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View from the Brow

View from the Brow

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Yesterday, for the “retreat” part of this work week in Arkansas, we drove an hour and a half west to Petit Jean Mountain. It was where the organization I work for began —  and a place that holds special memories for me.

I spent most of the day at a conference room inside, but there were a few minutes at the beginning and end of the day when I could walk to the brow of the hill and savor the view —  the big puffy clouds casting shadows on the fields, the hawks soaring high above the pines, the two mountain ranges that draw the gaze ever westward.

It was a view that captivated me decades ago — and still does. I thought about why. It’s more than just the beauty, I think. It’s also the promise and perspective, metaphor for a nation that once stretched its legs across a continent and took its strength from people and from place.

Down in the Delta

Down in the Delta

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On Tuesday, my colleagues and I drove two-and-a-half hours south to see some of the work we’ve done in a small town called Lake Village.

It’s a pretty little place, situated on the banks of the largest natural oxbow lake in the country. Before visiting I had no idea there were any oxbow lakes in the country, natural or un-.  Lake Chicot was formed when the Mississippi River shifted course 800 years ago. It was discovered by the French explorer Lasalle in 1685.

It was 95 degrees and dusty in the Delta (we were only eight miles from Mississippi), but looking at Lake Chicot cooled me off a bit. Enough that I decided to take a stroll along it and see the cypress trees with their knobby knees.

Walking to Listen

Walking to Listen

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A book group friend recommended this book, the tale of a young man who walked across America and listened to the voices of vagabonds and preachers, beauticians and firefighters.

Andrew Forsthoefel was newly graduated from Middlebury College when he decided to make the journey. “Everyone of us has an extraordinary story worth hearing, and I’m walking the country to listen,” he wrote on his travel blog at the beginning of the trip.

Admitting it might sound contrived, but resolved to do it anyway, Forsthoefel quickly gained my trust when he told the story of his leave-taking. His mother was worried but brave. She acts like I hope I would if one of my children announced she was walking across the country. The picture she snaps of her son walking down the train tracks behind their house in Pennsylvania is priceless. It’s the picture of a young adult doing his own thing, back turned to the camera, arms outstretched as if to say, enough, I’m done, catch ‘ya later.

Needless to say, he survives the trip — and gets a book contract, to boot. He only just reached Georgia, so I imagine I’ll have more to say about Walking to Listen.

Let me close for today with a passage about walking:


The walking itself was slowly become my home, or something like it. It was the only constant, the connective thread that tied everything together. 

(Photo: Courtesy Bloomsbury Press)

Fernweh and Heimweh

Fernweh and Heimweh

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Homesickness is when you long for the place you know best of all. But what about its opposite? Wanting to venture to a place you’ve never been? It’s a feeling deeper than wanderlust, stronger than attachment. Until the other day, I didn’t know it has a name.

Farsickness —or “fernweh” from the German “fern” (far) and “weh” (pain) is when you yearn for a place you’ve never been, for the faraway. I heard about it on the radio, and a quick Google search shows me the word has been out there for a while. There are “Fernweh” t-shirts and “Farsickness” travel blogs.

Digging a little deeper I learn that the word “homesick” also entered our language from the German — “heimweh.” It comes from a Swiss dialect and can also mean longing for the mountains. Ah, I think, just like Heidi. Remember when she’s sent to Frankfurt and entertains Clara but all she wants is to go back and live with her grandfather on the mountain?

To have “fernweh” we need “heimweh.” The familiar propels us to the faraway — then brings us home again.

Reminders

Reminders

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I grew up on road trips — long, car-sick journeys to Cincinnati, Greensburg or Natural Bridge. Kentucky is rolling country, so driving through it is not for the faint of stomach. Dramamine was my friend.

None of this dampened my love of travel. In fact, it conditioned me to rigor. Which brings me to these wonderful trips I’ve taken the last two years. They haven’t been easy either — once I get there. But the fact that I can board one plane, then another — and wind up on the other side of the world …  will never stop being miraculous to me. 
So in honor of the miraculous, and because I want to keep reminding myself I was there … a few photographs from Nepal.
Workday Travel

Workday Travel

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Travel has many advantages, one of them being how it shakes me out of my routine. It forces me to take a few risks, talk to people more than I would otherwise. It’s hard to be bored when I’m traveling. Tired, nervous and hungry, maybe. But never bored.

Sometimes, even traveling to work will do that. Today was one of those days.

With the two main subway lines coming in from the west partially shut down due to smoke in the tunnels, I took a bus I’d never taken before.  It was a jolly crew of commuters and travelers crammed together, many of us standing.

I chatted with a young couple from Slovenia. She was model-caliber gorgeous. He spoke excellent English, had a pierced eyebrow and wore a button that said, “Ask me how to lose weight.” (I didn’t.)

“Slovenia is small, but we are mighty,” he said, reeling off names of some of its famous citizens, including First Lady Melania Trump and various sports figures I’d never heard of. But he was so proud of his small country that he made me want to go there immediately!

All this is to say that when I got off the bus at Rosslyn, I barely knew where I was.

The Sacred and the Profane

The Sacred and the Profane

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I snapped this photo on a walk around Nagarkot, the hill town on the cusp of the Himalayas. It speaks to me, summarizes the way Nepal combines spirituality and chaos, how it mushes up prayer life and real life until you can’t really tell the difference.

And isn’t that how it should be?

I looked up “sacred and profane” not really knowing the origin of this dichotomy, and learned that it’s attributed to the French sociologist Emile Durkheim. Sacred things are those forbidden and set apart; they represent the interests of the group. Profane things are individual interests, more mundane concerns.

While Durkheim believed that all religions contain this dichotomy, other scholars disagree. It’s a western way of looking at faith, they say.

After visiting the temples and stupas, seeing the Ganesh statues in taxis, and of course, the prayer flags … I would agree with those who disagree with Durkheim.

Easter Monday

Easter Monday

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Easter has its own rhythm, different from Christmas or Thanksgiving. Church comes first.

Yesterday, through some miracle of timing, Suzanne arrived only minutes after we did, which meant she could park her ambrosia salad, backpack, running tights and jogging shoes in the car and slide into the seat we saved in the big sanctuary.

The sermon was more honest than others I recall. It was as if the priest was trying to convince himself of the significance of the empty tomb. His conclusion: there must be something to it, because of all the good people we know who are gone, and because of the incompleteness of life.

A cynic — heck, even a realist — could easily counter these arguments. Of course, there are good people in the world, but that doesn’t mean there’s a God and an afterlife. As for incompleteness, that’s why we have irony.

But I was touched at the honest homily. The priest is one I’ve seen for years, and he looked noticeably older this year, walked with a cane. Maybe he’s working out some things in his own mind. Whatever the case, I appreciated his candor.

In the end, he said, it all comes down to faith.

And so it does.


(Detail from the Cambodian monastery at Lumbini, birthplace of the Buddha)

Brain Drain

Brain Drain

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I’m up early. Too late for Nepali time. Maybe it’s Dubai time. Speaking of that place … my airline out of Kathmandu was called “Fly Dubai,” and it carried a crazy mixture of tired trekkers and migrant workers headed back to the Middle East.

Ads in the Kathmandu Airport featured the money transfer service “Himal Remit,” with an older man on a tractor waving his hand in glee. The check has arrived! The check from my son or daughter who can no longer live here because there are no jobs.

One issue I heard from all quarters in Nepal (from bank execs to taxi drivers) was the brain drain. It’s difficult to find a family that has not been affected. Two interviews in a row ended with stories of children in college in Iowa or Massachusetts. Will they return?

As the world shrinks and problems grow, populations are on the move. One-quarter of Nepalis live outside Nepal. I’d like to think this country will remain its lovely, spiritual self. But what is a nation but its people? This is a question every world citizen should ask.

Coda

Coda

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Jumbo jets are seas of humanity, hundreds of people jammed into tight quarters, each with their own pasts, presents, futures — and languages. Some travel in pairs: old couples with their heads tipped together in sleep; lovers on honeymoons. Others travel in groups: families and babies in the bulkhead. Many travel alone, as I did.

When I arrived home this morning, I looked out the window of the bus taking me to the main terminal to see the craft that had just borne me home. We flew up and over from Dubai to Dulles, crossing eastern Europe and Scandinavia, Labrador and Nova Scotia.

And now, miraculously, I’m home.  The busy boulevards of Bangkok, the dusty thoroughfares of Kathmandu, are behind me now,  alive in photographs and memories. How improbable it all seems, to travel to the other side of the world and back. How very lucky I was to have done it. How grateful I am to be home.