Oh, the beautiful mountains!

Nepal. Here the mountains are huge. I really mean it. They're big. Everyone asks, "Are you going to Everest Base Camp?" I always answer, "No, it seems like a junk show up there." As if I know! Which I don't. Mostly I say that to cover up that it sounds intimidating, and that I feel like 'everyone' goes to Everest, which also isn't true. Most people trek the Annapurna Circuit, which I will do in a couple weeks. I guess mostly I have a thing against Everest because it seems so cliche, so 'typical'. But I digress. I also went trekking to the Langtang area and that is what this post is really about.

There are many things to write about. I could write about the ridiculous bus ride to the start of the trek at Syrabrubesi (or Syfrabubensi, or Shyabrubensi, who knows how its really spelled). I could write about how beautiful it was to hike through rhodadendron forests along a steep and rocky creek up a deep canyon. Or the change from fluvial to glacial dominated landforms. Or the HUGE thrust fault that put old crystalline gneisses on to younger metasediments that I saw on the last day. I could ramble about the people and how amazing they are, their kind eyes, high pink cheeks, and colorful clothing. The food was filling and tasty too. But most of you already know all those things-or at least they aren't hard to imagine. It's not hard for you to imagine how comical it would be to see me stuffed into the smallest seat on the bus (no joke-I checked after everyone else got off and I unraveled myself) with only inches between my face and the next seat in front of me. So what will I say about my experience along the Langtang Khola, at 3900m, only a couple miles from Tibet? It starts with a series of questions that I asked myself after reaching Kyanjin Gompa, the village at the end of the valley.

"Why do people go to such great lengths to spend time in the mountains? Why did I spend so much effort getting here? Why did I not spend two months in Nebraska instead?"

At first, the questions seem ridiculous. The natural beauty of the place should be enough justification. But there is equal beauty in a blooming flower, a buzzing fly, simple human existence, the crystal structure of a small garnet embedded in a metaplutonic rock along a creek (yes, I have a hand lens with me). So it must be something else.

Maybe its the chance to feel insignificant. It is so easy to feel important in our lives. Back in the states I have a job, responsibilities, bills to pay, things to do. Standing at over 12,000' elevation, sucking air like a distressed vaccum cleaner just to exist, and being at the bottom of an enormous glacial valley with peaks rising another two miles vertically above me is humbling. And that feels good. It needs no other justification-it just feels good to feel so small. Its like that feeling you get when you lay in a field at night looking up at the stars. 'Here I am,' you think, 'and I am so small and everything feels right in the universe.'

Emily and I stayed for four days at Kyanjin Gompa. We only planned on staying for two, but it was very beautiful and somehow, the place just resonated. So we did some day hikes. We got snowed on, blown around by cold winds, and exhausted by long days and cold nights. And then something else occurred to me. This experience is so different from my 'normal' everyday life. If you lived in a red house with a red room, drove a red car to your red office, and then worked all day with red blinds on the window, you would eventually become, well, redd ed-out. It would be hard to really understand what someone meant when they said 'blue.'

I know what you're thinking. Wow...I just spent 10 minutes of my precio us day for that? Seriously? Yes. You did. And I spent even more time than that writing what you read. I never said that I had reached some new conclusion about the meaning of life, the way the world works, or how to make the world a better place. But I didn't want to write a trip report either.