Editors’ Note: Eighteen-year old Cassie Denton, a Truckee local, is currently in India, with Global LAB (Learning Across Borders), on a three-month immersion program called ‘From Brahma to Buddha.’ The students move across the country, to explore traditional villages, learn new languages, stay with local families, talk to NGOs about sustainable development, and immerse themselves in an ancient society.
Cassie explains how she came to this adventure, ‘I am taking a gap year in between Truckee High School and Pomona College, where I will be a freshman next fall. At this point in my life, I felt that I needed to jump outside of my skin and live a little, and that is how I found myself trekking in India with a group of 8 other people from all around the United States…’
There is an online blog where the students share their experiences, with photos and first-hand accounts of the beauty and the struggle of their journey. Below is just one excerpt from Cassie, written as the group is on a 10-day trekking excursion through 17,000-feet peaks. Check out the group’s blog at www.global-lab.org/mt/BBFall06/. (Be sure to read a compelling description of the best cake Cassie has ‘ever tasted,’ in another excerpt entitled ‘A Piece of the Trekking Pie.’)
Oh to spend my days walking!
Every morning, I awake at seven to the cheerful cries of ‘Tea! Tea!’ from the horsemen, Tashi, Tenzin Ram, and Dondrup. It is cold, and I can see my breath puff into the air outside of my sleeping bag. And for one second, it is only that: the white steam hovering in the chilled air. I watch it, mesmerized.
Because up here it is as though nothing else matters. Today I will stretch my tired muscles and put one foot in front of the other, hear the snow and dirt crunch underneath my feet and feel the sunshine warming my back through my same soft Brasil shirt that I have worn for the past six days and will continue to wear for four more. I will sing songs over and over in my head, songs that I can hardly believe I know the words to – Come in From the Cold and Nosebleed Section and Beauty in the Breakdown – and instead of thinking about what will happen tomorrow or in a year and if it will be okay for me and if it will lift my spirits and will I fit in at college and will this trip make me a better person and who am I really, instead I think about breathing and about placing my feet, one in front of the other.
Jesse and I reach the summit at the same time, walking on the narrow trail next to each other and for a second it is as though those fluttering prayer flags are an extension of my heartbeat, fluttering in this thin thin oxygen. We look at each other and it begins to snow and I can hear in my head, ‘17,400 feet!’ and we place our hands on the hundreds of prayer flags and smile. ‘Ki ki so so largyloh!!!’
We stand there, the very first of our group to make it to the top. Around us are hundreds of mountains, stretching away as far as I can see, so cracked and new and growing, growing, reaching upwards to the clouds and then I reach my gloved hand into the air and I can feel a cloud whisper around my hand – that’s me! I’m up in the clouds too!
And then the wind blows a little harder and we laugh, and continue down the other side. There are more mountains to climb, more paths to walk on. The ponies will pass us soon, carrying our tents and the incredible food we will eat tonight (my new favourite food is ramen-after-a-seven-hour-fifteen-mile-day) and with them our horsemen, wearing hardly any clothing and speaking hardly any English. ‘Tenzin, Tenzin, can I ride the pony? ‘And then he makes it trot faster, faster and I tease him about being a gorgeous Zanskari man without a girlfriend, and he says something back which I cannot understand and smiles his white, white smile.
And sometimes at night I dream about sushi and french fries and fresh avocados, but sometimes I just dream about how happy I am to be trekking up in the mountains, so far away from myself and yet oh so near.
Oh to spend my days sweating and breathing hard and walking walking walking as far as the eye can see!
Are you a ‘wandering native’? Send us your tale of adventure, email editors@moonshineink.com.
