Icarus - Flying Too Close to the Sky

"When the boy began to delight in his daring flight, and abandoning his guide, drawn by desire for the heavens, soared higher. . ."
Ovid, "Metamorphosis"

Hey Yall,

Somewhere in Eastern Tibet, the sprightly grandfather of the Tibetan family who I mentioned in the last email led us from his cabin to the bridge where the trail started. "First go and then turn left, then go and turn right. After that, keep going," were the only instructions that he gave us. Then, he said goodbye, and shook hands with each of us. Strangely, he insisted on using his left hand to shake hands. I couldn't figure out if he just didn't know how to shake hands, or if there was something else going on.

Our guide left us, and we started climbing. That day, we climbed a total of about 3,500 feet, about 7/10ths of a mile straight up, from a starting point of about 9,000 feet above sea level at the bridge. As we started to climb, it started to rain. The rain came lightly at first, but, slowly, the mist transformed into pellets, and the trail we were following metamorphed into mud. We passed a rock that the Tibetans claimed was the footprint of Buddha, on his way to bring salvation to the Tibetan people, but we had little time to contemplate this salvation, because there the trail turned even steeper upwards and we ascended into a Hades of our own.

As we moved up, the temperature dropped. When we reached the crest of the trail, we took a rest in a little cabin. But we soon realized that, as nice as it was to get out of the cold, we couldn't stay there for too long. We were soaked, and stopping would just make us colder, risking hypothermia. We nibbled on some of the bread that the Tibetan family had given to us that morning and then kept moving. By the time we left the shelter, the rain had morphed into snow. Things were getting worse.

We continued on. In the next hour, we past two small Tibetan caravans, three or four people with five to ten horses. They confirmed that we were going in the right direction. It could have been worse.

And soon it became worse. We descended a little ways into a big meadow, about three miles wide and one mile long. By this point, the snow was coming down hard, and a strong wind was whipping it across our faces and across the meadow. The ground wasn't cold enough for the snow to stick, so it just gelled into cold mud. Visibility was bad. I could just barely make out some cabins about a mile away, in the middle of the meadow. There was a sign and a trail, but where the sign pointed was not really clear and the trail led towards the cabins, so we made for the cabins. One of them was locked, so we went into the other one, an empty barn. We had a little powwow. Shannon thought that we should explore the area to our left, but I felt that our best chance was to go across the meadow, to a little outlet we could just barely make out on the horizon.

Neither were really good choices, but we went the way I thought was right. Along the way, the pathway dissipated, and we just walking through unmarked fields without any idea where we were going. As we walked, we came on several herds of Tibetan yaks, standing quietly in the gale, as if they couldn't feel the gusts of snow through their shaggy coats. They stared ominously at us as we passed by. We crept by, not sure why they were staring at us so intently.

After about thirty more minutes of walking through the fields, we found our way to another collection of cabins, cabins that had been invisible at first due to the blinding gusts of snow plowing their way across the meadow.

Once again, we broke into a house that wasn't locked. It was not a barn this time, but some one's house. We sat around their sitting room, trying to figure out our next move. It was 2:30 in the afternoon, so we decided to take our chances and descend from the meadow through the little outlet I had seen earlier. I couldn't stay in the cabin for too long in my wet clothes. I was now showing signs of hypothermia.

As we wondered across the meadow, through the white blaze of snow, faces wet and numb with the melting snow flakes dripping down them, it became clear that we had flown to close to the sky, taking on something that was too tough, at least in this weather. And now, like Icarus, we were falling.

After an hour of making our way across the meadow, we started descending through that little outlet that I had seen. The signs started out being good. The snow stopped, and, for a few moments, the sun even broke through the clouds, warming us up. We stopped to soak in his warm rays. That was only a temporary relief, though. Precipitation quickly returned, but, mercifully, it turned back into rain as we descended to lower elevations, not snow.

We continued on, through a small, hillside meadow with two houses clinging to the mountainside, but no one was home. So we descended farther into a gorge, hoping that where ever it ended, there would be a village or something. The gorge quickly narrowed, and the path we had been following disappeared. We continued slashing our way through bamboo and jumping over rocks down the narrow gorge. It was getting warmer as we descended, but there was no sign of human habitation.

Around six o'clock, just as we were starting to really worry about the coming darkness, we had a little miracle. We found a large rock-overhanging, with a dry plot ten feet by fifteen feet. Someone had used the spot as a campsite before, and they had built a little rock wall around it and left four blankets there.

We made camp there. Shannon took charge, telling us how to set up the campsite and making me and Katherine eat some of the pork fat that the Tibetan family had left us (pork fat is instant calories, warming you up immediately). We changed into dry clothes, pulled the blankets over us and tried to stay as warm as possible for the rest of the night.

Towards the end of the day, I remembered a quote which was comforting, if also a little disturbing. I shared it with Shannon, and she said, "If you had told me that quote when we were wandering through that blizzard, I would have mashed the *#$ out of your &*#@" (The contents of this email have been modified for a Southern/Mormon audience). Though Shannon didn't appreciate it at the time, I think I'm going to end this email with that quote, leaving yall at the point where the clouds were clearing away, the stars starting to twinkle through the trees, and nighttime was descending on Eastern Tibet.

Best,
Lee

"Although the road may be dangerous
and the destination far out of sight,
all journeys come to an end:
Do not despair."

Hafez (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafez)