeep stopped and we all piled in. As our interpreter explained who we were, tears welled up in his eyes and rolled down his cheeks. He said, “All my life I’ve been afraid of Americans - and really, you’re just like us.” It was a revelation for him. The feeling was mutual. As the jeep bounced along the dirt road, tears rolled down everybody’s cheeks. It turned out he had jeopardized his job by giving us a ride so far out of his way. Driving Americans to the airstrip was as believable an explanation for being late as driving Martians to their spaceship. I gave him some Chanel No. 5 perfume samples and a Polaroid group portrait to defend his case. He pleaded with us to come home with him for dinner, but his was our fifth invitation for that night, so we politely declined.

I’m not the kind of person who cries at the drop of a hat, and only twice have I cried listening to music, but both were in Russia. The first was in Moscow, where a harp player with a mustache in a park sang so passionately that it brought tears to my eyes. I didn’t understand what was happening since that was the first time in my life I had been so moved by music. Later in the trip our hosts took us camping in Stolby, a “stone forest” near Krasnoyarsk. I could make out the silhouettes of the rock outcroppings looming over us by the gaps in the stars, hidden behind them. We gathered around the fire, where the Siberians passed around a guitar and every one of them played and sang beautifully. Falling asleep by the fire to the sound of Russian folk songs was one of the great pleasures of my life - even to this day it’s in my top ten.

Turohansk was a town in a time warp. It had a true frontier spirit, with wooden sidewalks and families of five packed in sidecars dodging sleeping dogs in the middle of the dirt streets. Here we had an Aeroflot helicopter at our disposal for four days. This whole project had been the brainchild of a professor at the Brooks Institute, and he had secured Aeroflot as one of our sponsors.

Since roads are too difficult to maintain in frozen or slushy ground, these helicopters, which looked like flying submarines, were the main form of transportation to the outlying areas. In them we flew into forgotten Stalin-era work camps swarmed with mosquitoes from the thawed permafrost. Even with jackets, repellent, and net hats, we were eaten alive. I can only imagine what the prisoners had to endure without any protection. I don't normally walk around thinking of ghosts, but this was one of the few times in my life when I could sense a haunting.

We spotted a nomadic reindeer-hunter tribe from the air and made a surprise landing. I was invited into a Mongol couple’s house that was no more than a teepee where, in the 90 degree heat, the husband modeled his winter uniform for me. With sweat pouring down his face, he showed me how to rope a reindeer with a lasso he had made by hand, while his wife demonstrated how to hand-sew beadwork onto the fur boots that were curing in the drying tent.

As the helicopter followed the river back to town, I’m sure all of us, on both sides, wondered if that encounter really happened. Many state borders were closed to Russians - even they couldn’t move across state lines - and here were Americans, dropping in from the sky?! It was unfathomable for us to appear out of the blue like that at what none of us yet knew was the tail end of the Cold War. And as for me, I felt like I had stepped into another century.

The submarine helicopter became our almost home in the days it took to fly north over the never-ending taiga, on to Norilsk, and then finally Dikson, barely an outpost, on the Arctic Ocean. From Turohansk, the pilots followed the Yenisey River most of the way. In the main body of the helicopter bench seats ran down either side with room for all our luggage piled up in the center. No seatbelts, but that meant we could move around and photograph out the various round porthole windows. I was thrilled when the pilots asked if I’d like to hang out in the cockpit. It had a clear bubble nose, and as the taiga zoomed past under us, I felt a bit like a superhero. The pilots asked if I was thirsty (I think), and I thought it a rather odd survey question, so I figured I had misunderstood, and dismissed it. Soon after, they hastily landed the helicopter in a very precarious location not far from the trees on either bank. None of us knew what was going on and why the sudden landing. One Russian took a dip in the icy water, and the pilots grabbed their fishing poles and started casting. A campfire suddenly appeared with a kettle of tea brewing, and when I was handed the cup of tea, I thought all because I said I was thirsty? But the pilots actually were following a school of salmon up the river, and were just being strategic.

That night we stayed with a fur-trapper whose cabin rested beside a lake somewhat north of the Arctic Circle. The men went fishing, and I was left with the women to prepare the sauna. As we gathered wood and built the fire, we could actually ~hear~ the lake. The prevailing wind pushed all the ice to our end, and as the ice clinked into itself, it sounded like hundreds of people making toasts with crystal glasses.

For dinner we had freshly smoked salmon and fish stew while we sang Russian folk songs and Beatles tunes. It sometimes took most of the song to realize it was a Beatles tune, the accents so thick, just copying the sounds without any knowledge of the meaning of the words, endearing in a so-bad-it’s-good sort of way. “Hey, Jude” and “Yesterday” were covered by all, and I do mean all, of the live musicians that I witnessed on this trip.

The host makes the first toast, followed by a healthy shot of vodka for all. The second toast will no doubt honor women. The third is up for grabs, but in our case it was usually “Mir y Druzhba!” - “Peace and Friendship!”. Since I had been to the USSR before, I knew what I was getting into - it’s part of the culture. But even though I started vodka training as soon as I was accepted on the trip, I was still a lightweight.

It was around 1 in the morning when I joined the other women - after the men of course, segregated because we were naked - in the sauna by the lake. I needed it. I had exceeded my resistance level of vodka, toasting over and over to shouts of “Mir y Druzhba!!” I took my position as a self-assigned ambassador very seriously, as one of the first Americans any of these Russians had met. It would have been terribly rude to our hosts to not raise a glass for “Peace and Friendship!!” I would palm my glass like a good spy when our hosts would make the rounds - immediately after the last toast - to refill everyone’s glass from the never-ending bottle of vodka, ready for the next shout of “Mir y Druzhba!!” In spite of my cleverness, I still managed to overdo it, vodka-wise.

It was around 2 am when I left the sauna, completely overheated, so much so I yearned for a cold plunge between tiny little icebergs, to douse my raging fire. Out there, in the icy lake, under the very pink midnight sun, time seemed to stand still. The sun was so much larger than normal that it seemed surreal, like a sci-fi movie taking place on another planet, in another galaxy. I was awash in fantastical colors - a beautiful pastel hue somewhere between pink and magenta swam together with all the blues I’ve never seen before to make it feel like I was in a watercolor painting, the cold barely seeping in. The only indicator that time had indeed not stopped was the “toasting” of the little icebergs clinking into one another, the sound of hundreds of glasses being raised, hopefully to peace and friendship as well.

At the tour’s end, and, as it turned out, one week before the coup, I watched Moscow shrink in the window of the jet and I knew I would never be able to look at my life in America the same. Indeed, over 35 years later, I still cannot walk down the cereal aisle in a supermarket and not think of the disparity between our crazy over-the-top abundance and choices, and how difficult it was for Russians to get soap, or umbrellas, or car parts at that stage of the Cold War. If they could buy something they actually liked ~despite~ there being no choices, their friends would congratulate them. It made me realize that being able to have, and buy, all the stuff in America is a diversion from what is really important. In America we seek fulfillment from the outside, because we have the luxury of being able to do so. In Siberia the people had next to nothing, yet shared everything - their food, their drink, their hearts, and their souls.

All these images were taken with Kodak 35mm infrared film. During the Cold War, infrared film was mainly used for spying purposes - and originated from satellites. I believe I’m the first one to be boots on the ground, using my Nikon F4 with a 24mm lens and 35mm infrared film, for the sake of love and art, to share.

These prints are available for sale. Some are matted, mostly 11 x 14, or at least printed in the darkroom on 11 x 14 paper. If you know, you know. For now they are sold exclusively out of my photo studio, Photos Do Not Bend Gallery, in Sun Valley Idaho. DM me, or since I’m still trying to figure out Substack, maybe it’s best to email me (thiakonig@gmail.com) to start the conversation and find out more about investing in this unique photo series. Of course digital prints are available as well. (But there’s nothing like a real silver gelatin print made in the darkroom!) I think the infrared film gives a hauntingly surreal effect to the images. Do you agree?

“What on EARTH have you done with your husband?!” Both men and women would ask with a combination of alarm and inquisitive pity, like something terrible had happened, because in their eyes, it had. I had failed to get married. Poor lady, I had no husband, and even worse, no children.

Ironically, most of my offers in marriage have included animals. “What kind of horse?” my friend actually asked, after being offered 10,000 rubles, 40 sheep, and a horse for my hand in marriage. The couple living in a yurt in the Tien Shan Mountains in Kyrgyzstan who offered the deal were very happy, almost schoolgirl-crush happy, an arranged marriage gone good. The husband had six brothers yet to be married off, and the wife wanted to add the funny yet sturdy American girl to the mix. I politely declined, but the wife kept patting me on the leg, like it was already a done deal.

Kiki, my guide in Namibia, was “missing me already”, but admittedly had only one cow to offer my parents. I tried not to be rude as I explained that my parents wouldn’t know what to do with a cow, and had no place for it anyway. He was not discouraged until I shared the details of an Idaho winter with him, where a water bottle will be frozen in hours if left outside, and he backed away slowly.

I like visiting border tribes, because their indigenous culture seems to me more pure and authentic than if they were smack dab in the center of a country. They live steadfastly true to their heritage and culture, not influenced by the current government-at-large or the whims of kings. These tribes far from central powers seem to govern themselves, rising above the squabbling ruling classes on either side fighting like angry neighbors over the fence line, and instead adhering to centuries-old traditions.

Kiki, who I hired in Opuwo, Namibia, was a great guide because he understood how important it was to get going before dawn. To a photographer, the light is everything. I had hired him to introduce me to the nomadic Himba tribe near the Angola border. It was 10 am and the light was done, as well as the morning photography session, so we stopped the truck in the shade of a tree in the middle of nowhere, for a snack break. In Windhoek I had loaded up on tortellini, pesto, yogurt and cheese, as much easy camp food as I could fit into the little office fridge that plugged into the cigarette lighter of my rental camper truck. I was halfway through my berry Yoplait yogurt when two topless Himba girls appeared out of nowhere like ninjas. They were on foot, but where had they come from? We had been driving for a long time to get to this tree. They just stood there and stared at me. They couldn’t figure me out and asked Kiki if I was a man or a woman. I flashed him a confused look. He said with a shrug, “You are wearing grandfather clothes.” It was Africa-hot, so I was wearing shorts and a loose fitting tank top with a pattern, so I could get away without wearing a bra. I tugged at the bottom of the tank top to show the outline of my breasts to the girls, and that seemed to satisfy them. I offered them the last of my yogurt, but they were really just waiting for me to finish so they could have the plastic Yoplait container.

Nagaland, on the border of Northeast India and Myanmar, is home to the Konyak people. They were never cannibals, but they did lop off the heads of fallen enemies until the Christian missionaries convinced them to change their ways back in the 60’s. When these guys die out, that will be the last of the Konyak headhunters. Alit, my guide who spoke many languages, was able to translate the ancient dialect to English so I could talk with one of the elders. This old headhunter had a brass necklace denoting how many invading enemies’ heads had found their fate at the end of a stick and huge bone earrings protruding menacingly outward. He was wearing a polo shirt - it was winter and cheap clothing is easy to get since it’s made next door in Bangladesh. He asked me when I thought time would end, and then we agreed how sad it was that plastic doesn’t go away.

English is not very prevalent in Phongsali, in the extreme north of Laos near the China border. At the local bakery I’m told I can find Po, a sometimes-guide to take me into the jungle. I rely on charades and laughter to inquire. Either I just purchased five loaves of bread, or I must wait five days for my alleged possible guide to return, so I can hire him to take me to the Akha tribes living on the border. I guess I’m hanging out for a couple days to see how this plays out - you can’t be in a hurry in Asia, as this Type A has learned - it’s counter-productive. I go back the next day, and numerical progress is evident, as only four fingers of the bakery worker’s hand are waved in my face, with some grunting. Po works for the government but moonlights as a baker, and, to make ends meet, also as a trekking guide. Reaching the tribes takes three days through leech-infested jungle, with questionable trails, and I think hiring Po to show me the way, procure my food and gain passage to the headman, seems like a great idea and worth the wait.

Guides not only act as a director and protector on the trail, and a procurement officer for food and shelter, but most importantly a translator. The absolute greatest benefit of hiring a guide is the ability to communicate with everyone we meet, since there is usually a headman of sorts who needs to be asked for permission to enter the village. Without a guide, I’m just an outsider. I always encourage my guides to stop and chat with the locals passing us on the trail and get the scoop - find out about their lives and then tell me all about it later. Get the trail gossip!

At an Akha village perched on a ridgetop high in the misty mountains, Po asks the headman if we can spend the night. We sleep like puppies in a row with our clothes on, three of us sharing two blankets on some bamboo floor mats, and my head was disappointingly lower than my feet. I cannot turn around, because then my feet would be next to the headman’s head, which would be the worst insult imaginable. The Akha live in longhouses, with men on one side, and women and children on the other. Oddly enough, hiring the guide has somehow given me “man status” and I hang out, eat, and sleep on the men’s side. At 3:30 am the ‘bonking’ starts. I don’t know why they feel rice production needs to start so early. Rice was raining through the cracks in the bamboo floor above, which was also our bamboo ceiling. Then it was cooking the pigs' food, feeding the pigs, cooking the men’s food, feeding the men, and cooking the women’s food, before the new wife could finally eat. She is not relieved of her “slave” duties until she bears a son, who then marries and brings the new wife to live in his parents’ longhouse, and hits “reset” on the slave cycle.

By just being there I was creating my own paradoxical problem. Po facilitates my conversation with the headman, and I ask “What is the biggest change you see in the last couple years in the village?” I’m certain the answer will be discarding traditional clothing for Chinese rags or the decline of the male workforce lost to heroin addiction. But I was mortified at the answer. Without hesitation he replied, “The biggest change that I have seen,” and then he pointed at me, “is that now women are on the men’s side!” I was the biggest change the headman had seen in the last couple years. Oh dear.

These people are understandably wary of the power I have to capture their essence in my “magic photo box.” On the first trip to the village, I just took Polaroids of the kids and gave them away, knowing that the photos would eventually get back to the parents, to spark some interest and perhaps gain their trust. There’s no denying the magic of an instant Polaroid, and so by the time I passed back through their village a second time, they were ready for me. Families were lined up, ready for their portrait. I made them a deal - I take a Polaroid or two for them, and then I get to take one with my film camera. I promised to respect their image and treasure the picture “for remember.”

As a photographer, I understood the effort it took to reach villages not yet swallowed up by civilization. I’m drawn to indigenous tribes still living like generations before - it’s like having a time machine. I have carried a medium-format camera with a bag of film up and over mountains and have endured mosquitoes and leeches, pig toilets (don’t ask), and air so humid I was swimming. On the border of Thailand and Myanmar (the cool kids still called it Burma), my guide and I walked for days to reach villages not influenced much by the norms of modern society. The villages closest to the road had started to abandon their traditional way of dress and wear fast fashion - cheap Chinese clothes and American misprints and knockoffs. The problem with cheap clothes is that they don’t hold up, and after a couple years they start to look like torn, dirty dishrags, as if the whole village had got dressed in the dumpster.

For the hard-to-reach villages up in the highlands the feudal way of life clearly wasn’t easy or convenient. They make their own cloth, dye it, gather water, reap the land - every task and chore done by everyone individually. When I walked through the village after dinner, there was no TV gawking, no blipping of video games, only the sound of happiness. Sounds of giggling, cooing, and soft conversation. A hard life, but simple and pure. The electrical grid will slowly swallow up these villages as the “civilized” world tries to “modernize” them. Until then, it will be a noble struggle. The next morning at dawn we woke to a terrible commotion, the neighbor’s water buffalo was in a predicament. I wouldn’t have known what to do, but the woman handled the situation with grace. Her water buffalo problems seemingly did not trump my hard drive malfunctions, iPhone glass repairs, mountain of email and password encryptions, and the software updates necessary to be a modern human.

Perhaps the more we civilize ourselves, the farther away from the answer we become.

Story and photographs by Thia Konig.

These black and white photographs were taken with a Mamiya 6 medium format FILM! camera, and fine art prints are available.

Everything I Needed to Know About Life I Learned at Burning Man

To be able to witness your own thoughts manifest in mere moments, no matter how simple the wish or deep the prayer, is both humbling and empowering. Connect with the universal order and be validated instantaneously!? Amen! I guess we call that magic before science figures out how it works. Divine? Perhaps, but to experience it first-hand offers the chance to really know it, deep down. How else can you explain the hat-camp multiverse incident of 2001 or countless other out-of-this-realm adventures in the time-space vortex that is the planet of Burning Man?

According to Joseph Campbell, the hero in a hero’s journey must overcome challenges along the route, in order to actually return home a hero. These days, you can just buy your way out of the hardships of old-school Burning Man. The plug-and-play camps have officially been outlawed, but memberships are still available on the underground market - at a price. For a cool $25,000 or so, you can isolate yourself from the harsh surroundings, access private toilets, use personalized Segways or e-bikes, ride in private art cars and taxis, and relax in private air-conditioned trailers with hot showers and private chefs, while camp pharmacists bring you vitamin K (what the cool kids call ketamine), whenever you ring your emotional support bell.

But you can’t have a spiritual awakening with someone else wiping your ass. It’s not a hero’s journey if you fly first class. An arduous journey builds character. If Frodo could have just pushed an elevator button to the 11th floor of Mordor to do whatever he had to do with that ring, it wouldn’t have been the same. Enduring hardships can break down the ego armor and reveal a squishy raw inside that is more receptive and amenable to breakthroughs and revelations.

Isn’t that why the Burning Man organizers hold this festival in one of the most inhospitable places on earth? It weeds out the weak. Or at least it used to. Back in the day, if you could survive the playa, you could return to the “default” world as a dusty hero.

Burning Man is a magical place. More so, perhaps, before cell service, digital cameras, celebrity camps, and competing DJ sound trucks blasting deafening decibels of bad techno and before the drugs got all speedy. Over time, DJs have sped up the spinning to rival the evolving drug-culture vibe and, together with the rave kids, have tangled themselves into a spiraling dubstep feedback loop. And now a street scene at Burning Man more closely resembles a street scene anywhere in the default world, with everyone hunched over their phones like zombies. Call me jaded, but I’m also fascinated.

The magic frequency can be found in today’s Burning Man, it’s just harder to fine-tune through all the static. Black Rock City, for that couple of weeks around Labor Day weekend, is a microcosm of society, unfolding in a dusty, surreal snowglobe under pressure. To friends who haven’t been, I usually describe Burning Man as a performance art festival in the desert with effigies on fire and lots of LED blinky things, sort of like if Alice in Wonderland and Mad Max had tens of thousands of love children with no curfew or boundaries, and were given bedazzled blowtorches for their second birthday. It’s really more of a creative collective, a hive mindset, rather than the actual spot on the map, a dry, alkaline lake bed two hours’ drive north of Reno, Nevada.

Before the cool kids showed up, you could just jump on the nearest dragon art car and see where it would take you. All encounters were chance encounters, as there was no cell service. There were many life lessons in that concentrated crash course out there in the high-frequency desert vortex, if you were open to them. Sometimes epiphanies and breakthroughs only manifest if you actively seek truth and enlightenment, and other times they bonk you in the face, leaving you no choice but to surrender.

Regardless of where Burning Man is on the evolutionary scale, the transformative effects of mass gatherings are real, and tangible enough to have been studied by a group of sociologists at Yale. Turns out, those festival goers who have those transformative experiences out in the desert are more likely to feel a connection with all of humanity, and, not surprisingly, be more willing to help strangers. (And, yes, psychedelic drugs make the experience even more intense, the group of labcoats confirmed, in case you were wondering.)

Burning Man is where I learned to simply let go. Many things (ok, pretty much everything) at Burning Man are beyond anyone’s ultimate control. A dust storm that envelops 70,000 people is far beyond any conceivable containment. Everything will get dusty. I had no choice but to accept this. This life lesson is revolutionary for all my Type-A personality and control-issue brothers and sisters out there. If you can’t decide when (or if) to let go, the desert will decide for you.

Burning Man helped me to tap into my primal self and all the superpowers that I might need to summon at will for future tasks. I found my own rhythm. I trusted my gut. I ate when I was hungry, I slept when I was tired (except for the exceptions, of course). The circadian rhythm that a productive 9-5 corporate empire forces onto society is a terrible idea in the desert. As Darwin said, “It’s not the strongest that will survive, but those that can adapt.”

The ephemeral nature of things is one of Burning Man’s biggest lessons. You could be walking along, and someone grabs you to take part in their kinetic sculpture that moves only with lots of stationary bike peddlers, or a stranger invites you to participate in synchronized toaster tossing, or watermelon catapulting, whatever it is, it’s probably beyond what you could have imagined all by yourself. If you leave to go tell your friends at camp that there is this really cool thing happening way out on the playa, by the time you all come back it won’t be there anymore. The fleeting moment exists for you to enjoy in the present. You can’t put it in your pocket and save it for later. Everything is ephemeral.

Burning Man can be overwhelming. There is so much going on that it becomes apparent pretty quickly that in each moment, you are missing far more than you could possibly see in a lifetime. I’m a gregarious introvert, and I have learned to recognize when I need to tap out and decompress. My mantras became “just say no to FOMO” (fear of missing out) and “wherever I am is exactly the right place to be.” Once I lived and breathed it out there in the desert, I could easily apply that feeling to everyday life. I don’t stress anymore about which line is going faster at the supermarket, and I’m always on the right skis for the local ski mountain, even if I’m not. I replaced my stress with some Zen.

Granted, it’s hard to explain how the high-frequency concentration out there in the dusty, sparkly desert seems to create some sort of energy vortex. I think we are dipping into the magic realm again, as science falls short of presenting it quantitatively with graphs and pie charts. But, over a hundred years ago, the French sociologist Emile Durkheim gave it a whirl and coined the term “collective effervescence" to try to qualify these transformative social experiences.

He proposed that society is a reality unique to itself. It’s created when individual consciences interact and meld together to create an evolving tapestry of reality - always new and greater than the sum of its parts. This concept is amplified exponentially at Burning Man, with so many zany creative consciences interacting and bouncing off one another along the ribbons of time, layer after unique layer.

You don’t need to fully understand electricity to be able to use a light switch. Same goes with wormholes of thought and prayer at Burning Man. You don’t need to know how it works, just that it does work. I saw in real time that what I transmitted, I attracted. I realized the tremendous power of my thoughts. The following case-in-point examples really happened and haven’t been editorialized or embellished in any way, and they made a believer out of me.

At Center Camp one Sunday morning, drinking a coffee and quietly observing life, I watched a couple lost in a loving embrace. I silently wished for more of that in my life. Later that day (sometimes manifestation takes a couple hours), I met a handsome young man at an art exhibit on the playa. Sitting under the Fisher-Price See ’N Says (boomer childhood toys with rip cord handles triggering random recordings like “Cow says, MOOooo!”), hung alternately between colorful Chinese lanterns (when random compilations in art installations were still a thing), we both thought it would be a good idea - and were compelled, in fact - to hug. After an hour we introduced ourselves.

We must have made the same wish. It was the path of least resistance for the universe, for us to turn up at the See ’N Says at the same time, longing for the same vibration. That’s the thing about Burning Man, no matter how weird something may seem (a three-hour embrace with a stranger?!), there is always something weirder going on. Like that drag queen driving a huge rubber duckie across the desert. Now, that’s weird.

These next examples might not seem as important as the loving embrace but are excellent illustrations of the speed at which thoughts can manifest in the physical realm.

One morning, biking back to camp as the sun’s rays started to penetrate my squint, I realized I had lost my only pair of sunglasses. Rats! Within two or three seconds - I kid you not - a man suddenly appeared in my field of vision carrying a comically large pair of red Ray-Ban sunglasses. That’s weird! I was just thinking about sunglasses. I circle around, park my bike, and a red carpet magically unrolls before me, leading to a counter being set up with rotating-spindle displays of free sunglasses.

Another example: I had been on my photographic safari since 4:30 am, and the hunt was over. The sun was getting too high in the sky for my photographic liking. The yellow orb had also begun to warm everything up, and it was only going to get hotter. I was miffed with myself because during a short-lived health craze, I had planned to prepare freshly cut assorted fruits, with yogurt, for breakfast each morning. I just didn’t think it through. Didn’t I already know that all surfaces become dusty, and that those were impossible breakfast goals?! “I wish I had just brought cereal!” I said to myself impulsively as I pedaled home. Rounding the corner, no more than 5 seconds after this innocuous wish, I came upon the Cereal Thrillers Camp! Don’t mind if I do! There were inviting bar stools and a choice of Captain Crunch, Cheerios, or Life cereals poured for you in a bowl with a spoon. Milk, soy milk, or almond milk? Wow. Is this heaven? How was my wish granted so quickly? This phenomenon is explained by the common phrase among burners, “The Playa provides.”

Both the Cereal Thrillers and the Sunglass Angels (as I liked to call them) were registered theme camps, there to share gifts and pay it forward. Once introduced to the cereal camp, I could make a point of swinging by on my way home from the dawn’s escapades. The Sunglass Angels set up their free display every morning at sunrise, just the time that burners returning from the evening’s adventures are caught off guard by the rising sun. These camps weren’t quite as magical once I knew I could count on them, but I relished the thought of other burners being as surprised and delighted as I was, keeping the spark of magic alive. But cereal and sunglasses can’t explain the playa’s parallel universe phenomenon.

Are my thoughts actually powerful enough to create my own reality? For a glimpse into the multiverse, I present the Hat Camp incident of 2001.

I bought a much-needed sun hat in Gerlach, the last town and last chance, before entering Black Rock City. It was the year my VW van was in the shop, so I was roughing it among the elements in a tent. Less than 24 hours after setting up camp, my new (and only) sun hat was snatched away by a dust devil. Gone. No trace. Sigh. Lamenting my loss, I ventured forth on my bike for an afternoon tootle in the oppressive sun.

Black Rock City is systematically laid out by the DPW (Department of Public Works) in the form of a clock face, fanning from 2 o'clock around to 10 o’clock, with cross streets rippling outwards from the center in alphabetical order, adhering to the current theme. It’s an ingenious way to navigate in white-out dust storms. Theoretically, you can never be too far from lost - just follow a street to the nearest corner, and the intersections will tell you exactly which direction to head. The “Esplanade” is the ring street, which separates the circular streets of camps from the art installation and art car playground, the Playa. Our camp that year was near 3:30 and Delirium - ‘D’ being the fourth letter in the alphabet, and consequently the fourth street radiating away from The Esplanade.

As I biked along while being baked by the midday sun, I wished I had not lost my hat. I should have been more careful. If only I could have another chance at hat ownership, I dreamed. When I looked up...those of you paying attention can guess what happened next. Yes, a hat camp! Almost like a fantastical Dr. Seuss book, there were stacks and stacks of hats to choose from piled under this tent. The nice hat man had a mirror for fittings and ribbons to tie under the chin, so I could keep my promise and the hat would never blow away again. My camp mates were amazed to see such a nice hat - a better hat, in fact - and so quickly manifested after losing my original one! Amazing. Clearly, a miracle! I gushed “Hat Camp!” and gestured towards the direction where my hat wish and acquisition took place. Now everyone wanted a hat, even if they hadn’t lost one, and we all set out together as a search party, with me in the lead. I knew the quadrant I had explored, but not exactly how many blocks in each direction I went. I knew the general vector from camp, as I had gone “backwards in time” towards 2 o’clock and away from the center, so along the alphabet towards E, F, and G streets. But, like the chess move of a knight, it was either two blocks down and three over, or it was three blocks down and two over. Just to make sure we did not miss this hat gift opportunity, we widened the search pattern and searched four blocks down, one block over, then four blocks back, and biked the classic search pattern, four blocks again away, then four back returning, and so forth. Hat Camp was nowhere to be found. We expanded the search pattern to five blocks and biked every single street twice in the quadrant from 3:30 and Delirium. It had disappeared!?! What was going on? It is plausible that the nice hat man suddenly broke camp, packed all the leftover hats into his vehicle, and left Burning Man without a trace, but not likely. I know this seems far-fetched, but apparently Hat Camp existed solely for me in my own parallel universe. The Playa-time-space paradigm provides.

So it turns out that those Yale sociologists were right, because aligning with the cosmic forces like that and witnessing my thoughts create my own reality really did give me a sense of connection with all of humanity, and the infinite universe. I somehow reached in just like in The Matrix and tweaked my own reality. Made waves in time and space. Beyond the “grain of sand on a beach” analogy, and more profound than just the awareness of the “all the stars in the sky” perspective, my glimpse into the multiverse inspired a true interaction, a connectedness, with The Everything. To feel one with the infinite is indeed both humbling and empowering, at the same time. We are all made of star stuff.