True Nomads

Shroom With a View

2014-10-01T21:54:00.001-07:00

Travel often works as a reset button for our hectic, daily, monotonous routine. We all fall into patterns in life to keep things simpler, to “help” us with the supposed tasks of daily living. The mantra is well known – get up, go to work, eat, exercise, brush teeth, pay bills, repeat. We replay this mantra so often that we begin to believe that it represents life itself, and this is when we are in most need of a system reboot. This is not life. Life is each of ours to explore and define – to create each new day. We cannot do this if we think we are living when we really are just surviving. Our last trip was a visit to the Gili islands off the northwest corner of Lombok. These islands have changed much in the last 20 years, as has much of the world as it tries to accommodate 8 billion of us. But none the less, these islands remain ethereal, magical, floating between dimensions – the perfect place to go for a reset.

There are no cars, no motorized vehicles actually, only cidomos, the local famous local horse carts. When you step off the boat from the mainland, you are hit by the quiet. The fresh air envelopes you, and begins to erase your thoughts. You can walk around the island in a few hours –so there is nowhere to go. Sitting in your hammock, the island reminds you that life is not about doing, but rather about being present, and slowly the waves and gentle island breezes begin to strip away the layers of your daily mantra. Night after night of mind-boggling sunsets, the kind that look like your dreams, with oily purple water, midnight blue clouds, and fire in the sky. Don’t worry that this all takes place over the backdrop of verdant green hills, and pyramidal volcanic cones, just keep pinching yourself to understand that this is not a dream, but a very palpable reality. Our routine mantra is so anemic, so lifeless compared to this – yes, the perfect place to reset.

In the day, you can swim, watch the sun blister the white sand, and continue to let the island breeze massage your soul. Eventually, you may not even remember if you indulged in the islands famous ”shrooms”, because the nature of the place is so potent, it will make you forget your mantra anyway. Yet, if you spend enough time here,(anything over 4 days), you won’t even require any extra help, as the island air, water, and magic, irresistibly give you a new lease on life. In fact, only after a few Gili sunsets, you may find it increasingly difficult to leave …

Find Yourself

2010-11-04T01:32:00.000-07:00

We travel to lose ourselves, and to find ourselves. Travel affords us the opportunity to disappear from reality, forget about life for a while, and to lose ourselves in the moment. A new identity, a new reality, far from home, far from friends, far from family, its easy to disappear into the crowd. This temporary freedom lets us explore new and innovative identities as we glide through this existence. Is there no better feeling than that of being free on the open road, no ties, no responsibility, no identity. Yet, as we get drunk on this sense of freedom, we forget who we really are, and herein sits the dual nature of the travel. It is easy to get lost, but much more difficult to find ourselves. The open road is addictive, like a sweet drug, we are seduced into a sense comfort. Travel helps us see our reflection, but our reflection is not who we really are.

Life is all about balance, and we need to strive to maintain that. Distraction is everywhere, luring us from our true purpose, and travel provides us great opportunity to explore without ourselves. Yet, if we never get to question who we are, we probably never even wonder, just drone along, “living” a life that we do not understand. Travel lets us escape ourselves enough to get a glimpse of ourselves from the outside, a view that reveals so much. As we lose “our self” we begin to see what we really are. We all carry stories about who we are, who our families are, but do we ever question what we are really doing? Much is said about leaving the nest, looking for a new way, a new identity, but what are we really searching for? As we get further and further from home, we begin to loosen the shackles of our fixed worldview, and we begin to see what is truly out there. If we never leave the nest, we never even know there is a nest to leave, but as we get further and further away from our nest, we realize that the nest is really where we belong. We have to leave the nest to see, but as we do, we realize that everything we need was in the nest in the first place. We need to leave in order to see that we already have everything. That is the nature of our predicament.

Travel is a great tool in this effort. As we travel further and further from what we are comfortable with, we suddenly find ourselves looking in from the outside, wondering why we are so far from home. Lose yourself in the moment, but do not lose yourself. That is the balance, the neutrality, and the essence of this place. Every time you lose yourself, feel free, feel lost, feel empty, try to find yourself in there, the same self you came with, and the same self you will leave with. Then, you will glimpse the nature of this place; the illusion that time and place change us and speed us on our way. We alone choose these paths, yet we alone are the only ones walking them.

Time And Time Again

2010-03-30T03:35:00.000-07:00

Did you ever wonder how time moves forward when it runs in a circle? If so, you will have asked why is a clock round? Why does time go from 12 to 12 and then start over again? Why is the 24-hour day based on a circular rotation of the Earth? Why is a year based on a circular orbit of the earth around the Sun? And why do those days and years keep repeating, just starting over and over again, even though we count them as progressing in a line? Why do seconds, minutes, hours, days, years, all count up and then reset and count over again? And what really changes in those quantities of time – Are we different from second to second, hour to hour, day to day or even year to year? We are still standing here watching the sun come up, in the same place it did last year, we are still orbiting that star we call the sun, round and round and round again. Do we really get older as we add up the years, or is this just an illusion? A straight line drawn on top of a circle.

Of course things change, things develop, things progress – at least they seem to. Maybe it’s just the same old scenery, but since we have looked at it so many times, it just seems to change. That store wasn’t there before, nor was that freeway, there are more people here now, more traffic, I have less time than ever before, yet that clock still moves in a circle, and we are still spinning at 1000 miles per hour.

When we travel, we go from point a to point b. Maybe we add in some detours, some back roads, even end up where we started, but we feel like we have experienced a whole lot, met new people, seen new buildings, eaten new foods, spoken new languages – yet, after we get back on the plane, and plug in our ipod, turn on the TV and watch a few old movies, we are right back, right back at home, and soon enough we are at home, in our own kitchen, drinking out of our own favorite coffee mug, watching the sun come up from our favorite chair – and what has changed? We have a memory, a really indefinable experience, we feel like something happened, we can still taste that hot chili tom yum, we can still smell that lemongrass, we can still imagine that wat, but its not here with us, its over there somewhere, on another part of the circle. Now it begins to get really strange when we go back to those parts of the circle to which we have already been. Step off the plane in Bangkok, that thick air greets you, those same food vendors make your soup, and you drink that same lemongrass tea, and yet your calendar, your watch, and your vacation schedule, tell you that it is different – it has to be different. It’s next year - or next decade.

So we count time, we add time up, we get older, we travel, we “see” more, we “know” more, we are wiser, we can do better at crossword puzzles, we can order Thai soup in America and discuss how it differs from that in Chang Mai – yet despite all of our best efforts, time still flows in a circle, beginning each day where it ended the day before, our watch moves from 12 to 12, round and round, same to same, and we are still spinning and orbiting in the same place. Even our whole solar system is going round and round, on galactic time, just spinning away we travel billions and trillions of miles, and yet there we are, holding that favorite mug, drinking that coffee. Are we really older? Wiser? Changing? Or are we just spinning in circles?

Wanderlust

2009-12-28T13:34:00.000-08:00

Wanderlust – the intense desire to travel or move about. Wanderers, nomads - are we true adventurers? Are we running away? Are we living life to the full? Are we shirking responsibility? These are the questions a wander or true nomad encounters. The establishment challenges the nomadic way of life as disruptive, unproductive and carefree, and yet in the end is rather jealous of the freedom such a lifestyle affords. At times the nomad feels lost, detached, and untethered from this world, and their friends and family. It is common to second-guess what we trade for the freedom to move about at will, and see the world. Unencumbered by permanent house, mortgage, flat screen TV payments, a 9-5 job, the nomad is able to exercise and enjoy his wanderlust at will. Feel a burning desire to stand on the observatory tower at Palenque, jump a bus. Feel the need for swimming in 80-degree crystal clear water, head south. Want to see the Dogon villages in Mali, head out the door.

Wanderlust affects us all to different degrees, but it is an emotion that all humans share on some level. It is associated with ultimate freedom. It gives you the ability to decide who you are and where you are going, regardless of the external situation. As we go further, we learn to roll with the punches of the wander, seeing them not as failures, but as detours on our way. Wanderlust is valuable in making us stretch our horizons and comfort zones, providing endless fresh learning opportunities. This overwhelming sense of freedom, akin to our childhood memories of the last day of school, can be addicting.

At times we begin to wander just for the sake of wandering, or running away from our lives and ourselves. On these trips, the nomad soon realizes that he has pushed off without a reason, and yes, there always is a reason in this life. That kind of trip begins to feel empty, and we begin to try to fill it with distractions. The stuff of life like food, drink, adventure, cannot satisfy this void. We begin to wonder what we are doing out here, what is our purpose. We reach a sort of plateau, and our customary trips are no longer sufficient, so we dream up newer and bolder adventures. We find these types of trip offered by all types of high-end agents, with such offerings as a tour of the Wahkan corridor of Afghanistan for 10000 dollars. Or we witness this in the increasing need for people to “conquer” Mt. Everest at a staggering cost in money and spirit. And in the end, when we have come back from these extremes, what have we learned? Our addiction is still intact, we still are not satisfied, and the search continues. We have not left our plateau, because from plateaus, we need to evolve. As our life is an evolution, so is our wandering. Each experience must build of the prior, guiding us on our path.

Plateaus are resting points, places to regroup and gather our forces for the next push into the unknown – so we keep moving ahead – wandering. We start to see that our whole life is a wander – we cannot know anything here with certainty, so we set out each day with a fresh perspective. At the plateau we try to shed some opinion and judgment, and move ahead when our load is lighter, and we feel refreshed. The True Nomad does not wander to wander, aimless, and directionless.
We wander because this is life, living each new experience and creating a path as we go. This is the alternative to creating a “life” with a house, car, job, pension, and stuff, and then searching for direction in that random space, with its restrictions on movement and exploration. After all, you can only run away for so long. Eventually you will find your self, it has been along for the ride from the beginning. Once you know it, you can stop looking and start moving toward YOUR dreams, goals, and destiny. And when you do, you will be glad if you can wander, and follow that inner call of your heart. As humans, we have a beautiful capacity for that feeling, like the last day of school over and over again. When you are free and able to follow it you are on your path, and the feeling never gets old, and you never feel without purpose.

Echoes of the Anasazi

2009-11-04T07:57:00.000-08:00

Imagine a house made of stone, nestled high against sheer sandstone walls, beautiful stonework framing T-shaped openings with smooth lintels, and all hand plastered in red/brown adobe. There are fingerprints pressed into the adobe around the opening, small and slender, and wooden vigas protrude from the wall. The ground is strewn with bits of corn, little brushes, copal, charcoal, and pottery, white pieces with black paint, black with red. The air is slightly pungent, not quite musty, and it is quiet. I am standing deep in a canyon that drains the eastern side of Cedar Mesa, miles from anyone or anyplace, and I am literally surrounded for hundreds of miles in either direction by houses like this. The surrounding landscape is riddled with canyons, and each canyon splits into countless side canyons like the branching of a tree or of some giant circulatory system. It makes you wonder how many sites like this are hidden away, in other canyons and tributaries that barely have a name. Who built this? Who lived here?

Much has been written and debated about the people called the “Anasazi”, the “Ancestral Puebloans”, the “Ancient Ones”, the ancestors of the Hopi, Zuni, and how many of the southwestern peoples. We have asked: Who were they? Where did they go? How did they live? People have devoted their lives to studying their pottery, their archeology, their pictographs, their astronomy, and still we ask – what do we know? They haunt us with these enigmatic ruins, perched on cliff walls, corn, fire pits and pots, still resting in their places inside silent walls of adobe, as if they simply walked on one day. Anyone who stands inside an old dwelling knows this feeling, the feeling that you expect these people to come back in the evening from their work day, to cook dinner, and light a fire under the stars.

These trails enmesh the four corners region of the southwestern US. Once you experience the mystery of a canyon or a mesa that was inhabited 800 years ago, yet still only yesterday, you want to return again and again. There are known ruins like Mesa Verde, and Chaco, and there are lesser known places, and still undiscovered places. The more time you spend in this land, you come to see that the ancestors were everywhere, hidden up canyons with hidden springs, places that no one knows exist, miles from nowhere, and yet there is a pot shard, an arrowhead, a masonry wall. And just when you thought you were alone, you can feel their presence.

There are many questions in life, and answers are hard to come by, and it seems with the great mysteries of life, most of the answers come when you stop asking the questions, and just start being in the presence. These thoughts came back to me again during a recent trip to Cedar Mesa, a magical space that was thoroughly inhabited by those who came before us. Each night in camp, as the stars began to appear in the jet-black sky, I would peer down into the countless canyons, imagining the campfires twinkling, and the sounds of dogs barking, and children playing. Sometimes it’s a heavy feeling, of another presence here, and sometimes its comforting knowing that others shared these remote spaces. As I stir the campfire, and stare into the glowing embers, I am transported to their landscape, their mindscape. And yes, the questions arise, it is our human nature to ask them, so we put them out into the blackness and see what comes back, like an echo off the canyon walls.

So we learn some things about the past – they ate corn, built stone houses, with T-shaped windows, painted and chipped art into rocks, we can see these things, we can see their pottery, their tools, their midden. But science leaves us feeling empty as to who they were, what they were doing, what they were thinking. Their direct descendants in the Hopi and Pueblo cultures of today, know more as they share similar rituals, beliefs and ideas, but these are well kept secrets, passed over generations. So what can we “know” as we sit under the same stars that these ancestors did thousands of years ago? We can know that they were fellow humans, in this vast, sometimes beautiful, sometimes lonely landscape – trying to survive as we do, looking for water, food, and shelter. And also that they saw these amazing stars, and marveled at how the earth was connected to the heavens, that they were a small part of a much larger picture, a picture composed of overlapping worlds and universes. They made beautiful bowls, and left their symbology on the rock walls, and even built their houses and cities to reflect the motions and interactions of the sun, moon, stars and planets.

Today, we share their questioning of the great mystery that surrounds us all, searching for some common ground that could provide some tether for us in this vastness. When we sit out there, and realize that people like us have gone before, and that they lived like us -we can sit in their kitchens and their homes and feel a bond as humans. This helps give us perspective in this place that is infinite and overwhelming, and give us some reassurance, if not answers, that we all share this space with those who came before, and those who will come. It gives us hope that we can evolve to understand a bigger picture of humanity’s place in the universe. Our common experience inspires compassion among fellow humans, who share our journey, that even though we are different, we are the same.

There and Back Again - Rim to Rim Grand Canyon

2009-10-04T14:24:00.000-07:00

I was standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon – grand is a good modifier here, but if you haven’t stood at the edge, it may not carry the requisite effect. This is a canyon of red and yellow rock, over one mile deep, with a blue green river at the bottom, carving s- turns far below. Condors soar on warm thermals as silence envelops you and you begin to experience vertigo, or an out of body experience as the canyon walls fall away beneath you. That is what its like to stand on the edge of this place.

Then you regain your senses and realize that you are on the rim. Most of the trails stretch 6 miles down to the Colorado River. The rim is dry, windy and distant. The river valley below is a different world altogether. There is life there - water, lots of water, the tinkling of the river and the roaring of the rapids make a big impression on desert ears. It’s a lost world down there, ripe with cottonwoods and datura, and averaging 20-30 degrees warmer than at the top.

Standing at the rim you don’t grok all this – its only when you descend to the river that this lost world reveals itself, and it seems like it’s far, far away. 6 miles may not seem very far, but in this desert, with minimal water and over mile of elevation change, it can be an eternity.

People say we only use 10 percent of our human brain, and that we have access to, but choose to ignore or deny the other 90%. Many maintain that this holds true for the physical body as well. Standing on the rim, it would seem that hiking down to the river would be an endeavor, and that hiking back up would be triple that. It was indeed hard for me to imagine hiking down the South Kaibab trail, and then up the North Kaibab trail, over 21 miles of canyon trail, in one day, and idea fostered by story of rim to rim runs and hikes, and even rim to rim to rim ones. After living in the Southwest for years, I had inevitably stumbled across the reports of crazy people running from rim to rim in 3 hours (the current record time for such a feat). And here is where my analogy takes off. If a human male, aged 35ish, can run from rim to rim of the Grand Canyon in 3 hours, then we are surely only using 10% of our physical abilities. Then, its no large jump to agree with the pundits who claim we are using no more than 10% of our brains (evidence: the current world/humanity condition). I mean: this man can run from rim to rim, covering 21+ miles, with a descent of 5000 feet, and a gain of 6000 feet elevation over this course, in three hours, shattering all ideas of what is possible in the human condition. Followed by: we all have a human brain and heart – we can feel, love, trust, and understand. We all share this planet and our human condition, yet we live in a world where greed and competition create poverty, hunger, pain and suffering for a majority of us. We must have more brain or heart to use, and it followed that the same holds true for our bodies.

To test this hypothesis, I decided to run rim to rim in the Grand Canyon. The date was late September, and my wife dropped me off at the South Kaibab trailhead about 7:30 am after a beautiful equinoxical sunrise. I assured her I would meet her in 6-7 hours on the North Kaibab trailhead, a mere 21 miles and 10000 feet elevation change away. I mean, this was the Grand Canyon after all. I mean, I had run a marathon some tears back, and still run out in the woods on occasion, and I had hiked down to Phantom Ranch a long time ago, but I had no real idea of what the rim-to-rim run entailed. I had a 100oz camelbak, filled full of course, a few power bar type bars, and some salted peanuts, and a mini almond joy.

I confidently set out in the brisk morning air, clad in my polypro t-shirt, shorts and running shoes, without socks. I felt light and strong, running down the 6+-mile trail, anticipating my arrival at the alluring river below. I passed a few parties getting an early start to the hiking day, and even a mule train further down by the Tonto trail junction. I crossed the bridge over the Colorado River, and took the river trail cut-off to the boat beach where warm sand and sun awaited. As I stripped off my shoes for a dip in the river, I assessed my progress so far. It was about 8:45am, according to river guide who had just pulled in, I had no time keeping device, so needed updates from fellow travelers. I took a brief dip in the breathtakingly cold Colorado, sat down to dry off with a power bar and a handful of peanuts. As I was refilling my camelbak, I overheard the river guide mention to one of her clients that the water we were using came from roaring springs – 9 miles above where we currently stood. Somewhere in the back of my mind these words registered, but, I didn’t pause to understand them, I couldn’t, as this was the first time I was attempting a rim to rim, and thus was in the territory of the unknown.

My break at the river bordered on surreal. I had just descended 5000 or so vertical feet on the scenic South Kaibab trail. Vistas stretched in every direction, with vertical exposure of such degree that you definitely double-checked your footing. Sometimes on the descent I would have to reset my visual, as the peripheral scenery changed so drastically. And then suddenly, I was at the river, the calm, peaceful, abundant river. In a land of extremes, this amount of water seems like an excess, and fills you with heaviness, fullness. As I sat by the water and absorbed this immensity, I scarcely thought of what lay ahead, it was more interesting to look at the lush datura blooms, still unfurled in the morning coolness. But, my brain kicked in a said, hey; you still have 14 miles and 6000 feet elevation to go. So I packed up my bag, and trotted out into the Box, the lower canyon of Bright Angel creek. I don’t know what combination of bonking, vertigo, or other factors on such an endeavor combined, however, for the next few miles I ran in a cloud, just focusing on the trail, as the epic scenery flowed past.

Gradually, my body began to register the toll of this undertaking - little blisters on my big toe, sore quads as I pushed up the North Kaibab Trail, and a mind beginning to chant its mantra: just stop and rest for a while, just slow down, it will feel so good. I knew as I passed Cottonwood Camp, with about 7 miles to go, that to start breaking would lead to the end. I was tired, hungry, and sore, but I had to keep faith that my body could finish. It was my mind now that began to be the adversary. I mean stunning canyon walls of red sandstone, beautiful yellow aspens dotting the hills, surrounded me, and of course that blue sky – there were many worse places I could have found myself that afternoon, and yet my mind doubted. As the distance ticked by, my brain increased its voice – to push on or rest, that was the struggle. This was my first time, I had no expectations, I did not have a real time limit, and I had no certainty I could even finish. Then, lost somewhere in the final 2 miles above the Supai tunnel, as I encountered happy day hikers, mule trains of tourists, and the altitude ticked over 7000 feet, I had to face down doubt and fear. It was here that this exercise took the turn from a nice jaunt in the Grand Canyon, to an epic struggle. I became as a pawn in a struggle between body and mind, river and rim, wet and dry, above and below, yes and no, right and wrong, stop and go. I would make a few switchbacks, then pause for some water, looking up for the North Rim hidden in the pines. Salt dried in white crystals on my face – my vision narrowed. Was I dehydrated? Was I delierious?Could I finish? My focus only held one idea - the rim, as the nice rest by the river became a memory from another universe. And yet, other world's existed here as well, outside of my immediate awareness was superimposed other layers of reality. I was less than a mile below the rim, on a popular day hike route, the hikers were multiplying, a couple sat enjoying the view, two teenage boys walked with their father and grandfather, a group of boy scouts were heading down with full packs. I was locked in an epic struggle, and yet here I was on beautiful fall afternoon here in the world….

Finally, I made the North Rim. 21 miles away lay the South Rim, where I had begun early this morning. The south rim, and the Colorado River below, seemed like they belonged to a dream, hard to imagine that I had been occupying those spaces mere hours before. When I set out, I had no security that my body was up for the task other than that others had done this before. I didn’t know if my mind was up for the task either, the mind being much harder to train, and much more fickle when faced with the doubts and darkness of the unknown. Most of us are more familiar with testing limits in the physical, that is how we like to spend our time. But testing limits in the spiritual, that is a new game, not as comfortable, but vastly rewarding. For some reason on this day, I pushed my body and my spirit to new limits, taking both out of their comfort zone. I came away with a renewed respect for the untapped capacity that we as humans hold inside, waiting to be re-discovered and grown into. As each of us challenges ourselves, we learn more about our capacity for improving our space, and our interactions with those around us. When we challenge our own fear and doubt by testing the unknown, we cultivate a deep compassion for this world, ourselves, and everything around us. I did not complete that crossing of the canyon without infinite aid from water, food, air, beauty, pain, pleasure, and faith. Every detail contributed, and I cannot tell you that each one, each moment was not independent from the next. A water source here, an inspiring vista there, an inner strength, and and outer. In the end it was not a blind hope that I could finish that carried me through, it was a participation and cooperation with all that surrounded me which gave me on some level, a know-ledge, that everything is possible.

The Paradox of Experience

2009-08-19T20:43:00.000-07:00

It seems that the more you experience, the more you begin to have the experience while you are doing the experiencing, "hey - I am feeling pleasure, I am enjoying this food, I am enjoying this swim, I am enjoying this show, or wow I am suffering under this hot sun, I am freezing in this snow, I am hurting after that accident"...and so on. But the more it happens, the more the "I", the experiencer, becomes separate from the experience, the symptoms, the feelings. The "I" doesn't change. I feel hot, I feel cold, I feel pain, I feel pleasure, but "I" am the same person after the experience as the one who started it. There is some part of me - that much bigger part of me, that stays constant. I survive the ordeal in the desert, I survive the war, I survive the 5 star hotel - I survive the Dom perignon. But at the end of the day, I am still here, unchanged for all that drama, unchanged for all that experience. And I don't quite get it each time, but after a hundred or a thousand times, I start to realize that whatever is happening happens outside of me, and for better or worse, I come through unscathed. So what happens? Eventually, the experience and the experiencer begin to separate, and a witnessing begins to happen. You can sort of detach from the pleasure or pain, recognize that it is happening, but that its not happening to YOU, its sort of happening around you.

This leaves us with a sense of I am I and you are you, we are we - whatever you want to believe that means. But this perspective gives us a wonderful sense of freedom from the cycles of pleasure and pain that we were raised on and trained in. It gives us the freedom to be who we are, and takes the pressure away to pretend to be something we are not. If you realize that the external stimuli are external, that they are happening, but not to you, then you can unattach from them, and they slowly lose their significance like air leaking from a balloon. If you then are not busy trying to experience everything, then you are free to be who you are, and really make a difference in this world. It also allows you to accept where you are in life, no matter what country you are from, how much money you have, what your job is - those become simple variables that modify your experiences, and why do we care how we modify something that is as fickle as the summer breeze, and that blows through us, leaving us unchanged?

How does this relate to travel? Well, travel is pretty much all about the experience. The desire for new sights, new foods, new pleasures, new thrills, new discoveries. We get bored with the day to day and want to take a vacation. Just let loose for a while, drink a cold beverage on the beach. Or maybe you want to see a new culture, learn a language and volunteer in a new community and help your fellow human. When we travel we gain new experience, and we think that experience forms us, makes us who we are and gives us our character. Yet, we already are formed, and that part of us, that part that is really us, lies above the experience - when we can bring that US to the world and the experience, we then start to make a real difference. The paradox is that in order to become aware of this other "me" I have to go through all these hundreds of experiences in order to re-cognize that we exist outside of all this, even though we are exquisitely entwined with all this - and that is sort of tricky. I want to taste the ripest mango on Java, want to find the butteriest dal-fry in Himachal Pradesh, want to volunteer in a medical clinic in the Nubra Valley, want to meditate in Hemis Gompa, want to soak in remote onsens surrounded by snow monkeys, want to trek through virgin Borneo forest, do kora around the navel of Tibet, watch the monsoon arrive in a sleepy village in the Keralan hills....And as I do these things, and all the other things in my life, I slowly realize that there is no end this way, there are always other Himalayan peaks, snow leopards, new foods, new remotest villages, and even if I can travel to the ends of the Earth and experience it all, I will still be me, right here. At that moment, we are truly free to decide what we really want to do, no strings attached, because, as we find out, there are no strings in the first place.

Experience and having it all are not the goal, but we have to have the experience to get free. Travel compresses this process, providing maximum new and challenging experience in small amounts of time-space. Thus it becomes a useful tool for becoming "you". When you can take a trip and be the real you, and stay in character, that is the rub. Then you are not running away, but being YOU.

Around The World In 80 Years

2009-07-01T20:57:00.000-07:00

80 years - that's what we have - a flash in the pan? An eternity? Let's investigate...
Einstein once explained relativity like this:"When you are courting a beautiful woman, one hour seems like one second, when you are being tortured with hot coals, one second seems like one hour." 80 years is just a random number, and what it means is all relative - some of us may not even have that many, all we know is that its a number between one and eighty. I mean, we have 80 years, that is 2.5 billion seconds. The "experts" think the Earth is around 4 billion years old. If you could travel at the speed of light, it would take 26,000 years to get to the center of the Milky Way, our galaxy. 26,000 years, and you would be travelling at 186,000 miles per second!

Our lifespan is defined by this highly relative term of 80 years. I am already almost halfway through, and it seems like a twinkle in time. Sure I have a lot of great memories, lots of great travels, lots of great experiences, lots of bad experiences, but from the halfway point, they all condense into a few moments in time. Even if your memories seem longer than this, they most probably don't feel like 40 years worth. And when we are 80, I bet they won't feel like 80 years, maybe a few months at best. Months!!!! So, if we are living, and we know we have this "relative" lifespan that may as well be a week or a month, why wouldn't we spend every day doing everything we need to do? When we are sitting at work, or watching a movie, or walking outside, we can catch ourselves wondering, what is happening? Moments are going by, am I engaged? Am I on Earth do do these tasks? Am I doing these tasks the way I was meant to be doing them? Or when I am angry with someone, or dreaming about something, or wanting something that I don't have...am I on Earth to be doing this? Are we on earth to build a house? Buy a car? Earn social security? Make a million? Are we here to judge? To hate? To fight? To get up on Monday morning? To get 2 WEEKS of vacation per year(that would be 160 weeks per life, or one half year off per life, not counting weekends and retirement!) What would I be, if I had one year? Or one week? Or one DAY?

We don't always get to choose what happens in life, but we have a lot more choice than we give ourselves. Bad things may happen, we may get angry, but life is too short to worry about any of it. Don't let something like the magic number 80 make all your rules, that is just living by the clock and calender, stuff we made up in the first place.

Everyone has their very own reason for being here. We can spend our time any way we like. We may have strict requirements, responsibilities, and rules that we created out of thin air about how we spend that time, but those are just blinders and excuses we give ourselves for not owning up to our reason for being here. Why wait? Why delay? We know it in our hearts, so why are we embarrassed, or scared, or worried. In the blink of an eye, the snap of your fingers, it will be gone, so lets get on with it. If we can learn to live and spend our "time" on that, then we may be onto something. Otherwise, we are just living the dream, and in 80 years, or tomorrow, we are going to wake up and rub the sleep out of our eyes, look around, and say to ourselves:"hmmm...that was interesting."

Travel is a great metaphor for this idea. We plan and plan and plan a trip, maybe two weeks, maybe two years, and once we get on the plane or train or bike, everything becomes dynamic, our plans are out the window, we get curve balls, we get lost. We deal with new faces, new sensations, new surroundings, new everything. We can be ourselves, or anything we want to be. We can bring our baggage along, or leave it at home, we can worry about money, about food, about doing it right, about being lucky, or we can just sit down and enjoy it. We can drop all of our preconceptions and preferences, and get our hands dirty, wake up and become alive, or we can sleep away the day in the air-con, in crisp sheets, watching CNN, eating scrambled eggs and biscuits. It is all up to us, and is always up to us, maybe with a little fate and faith thrown in depending on how you see the world. We may be on a two week vacation, or an 80 year life, but it is every moment that counts. Travel on!

I Think Therefore I am Not

2009-05-21T15:19:00.000-07:00

Ladakh is one of those special places - look it up on a map and it is impossibly far from anywhere, nestled high in the Himalayas, along the banks of the Indus, near the old silk road. It is influenced heavily by Tibet and Buddhism, yet exists in a cloud at the top of the Indian sub-continent. It has been the scene of a centuries old power struggle between influences of Islam and Tibetan Buddhism and was not open for foreign visitation until 1974. Ladakh retains much of the Shangri-la qualities that are becoming increasingly difficult to find. As you survey the gompas and sprawling capital city of Leh while the effects of hypoxia cloud your brain, you are struck by the stunning beauty of the place. The main valley is dotted with gompas, terraced fields of buckwheat line the river banks, and the whole scene is dominated by snow capped giants and azure skies.

We arrived there in mid October - a bit late for the Ladakh "season", but on purpose to avoid the tourists of summer. We planned to do some trekking, probably through the Markha Valley, expecting good fall colors, cool days, and an empty trail. As we provisioned and began inquiries as to the status of the trail, we learned that the snows had come early this year. In particular, the region, normally bone dry had received a rather severe blizzard in September, the Manali-Leh road was closed for 3 days, with several buses and cars stranded, and several people died from exposure in snow several feet deep. As is typical for India, especially remote off the grid India, we were getting various different reports as to the conditions of the Gongmaru-la, the highest point and critical pass of the trek at 5306 metres. We were going light, and were not carrying snow gear, crampons, etc. and we were trying to avoid walking in hip deep snow through sub-freezing temperatures. The preferred direction of the trek is to cross the pass from the Markha side, as you have a steep descent on the last day, rather than a steep ascent to the pass on the first day, but due to the conflicting information and potentially dangerous conditions, we decided to travel to Hemis Gompa and on to the tiny village of Shang to begin the trek. The day we left, we heard rumors that the last group to attempt to cross had turned back at the pass due to blizzard, and the mountains were freshly powder coated in white.

Hemis Gompa is the celebrated seat of the Drupka Tibeatn Buddhists in Ladakh. It is also called Chang Chub Sam Ling or "the lone place of the compassionate person." It is very old, and is constructed as a 3 dimensional mandala, making it all the more auspicious. It is even rumored that Jesus spent some of his 30 "lost years" studying here. If you pilgramige here, and wander up the creekside trail, and sit under the prayer flags in meditative silence, you will have no doubt about the power of this valley, and you will get a taste of the real Ladakh, that feeling of Shangri-la, a lost place of peace that feels like a true oasis in this crazy world of ours.

But I digress. We walked down from the Hemis valley, feeling very clear and alive. We walked the 15km to Shang along a most incredible river gorge. The silence was such that it made your ears ring as my brain searched for a sound to hold onto. It was late in the day when we arrived. The workers were coming in from the field as the sun set over the mountains. There was a camp set up by the river, the porters were setting up the mess tent, and two trekking tents were set up with some exhausted looking trekkers laying flat, feet protruding from the door. We asked the guides how the pass was - knowing that the answer was not going to be good. They said it was hip deep snow, and super icy on both sides of the approach, and this was from a secondary pass, not on the main trail. Add to this it started snowing again, and the temperature was close to freezing down here some 1600 meters below the pass.

I began to realize that for all my planning, all my thinking, a whole trip arranged around doing a trek in Ladakh, we were going to be turned back within 10 miles of the goal. Fly to Delhi, fly to Leh, acclimatise, provision, bus to Hemis, trek to Shang, where we now sat. It was so close I could taste it, my wife was less enthusiastic after hearing reports of hip deep snow. And even though the trip was now for all purposes impossible, I still clung to its idea, and tried to "figure out" how we still could do it - in other words, I could not let go - could not detach, I was losing the battle with my ego, running in mental circles.

We camped in the town gompa's courtyard, snow falling gently. At 4am, in the crisp cold darkness, we made our way to the back door of the gompa for morning puja with the one monk who was in residence. Three of us sat in a 5x7 foot room, adorned with traditional tibetan buddhist thangpas, horns, cymbals. The butter lamps flickered off the painted, carved ceilings, and our misty breath co-mingled in the cold air. The monk began the puja, chanting and reading the ancient texts, drumming...

After tea, we walked up to the old gompa. The snow blanketed the hills, the old gompa sat perched 1000ft up a side valley, the walls arising out of the rock. Standing atop, the views were stunning. Blue sheep toed the brown crags, and the prayer flags rippled in the wind.

How did we get here? Where were we actually? Somewhere along the way, I thankfully lost my mind. I had stopped wondering why we couldn't trek, when we were so close, and had come so far, stopped being attached to that idea, that random idea, that that was better, that was right, that was meant to be. I did not know any of that to be true, after all, as my wife pointed out, we could have been walking 15km with wet feet through freezing snow, all while we gained 2000m in elevation. But the point is, while I was thinking, worrying, obsessing, being attached, I was never here and now. While I was living in my head, I was missing where I actually was, and what was actually happening. I had to learn to relinquish control of a situation over which I had no control, and never had any control of in the first place.

The famous phrase that launched the modern era of scientific deconstruction, and human misplacement in the world: "I think therefore I am", shot us out into an orbit from which we are still trying to recover. When we are thinking, where are we? What are we? Deep in thought? Lost in thought? Day dreaming? We certainly are not PRESENT. We are not HERE. I am, when I am in the moment, smelling the air, enjoying the view, enjoying where I am, what is happening. When I give up control, which I never really have anyway, everything is comes easy, it flows, it is enjoyable, not painful. So, if you find yourself stressed out or find yourself lost in the hamster wheel of your mind while you are trying to figure it all out, just take a deep breath, go outside and check in, smell the flowers, sit in the sunshine. Let go of thought and control, and feel alive - otherwise, what are we all really doing here?

Places like Ladakh always have lessons to share, this was mine this trip; I think therefore I am not. So as we sat drinking butter tea on the roof of a gompa, breathing rarified air, 100 kilometers from nowhere, I gave up control and that was what my wife had been telling me all along.

The Multi-Dimensional Universe

2009-04-28T21:13:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I found myself amidst the crowds of the annual Flame Tree Arts festival on the island of Saipan. This is a local gathering of artists from the islands, replete with local music and entertainment, food from the islands of the Northern Mariana, and crowds of tourists and locals “window shopping” and being seen. One can peruse beautiful local paintings, basket weavings, shell art, as well as eat to the hearts content on Chinese 5 choice, fresh fish, apigigi, arroz caldo, and desert on tropical fruits and concoctions. Mango and flame tree season have just come into their own, and the islands are awash with orange.

Fresh back from a trip to the mainland, I found myself enjoying the pace of the islands, no stress, FRESH food, real food, and beautiful sunsets, water and tropical breezes. The westward lagoon view in Saipan contains the most vivid variety of colors of anywhere I have ever been. So, wandering around the festival, it dawned on me that we are living in multiple dimensions all the time, and travel is a key to that world vision. Just as physicists and astronomers theorize that there are multiple dimensions of space-time out there, we can see those dimensions around us right here on Earth as we travel around we move between them. The fact that we are able to move between them, suggests that there are dimensions between which to move, but we usually don’t pay any attention to those shifts.

Jet lag is a good experiential example. When I fly from my quiet papaya garden in Saipan, to the chaos of Los Angeles, I cross the dateline, get there the same day and hour that I left, and transport myself between worlds – and yes, it does feel like different worlds. The pace, the people, and the concerns – the US runs on a different speed than the islands, a different vibration, and when you stop and actually feel the shift, you realize even a different universe or dimension. People in one place have absolutely no clue what it is like in the other unless they have been there very recently, and as soon as the air-lock of the plane door closes, or you sail off the shore, that dimension you are leaving begins to inevitably fade into the matrix. You can look up the news or weather, but it exists only in two dimensions, you cannot smell the air, feel the sane, or experience the sunset.

So as I was mentally traveling between my recent US experiences, and how different is than my Flame Tree Arts festival experience, I walked into the Voyagers camp. The Voyagers at the festival this year sailed 30foot sailing canoes from the outer islands of Yap, all the way to Saipan. These voyagers are renowned for their ability to navigate by the stars and currents, the clouds, and the sky. They can read weather and they know the sea. Some of the best are even blind, steering the boat by the way the current and waves sound against the wooden hulls. Now as I stood in their camp on the fringes of the carnival atmosphere of cotton candy and Budweiser, I was transported again to the outer islands, another downshift in pace and scope of life. It was quiet; people were sleeping on grass mats, cooking on open fires, speaking traditional languages, probably about food or sailing. The lagoon waters lapped against the wooden hulls of the boats, and I imagined them out there t night, listening for the currents to make a sound, feeling the sea air on their faces and I traveled to their outer islands, where there are no computers or iphones, no ATM’s or airplanes, some may not even know they exist, and for all intents they don’t when you are there. Their universe, their dimension was different than mine, it was different than the festival, yet I was right there on the edge of it. If I slowed down enough to travel with them, I would have joined that world for a little while. So now I had three dimensions in my experience, and that was profound, because then I knew very vividly that there were layers to this world that exist simultaneously, on top of one another, just like the physicists say the space-time dimensions exist all wrapped around and between each other. It just takes a subtle shift of perspective to go between them, if you are aware of them. How many more are out there, how many more had I been to in my travels, in my dreams. Reluctantly I stepped off the sand and back into the fray of the carnival, back to the dimension I was currently living and experiencing, but feeling both awed and unsettled at the same time that we are living among countless layers and dimensions all the time, and that we can CHOOSE, and we can BE, wherever we want to, with just a flick of perspective. Bon Voyage!

The Grass Is Always Greener

2009-04-28T05:07:00.001-07:00

When I step off the plane in a country like Indonesia, I look around, and feel a sort of bucolic/tropical/peaceful daydream come over me. The heavy equatorial air is almost succulent, and as it washes over your brain you start to slow down and dream of ripe mangoes, so orange that you don’t need a PhD to know that there is vitamin A there. I think of my busy life in the US, and watch the locals amble down the rice paddies, heading to the temple, or a soccer game, or who knows where. I see a man sleeping on his rice field palapala, in his straw hat, and think: wow, this guy has it figured out - a peaceful life, working in the beautiful green rice fields, taking naps, eating healthy local food, no television, no electricity, just the man and the land. Even if he is not making much money, and it is hard, back breaking work (thoughts which I may or may not have let into my daydream), I still think, wow - I have to figure out how to move here - find a nice simple house, buy local food, and slow down the pace of my life.

Yet over time, I begin to wonder - or project 3 months into the future...picture myself sitting in my new house….I cant speak the local dialect, I have no work, I don’t know anyone, and I am not in my culture, I wasn’t raised here, I don’t know the traditions, I have to leave the country every 30 days just to get my visa renewed...and so on.

Then consider the other side.... This farmer looks at me and says wow - this guy has it
dialed right. He's here on vacation, his dollar is worth 10,000 times more than mine, and he is eating at restaurants where his average bill is my months salary, buying luxury foods not even from this country, and then still is enjoying Bintang's and clove cigarettes whenever he likes. I want to go to America and make that kind of money. I don’t care if I have to sit in a cubicle all day in air-con (hey free-aircon) and stare my life away into a computer, I will even get paid to sit down! I can live in a nice condo, with a refrigerator, microwave and electric coffee maker and stove, and drive on the freeway to work everyday.

As we daydream more, we can even go a step further and convince ourselves that the simple, hermetic life is more "enlightened" - and that is very green grass. Escape the day to day, and sit in a field and meditate while we pick rice. Yet when we get there, and it is hot, and there are flies, and snakes, and we earn 2000 rupiah/day, we may forget our mission of enlightenment, and focus on how hard the work is, and how hot the sun is, and how we wish we were back in the air-con, going to the pub with office mates for happy hour. Should I move back? Did I make a mistake? And the farmer finds himself locked into a job of misery doing data entry, having to work overtime to make the rent payments, eating 99cent hot dog deals because its all the food he can afford, and dreading the 75mph traffic on the freeway - dreaming of his rice paddy, fresh food, and wondering why he left to pursue the American dream and the almighty dollar, and how rich he is now that he has that lifestyle.

And on and on it goes, the hamster wheel of life, running and running and running away, looking for the holy grail, the mystery – but stop, slow down, recognize that it is all around us, all the time, no matter where we go, what we do, what we drive, what we eat. As we drop the concern for these details of life, and start realizing why we are living, we may enjoy every moment that we have. Share this with our fellow humans, help each other, become aware of what we are doing and being. Let the grass be greener, because after running around the wheel a few too many times, we will start to see that the grass over there is really the same grass over here, just seen from a different perspective, but, REALLY THE SAME.

Why do we always want what we do not have? The grass is always greener, even when we haven’t even the faintest idea about what the other side even feels like or looks like. We live in America, but want to live on a tropical island. We live in Philippines, and want to eat Pizza Hut, and commute to work on a “freeway”. It is one of the great human challenges- to be happy where we are, focus on our living - instead of our living arrangements. It is far to easy to spend away an entire life looking for that perfect spot, or job, or car, or house, or trying to figure out how to transplant your life into a foreign culture, a far away land, or an escape. These details just are not what we are to worry about. After all, what is perfect anyway, and does it really matter if you have wood floors or concrete, or a thatch roof versus steel? Focusing on these details removes us from the real work of life, and takes us out of the moment. We are forever lost in
a world of illusion, wondering how we can make it better, get what that person has. The grass is always greener speaks to the fact that we are trying to escape the difficult work of life. Not the manual labor, but the actually owning up to what we are here for, and how we can help ourselves and others live better and feel loved. If we wake up, and feel good about what we were born with, or even where we have ended up, then we can forget the detail, and focus on the work at hand - living. Smell the flowers, enjoy the view, smile at people, and be compassionate. Then we may see that the grass is always green here and now, and always good - and that feels very free, very light, and very alive.

The Wheel of Life

2009-03-23T23:51:00.000-07:00

The world is a crazy place these days...it seems out of control, and beyond our control. The media tells of global economies failing, volcanoes erupting, climate changes, wars, civilian casualties, unimaginable hardships in Africa, overpopulation, starvation, inequity of resources and wealth, even inequities between our fellow humans - how can we change it? How can we help? What can we do? It overwhelms the mind. Some even talk about the end of the world...

Yet somehow, our situation is not unique, and the world has been crazy before. Circumstances always exist outside of ourselves, sometimes we say they are "good", and sometimes "bad", but really they are just circumstances. An alignment of the stars may be responsible, but what can we do about that? Life is full of drama, and worries, and purpose, and hope. We struggle against an unknown enemy just to survive here, as we have done since our human brain became big enough to recognize itself. Yet, what is really so different between now and then? Yesterday and today? We are endlessly caught in the web of duality, of comparison, of preference. Rich and poor, black and white, night and day, us and them, war and peace, happy and sad, right and wrong - its overwhelming to have that kind of choice every moment of every day.

What is constant here? Where is the solid ground? How can we focus? Whether you are running a country or a household, whether you live in a cave or on the streets, whether you have family or are alone, whether the volcano erupts or not, the sun still sets EVERY night. Everyone can step outside of the box and see or feel that time of twilight, when the light goes soft, and the colors awaken. It is the same in Garapan, and Los Angeles, and Varanasi, and Lhasa, and Cuzco, and Narita. The traffic, the television, the harvest, the election, the monsoon, the war, are all external, and these externalities have been running for eons, and it would seem we do not control them.

We are here now, wondering what to do, when all we really can do is to live - eat a warm meal, smell some flowers, gaze at the clouds, watch the sunset, help a neighbor, feed someone. No matter what we believe in - these are constants. When we stop worrying about the external, we focus on living. Escape the virtual reality - for it is not real. See through the great ponzi scheme that floats around us. Embrace this life, and re-discover what we came here to discover. We can turn off the tv, and the world wide web, and walk out of any doorway, and become the same. Money does not matter in that place, nor does race, nor does hunger. That place is united, not dual, and it feels like home. In that place there is peace, there is warmth, there is food, there is comfort from the storm. The beauty is that we can go there anytime we want, because there is always right here, just behind the sunset, just out the door, always in our hearts.

Tibetans paint the wheel of life on every gompa. That symbol expresses these ideas in a one complete, complex picture. It represents this ever turning world, and how beings evolve and move through it towards liberation. This wheel of life is constantly spinning, its centripetal force keeps us in it. We all find ourselves in different places, different situations, different distractions. When we know that the grass is not greener, and that there is nowhere to GET to, we gain the strength to let go, be ourselves, and get down to our business. Let the wheel keep on spinning - it always has, always will and always does. Things always happen, and life goes on spinning. Step back, take a deep breath, and enjoy it wherever you are.

Mount Kailash Kora

2009-02-15T15:21:00.000-08:00

The old man wore a sun hardened, wind worn face, a beaten leather jacket, a necklace of dzi beads, shells and ancient turquoise. He walked forward, his hands never stopping, working his mala. He stopped, looking at the mountain, placed his hands together in prayer, and bent down on hands and knees, forehead scraping the earth as he lay in full prostration, all the while chanting softly the mantra: “Om Mani Padme Hum.”

The Kora around Mount Kailash in Western Tibet is considered by many one of the holy grails of this planet. Whether you are there as a prostrating Buddhist, or Hindu on pilgrimage to Shiva’s throne, or just a traveler looking for some inspiration, the sacred mountain calls you. Kailash’s pyramid of snow juts into high altitude sky, and its rainbows of prayer flags send their offerings on the breeze. The kora is 50+km clockwise trek around the mountain with the start and finish in Darchen, a frontier town in Western Tibet.

You cannot fly here; the only way in is by jeep, bus, bike or hike. Most pilgrims opt for the jeep or bus, since Darchen lies more than 1000 kilometers west of Lhasa, and over 700 kilometers northwest of Katmandu, Nepal, the nearest feasible airports.
If you ever make it all the way to Darchen, you probably are here for kora.

The kora takes you 50+ kilometers clockwise around the peak. Thousands of pilgrims flock here to advance their sadhana. You will see grandpas and grandmas, infants, and everyone in between, walking, or prostrating to the high point at the Domla-la, over 5600m.

Along the way you can camp, or stay at the gompas or parachute tent camps. From the Drirapuk Gompa, you can walk to the Kangkyam glacier, hanging off the north face of Kailash. Standing on the blue ice, at the headwaters of the four rivers; Sutlej, Brahmaputra, Karnali and Indus, one cannot help but feel that this truly is the center of the universe. Four major religions consider this mountain sacred: Jain, Buddhist, Bon-Po, and Hindu. The kora around this abode of the gods is considered extremely auspicious. In fact, it is said that one proper kora can rinse you of a lifetime of sin – complete 108 koras and you may find yourself strolling the fields of Nirvana, enlightened beyond your wildest imagination.

As I sit at home writing, Kailash and west Tibet become one of those places that defy imagination. So remote, so high, so spiritual, that details quickly retreat behind layers of cloud. Kailash is such a place that leaves you wondering if you ever actually touched the ground there. Huge skies, electrically blue, ear ringing silence, and thousands of Om Mani Padme Hum’s fluttering in the wind leave you breathless. Standing at the top of Dromla-la, 5636m above sea level, I hung a set of prayer flags in offering to the Mountain for safe passage, to a friend that he would vanquish his cancer, and to the Gods that I was even given the chance to breath the air in such an amphitheater.

Gurus in India

2008-11-22T20:49:00.000-08:00

Another trip to India - and what a trip it was! Why India? The land of dirt and chaos, the Delhi belly, relentless touting, noise, pollution, and whatever else you may have heard or seen?

Because in India, nothing is as it seems.

On the surface, it looks one way, but look again, even a split second later, and the scene has changed. Look deeper, and you begin to see beneath the façade, to what India really is. India cannot be put into words, but it is the unspeakable which we are after. Those experiences that are indescribable, so deep, or so transcendent, that no words can do them justice. Just to begin to describe them takes away their luster. These experiences are what you find when you meditate, climb a mountain, do a fast, be with a guru, or, when you go to India.

Travel in India requires patience, fortitude, a sense of adventure and street smarts. I have been there numerous times, and I will catch my self daydreaming that I have it figured out(as if we ever could figure it all out) It is then that India throws you the best curveballs. Its not just having a train cancelled, or the bank teller close his window (after you stood in line for 2 hours) for his 11 am chai break. We are talking about the real India, the spiritual fabric underneath all the chaos - the lotus flower in the mud. When you look deeper and tap into this layer of India, you really start to have some wild experiences. You ask yourself: did I just see that 5 year old holding a cobra. Did the boy sweeping the train compartment just stop, look deep into your eyes, and tell you: "your life is a mistake." Did that quote painted above the bus driver's compartment,"To live is to serve, to serve is to live", just answer all your questions? Where do find these hidden gurus and messages? All over, and where you least expect it - that is India. When you order a chai, pay attention, when you give a beggar 50 rupees, pay attention, when you strike up an unassuming conversation with a shop owner, pay attention, when you ride a bus, pay attention. Pay attention to the flower girls, the street cleaners, the jeep drivers, the sadhus, the scholars, and the bakers. Pay attention to the pan wallahs, and the rickshaw wallahs. You can sense where this energy is, and catch a glimpse of it too. It is everywhere and nowhere.
Maybe we need a concrete example. Take the Ganges river in Varanasi for example. On one hand, science has written it off as the most polluted septic river on Earth, complete with low oxygen counts and dying fish. And it is true that raw sewage spills into it every day. On the other hand, millions swim and bathe and renew their spirit in those waters everyday. They worship it, they sing about it, they bury their loved ones in its waters. They even drink it. And there are fish in it, and birds and frogs, and all sorts of life thriving. And when you stand there on the ghats, and look into that gray green water, you realize that its just water like anywhere else, and you wash and swim in it like anywhere else, and it makes you feel good on a hot summer day. And then you may even read that some other scientists have tested the waters, and that the Ganges processes biological waste 30 times faster than other rivers, and that its not septic, but carries a good amount of oxygen. The waters of the Ganges have indeed been touted as magical, they can cleanse a lifetimes of karma, and even release you from this samsara.

So which do you believe? What do you believe? India is full of these paradoxes and India is like a guru, she will tell you anything and everything you need to hear, if that is, you are ready to hear it or believe it. The more time you spend in the world, you begin to see how everything is in the eye of the beholder. You can choose what to believe, there are so many options. And yet, as we see in quantum physics, its not at all random, its all connected. An electron a million miles from its partner, "knows" which way to spin to conserve the laws of energy - how does it know? How does the taxi driver "know" what you most needed to hear about your life right at that perfect moment that you could hear it, and take it to heart? That is the mystique of India - the guru pops up everywhere, when you least expect it, and when you surrender. If you go searching up in the caves, out in the mountains, or deep in the temples, there is no telling what you may find. It doesn't seem to work that way. When we are in control, we are not in control. When we give up control, we gain the ultimate.

So, listen to the universe, it will tell you. You never need to beg and you never have to fear that you are lost, because the answers are all around us all the time. If you need some reassurance, make a pilgrimage to India.

Crossing The Border Into Freedom

2008-09-09T20:25:00.000-07:00

I was tossing in bed, trying to find sleep before my trip. Thoughts racing, did I forget anything? Where was my passport? Did I have enough cash? As soon as the boarding door closes, or you step through the immigration line, the unknown replaces the comfortable world of home, and typically that can be an unnerving process. Humans are creatures of habit, and we designed our society to enforce that. We strive to make a home, get a job, have a life, and EARN a living. We like the routine, we are addicted to it, and somehow, it allows us to forget our SELVES. Sometimes we live in the same town for our entire lifetime, sometimes even the same house with the same job. Sometimes we move around, resettle, but we tend to try to define ourselves through our external life.

Enter travel. When you pack a bag, jump on a plane, and “leave” your life, you are traveling. It is the great unknown, whether you are in Calcutta or Des Moines. You may be sitting in a hotel room, watching CNN, or trying to buy samosas, but your stuff and your life are conspicuously absent. When you have obtained food and shelter, your basic needs, you find yourself laying there with yourself – just yourself. All your external baggage has disappeared to some degree, depending on how you pack. You can’t get lost right away in the basement, or in the yard, or in the kitchen, or at work. For a little while you are forced to be with yourself, and for a lot of us that is a scary unknown.

Crossing physical borders provides us with a window into ourselves, maybe brief, maybe longer, but infinitely valuable. Our work on earth is not about creating a life, or earning a living, we already have that taken care of simply by being here. More our work is to uncover our true self, and to live here accordingly. Our houses do not make us humble, our work does not make us compassionate, our cars do not make us lovers, our lives do not define us - we define our lives.

Travel forces us across mental borders, freeing us from the daily grind. If you are nervous before a trip, it is a good sign that you are in need of a trip. A vacation from your life, your routine, and a foray into the lesser explored region of self. Those dark places, where the real work lies waiting for us when we are ready. When we explore here, we change our whole being, and begin to address our karma. This is the work we are here for. This is how we remember compassion, truth, love, and honor. Do we want to live for this? Or for something else?

When I look out over the mountains, and take a deep breath of fresh air, and actually feel the earth under my feet, and feel the air enter my lungs, I am more aware of my life than when I am “busy”. Every so often we need this vacation, to get a new perspective on how we are doing and being. Travel allows us this chance to lift the veil of ego and remove the distraction of stuff so that we can catch a glimpse of who we really are.

Ancient Buddhas

2008-08-20T00:48:00.000-07:00

This is a cool visual metaphor that can be experienced in the meditation caves in the ruins at Guge, Tibet. The erosion in the mountains inspires the 1000 buddhas in the monestary art.

See my post here http://truenomads.blogspot.com/2007/09/ancient-kingdom-of-guge.html for more details on that trip.

Sunset on Shangri-la

2008-08-10T15:58:00.000-07:00

With all the hype around China these days, I wanted to write a bit about Tibet. Eastern Tibet is a jewel on this planet, and due to government restrictions, remote location, and no real transport options, it remains a gem, fortunately and unfortunately, tucked away from most. Western Tibet is raw power and open space, a place that humbles you immediately. The east is the true Shangri-la, white energy, peace, and a heaven on earth. It is mountains and rivers, hidden forests and glades, yellow aspens, blue rivers, serene lakes, and undisturbed monasteries. The sun is warm, and the wildflowers sway in the delicious breeze. It is quiet, unraveled, and unknown. There is more untouched wilderness there than almost anywhere on the planet, with gorges so deep and inaccessible, no one even knows where they are or what lives there.

We scored a land rover from Lhasa that a travel company had to return to China proper at the end of the season. We spent a week getting back to the border, stopping along the way at some sites, some random villages, and it was like a dream. There are many country villages, farmers, herders, and nomads, living in the old way, and the whole place exudes serenity. Of course you have to get there, from Lhasa, you have to cross a big mountain range and some heavy plateau, but then you drop into the valleys, and through the time warp. The air is filled with juniper smoke, the thukpa is savory, and most locals are
smiling. The hamlets are set in jaw dropping scenery, with some of the most beautiful light I have ever seen. The air is quiet and remote, just standing outside and breathing makes you slow way down and tune in. If you want true adventure, there is endless exploring to do if you can swing it, but there is very little network or support. You could walk into those forests for months on end.

Along the highway, Chinese influence is spreading, but the valleys are deep and vast. Until you cross the Mekong and pass 6700m Meili mountain, you are in a forgotten world. Slowly, as the pavement improves, you are pulled out of the daydream and slapped back into reality. The border of modern China advances daily with the road, and military and construction vehicles plow the way. It is like a giant mechanized steamroller, overlaying the bucolic country with asphalt and steel. Entire towns are plowed under, and retrofitted with the “modern” look. To see the Tibetans, true nomads in woolens and beads, faces weathered by altitude, sun, and wide open space, standing lost in front of a mini-mart is a cruel juxtaposition that is hard to get your mind around.

Change is inevitable in the world, that is how life goes, but when it is un-natural and ahead of schedule, we lose things that we don’t understand. Evolution and growth are natural processes, with steps to be taken along the way, and we see what happens when we skip steps and rush ahead. Whenever we cheat to get to the finish line faster, we always have to go back, because, after all, finishing is not the ultimate goal. We are where we are, and if we don’t fully understand why we need something “better”, maybe we should slow down, and put one foot in front of the other. To walk and progress and actually feel each step, feel the ground under you, and be fully aware, that is the process. Tibet is a land steeped in the mystery and as it changes in the name of modernization, we obscure a major path in our spiritual evolution. Yet, mystery can only ever be
obscured and hidden, never lost or destroyed - that is what you understand when you look, listen and feel the depth in the nomad’s eyes.

Indian Vibrations

2008-06-23T18:25:00.000-07:00

I have traveled all over the world but I keep going back to India, aka the sub-continent, or the Motherland. I have a ten-year visa, I love mango lassi, and between Ladakh and Kanyakumari, you can find anything that you are looking for. Despite all this, I never have a good answer for the one thing everyone always wants to know when I get back: “Why India?” What makes it so special? I have tried hard to answer that question for the ten years since my first visit. All of the obvious reasons easily come to mind, and that’s why they are obvious – the colors, smells, and sounds – India provides an unlimited tapestry for the senses. The hues of rajasthani saris, the cacophony of the streets in Delhi or Mumbai, the tingling complexity of a Trichur thali, the stupendous views from a Himalayan monastery, the endless markets, food vendors, and people from all walks of life, you can see it all in India. Fresh fried pakora and samosa, a steaming cup of sweet chai... But those are the obvious reasons, and everyplace has its fans, and its own unique food, culture, and people. I had to look deeper.

India is rich with culture, religion and wisdom. From the early Indus civilizations the history is full with babas, moguls, spice wars, and spirituality of all kinds. This rich tradition is interwoven into the fabric of the country maybe more than anywhere else. It is daily life. Whether at a mosque or temple, on the plane or rickshaw, people have a ritual, a practice. It may be a flower puja floating in the river, or incense wafting from a window. It may be the hours put into making the dhal. You will see it in the eyes of a street cleaner, bus driver, or beggar. India’s culture exudes from every aspect of its daily life, and this makes for a wonderful experience.

As my brain worked this riddle over and over, I realized that maybe I kept going back because I was searching for something too. India has a long tradition of people looking for answers, looking for gurus, reading the stars, and wondering where the wisdom of the Vedas came from. Yes, I had been many times - sitting in the cool silence of the monastery at Tabo, filing through the inner passages past Tirupathi’s devas, dipping in the Ganges at Varanasi’s ghats, and I was seeking my own answers.

What is the incredible draw of India? There is sitar music and tabla rhythm, prayer call and chanting, and temples, mosques and monasteries everywhere you look. Even the rivers are sacred, full of holy water that carries way your sins, and transports you to the other worlds. Not many places can claim that. So I sat by the river, it may have been the Sutlej, or the Indus, or the Ganga. I searched up on the flanks of Kinnaur and in the halls of Ki Gompa. I looked for it in the auto rickshaw and the night train. Was it in the chai wallah’s eyes, or in the myriad of childern’s smiles – yes, it was in all of those places. What I was looking for was always there, and I only “found” it when I stopped looking.

India is a place where 99 percent of the population believes in God, in something sacred, in some power bigger than ourselves that guides us on, and of which we are all a part. Everything is done with spirit in mind, from baking roti to driving a bus. You feel the energy in a child’s smile, a head nod, and the twinkle of an eye. Even at first if you don’t notice, a second look shows its there. Doing your task totally unselfishly, and devoting it to the universe results in some delicious bread, and gets most of the buses through the mountain passes unscathed. Doing your work from joy and with joy, because there is no other reason. It is karma yoga, it is devotional service, and no matter how it is labeled by religion, it transcends denomination. The veil between is very thin in India, and things are not so hidden. You can feel that energy everywhere if you take pause. It is that energy, that feeling, that connection that draws me back.

It's All Over But The Krayan

2008-05-05T21:35:00.000-07:00

Uuuuuuuuaaaaaaaahhhhhhheeeeeee
Uuuuuuuuuaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhheeeeeeeeee
Uuuuuuuuuuaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeeeeee

The jungle pulsates to the sound of millions of five-inch long cicadas, satiny black, with fire orange wing stripes. The air is moist and pleasantly fresh, 16,000 square kilometers of breathing trees, some of the newest oxygen on the planet. Everything is green - the ground, the sky, the canopy, so much biomass. Once your ears are attuned to the frequency of the jungle, the intervening silence is unbelievable. We are standing maybe 50 kilometers from the Malaysian-Indonesian border, a place known as the “heart” of Borneo.

Maybe 200 kilometers as the MAF prop plane flies from Tarakan, it might as well be 2000 kilometers. We landed on a grass football field carved out of “virgin” rainforest after about an hour flight over a carpet of trees, undulating like oversized broccoli. The silence was deafening. Welcome to Long Layu, administrative headquarters of the Krayan. Since the mid 70’s, Krayan Dayaks have moved villages out of the jungle and built around these missionary airstrips, their only viable connection to the outside world. Long Layu is home to maybe one thousand Dayak, living in stilt houses around their rice fields, the Sunghai Kuyur and the airstrip. The people are self-sufficient, they have to be. They grow excellent organic rice in reds, blacks and whites. They fish and hunt from the surrounding jungles, and they grow fruits and vegetables like cassava and banana. The life is simple and very much in tune with the surrounding nature. The villages function as a unit, and we get a glimpse into how humans can live together in harmony.

As I sit on the front porch of my home stay, I marvel at the passage of time here. Schedules are set on the activities of the day and with the light of the sun. There is mealtime and work time. There is rainy season and dry season. There are fruit and honey seasons. You commute on the river or through walking to the jungle or fields. Days and weeks flow by. No one needs a timepiece. It’s the kind of tranquility that seeps into your soul.

The cicadas are interrupted occasionally by the hum of the plane. Everyone can hear it coming from minutes away, and most of the village turns out to watch the bouncy landing. Boxes of sugar and coffee, noodles and rice are offloaded, and other goods and people get on. The plane is out of sight and sound in ten minutes more, and once again the aura of the jungle settles over the village. You can hear your heartbeat, and then the insects rev up again, and you try to adjust your own frequency.

Beyond the borders of the village lie acres of jungle, laced with hunting and commuter trails to neighboring villages. We hiked south from Long Layu, in a loop to Long Rungan, and Binawang, staying in the villages overnight. The locals were great hosts, and with the help of our guide Phillip from Long Layu, we entertained conversations on world politics, philosophy, and just the common plight of humans in general. The cool evenings would begin with a bowl of rice and jungle fern, or palm heart, and maybe some cassava leaves. Then we would drink coffee and eat cassava or rice krupuk and get deep into conversation. Before bed, I would gaze at the canopy of stars, so brilliant in this light free zone of the world.

The most lush and energetic jungle surrounded the Batu Sichen, Honey Rock. This is a forty-meter high limestone outcrop, where the locals gather honey in season. The beauty and energy of this place cannot be put into words, but if you want to know if the Earth is alive, you can know it here.

We went in search of the last remaining vast tracts of rainforest in Indonesia and found it alive and pulsating in the hinterlands of the Krayan Hulu. If you want to see virgin rainforest with massive trees, go here. If you want to meet people untainted by societies present pollution, go here. If you want to see hornbills as you drift down a jungle river, go here. If you want time to stop, go here. If you want a glimpse into the meaning of life, go here.

Lose Yourself

2008-04-21T19:23:00.000-07:00

Did you ever notice how travelling is an expansive process? How many times have you heard: “A whole world of possibilities, “Find yourself”, even, “Lose yourself”. Travel provides new experiences and new opportunities to do things you normally don’t, see things you normally don’t, eat things you normally don’t, maybe that’s why its called a “foreign” experience. All of this novelty leads to an evolving, expansive, creative, space; and all of that room feels very big and lets you grow, relax, find yourself, and lose yourself. This is the cycle; new to old and old to new that is mirrored in all things.

Consider this – I recently returned from a sojourn to East Kalimantan. I didn’t know why I was going except to try and visit some of the last “virgin” Rainforest left in Indonesia. Naturally I had a little planning to do since this was not an area I could just walk out of the airport and jump a taxi to arrive. This is the part of travel where the expansion begins. I had this kernel of an idea, a thought for a trip, and suddenly I am on the playing field of the imagination, because it is all new to me. The opportunities become endless once you begin to look. This can be overwhelming and stressful because you realize you can’t control all of the variables no matter how much you invest. You might miss the MAF missionary fight into the jungle because they only fly on Tuesdays and Thursdays. There might not even be a flight because they are out of fuel, or the plane may be grounded due to towering rainy season thunderheads. And these are just the things that cross your mind. What about all the other options that you don’t even think of because you are not even aware of them as possibilities. That is travel expanding. The relaxing part comes when you realize that you have no control, and you just start to go with the flow. That is also travel expanding, and the completion of the cycle, new to old to new again that your body and mind spin through on your trip. It feels like we already took a ten-hour bus ride and we haven’t even left the station. So, let’s GO!

I walk off the plane or boat, and it’s a totally “new” world, even if I have seen the video already. New sights, smells, sounds, and languages - just the pure physical reality id different than anything I have ever seen. Yes, cities are cities, and jungles are jungles, but only on the surface. Dive in, and the world expands exponentially. You can take a taxi, or and angkot, or walk. You can stay in a 5-star or a loseman. You can eat from a street cart or a warung. And you can go anywhere from there. By boat, plane, walk, bike, hike, to jungle, ocean, gunung, city, sunghai. And the people are all new - Dayak, Tarakanian, Paupauin, Indonesian, ex-pat Bule, every single one of them a new face in the sea of six billion plus that I never even dreamed of before. Travel obeys fractal laws where you enter an endless maze that only gets deeper and wider the more you explore. But on the surface, a Hyatt is a Hyatt, and a warung is a warung, and a becak driver is a becak driver. Its funny like that – it is all the same, but it’s all different, and that cycle just keeps spinning. Travel is an experience in this paradox, to be experienced, not figured out. Wet and dry, new and old, big and small, city and jungle, 5 star and stilt house, ferry and ces, the examples are everywhere, and travel transports us back and forth between the ends of the spectrum. Travel reveals its fractal nature right here – from one angle it feels like pure motion and movement, but from another its just running in place. Travel is both movement and stillness, so beautifully wrapped together that the perception changes only as the perspective changes – like viewing a prism or hologram. Step to the left, it looks like Indonesia, step right and it looks like someplace else, and no matter how many times we go back and forth, we always find ourselves, or lose ourselves, somewhere in the center.

Same Same but Different

2008-03-18T18:58:00.000-07:00

“Same same, but different.” How many times have you heard it? How many times does it make us laugh? You are standing in the morning fog at the government bus stand in Manali at 4am. Its cold, and you haven’t found chai yet. All you want to know is if there is still a bus, is the pass snowed in? Is this bus going to Leh? “Yes” is the answer you get, maybe even a “no problem” suffixed. What you don’t learn that you need to make four changes, stay overnight at 5000m in a tent, and that there is no food available because the herder’s hut on the pass is already closed for the season. But alas, that was not the information that you asked for with your simple question. The ticket wallah is not clairvoyant, or is he? You do catch strange twinkle in his eye.

Can I rent a jeep in town? “No” is what you hear, but you really can if you get 3 forms signed by three different officials in three different buildings 3 kilometers apart as long as you don’t’ catch one of them on a tea break. Is the pass open? “Not possible”…..but surely only locals would want to use that dangerous snow covered pass. So your frustration grows as you try to decipher the riddle; is the answer “Yes”, or No? You are sure they mean different things, but somehow they seem to be the same.

“Same same, but different.” You see it on t-shirts in Banglamphu, you hear it on the train to Goa, and then you laugh about that silly phrase as you tell your friends of your travels back home. It’s the classic mix of language barrier, culture barrier, and information barrier that is so common to traveling, and it is translated universally as: “same same, but different.” Which curry is not spicy? Which is vegetarian? Is that parantha stuffed with potatoes or onions? You may hear the answer “same, same” to any of these, but surely they are different, unless you cannot even trust your senses anymore.

The more you travel, the more you begin to hear this phrase’s nuances. You may even begin to see that it actually is a koan, a nugget of philosophy so powerful, yet so simple, that it remains well disguised. And, since it is usually attributed to originating in India, what better place to provide a hidden guru.

“Same same, but different.” Are we all the same? Not really the same personality, not the same skin color, not the same job, not the same tastes or desires. But we do all share some commonality as humans, and as souls. Are we really that different? We all want a warm meal, a nice house, and someone to care about us. We are all wandering this world, in a common human plight, fighting our fears, and revealing our happiness. So no matter who you are, you are here, and you are human. That is same same, not so different different.

Does it really matter what you did on vacation, or at work, or in this lifetime – well, of course on one level it does – our actions have cause and effect, and we can hurt and love, and lie and be true. We can go to medical school, or live in a cave, or farm the land, or become a monk. And yes, these are very different lives on a certain level. But if we step back, and look at this through our time compression goggles, it all gets a little fuzzy, at the same time getting clearer. (Those are magic goggles) If we are all really the SAME, which ultimately most traditions agree on, then all theses differences are merely illusions, distracting us from our enlightenment. Karma is going on as we are all going on, like a yoyo, up and down and up and down, like breathing. If we look at it from duality, it all appears different – night and day, right and wrong, good and evil, you and me. If we look from unity, it all becomes the same.

Same same, but different – Different different, but same.

The Road To Hana

2008-01-10T00:16:00.001-08:00

It is little wonder that the road to Hana is touted as a must “do” trip on the island of Maui. Fifty miles of single lane blacktop wind along the northeast coast, dipping in and out of valleys, skirting waterfalls, blue water vistas, and black sand beaches. The number of tourists, rented mustangs, and first worldness, decrease exponentially as you approach the tiny hamlet of Hana. You are wise to drive slowly on the twisting roads and let the local pick-ups rumble by. This part of Maui gets a lot of rain, and the most of the way the rainforest is dripping. There are plenty of diversions along the way: beaches, hikes, waterfalls, fruit stands, museums, and such. But as usual, the experience is in the journey. As you head east, the modern world fades behind you, and you enter the lost world of aloha, the rural island spirit that is both seductive and mysterious. Near Hana begins a world where people are people, living off the land, looking out for each other, waving hi with a smile, picking sweet liliko'i in the jungle. Its not the world you came from, its different there – and after a few days, if you are lucky enough to spend the time, you will notice the pulse of life slowing down so you can hear its beat. The air is rich with scents, orchids drip off the trees, tasty guava and coconuts abound, and rainbows touch the sea. In season, the whales even come to visit, and play in the azure waters just offshore. Luscious waterfalls pour off the mountains into beautiful jungle pools that trip down to the beaches. Sound like paradise – it’s a place that time forgot, no Wal-Mart, no McDonalds, No Starbucks, no malls, no cell phones – just the quiet spirit of land staring you in the face. Its quite a feeling, and not one that comes lightly, you need to slow down and spend some time here to tune into it. Pass through Hana, and the Hasegawa general store, your one stop shop for everything from spam musubi to plumbing supplies, and keep going past the celebrity mansions, well hidden off the road, and you enter the heart of the place. Open ranches roll to the sea, fresh breezes move the palms gently, and yes, the rainbows keep coming. Swim in the pools of Oheo Gulch, and hike up the river to the beautiful falls, while you hunt for yellow guavas. You can even camp for free at the coastal campground of Haleakala National Park, and watch sunrise over Mauna Kea. If you realize you want to go back to the hustle and bustle of life, pinch yourself a couple of times, and jump in the cool river, then start the journey back to civilization. As you travel back, and your senses are flooded with the over stimulation of our modern world, you will realize that you occupied a different time and space out there, and that it was indeed beautiful

Saipan - Island of Dreams

2007-12-07T08:47:00.000-08:00

Imagine a place surrounded by ocean as far as the eye can see. Some days it is black and glassy, some days it is frothy and cobalt, sometimes gin clear, and others, some shade of crystalline turquoise. Then picture a 50 square mile rock draped in rich, tropical green, that you are looking out from. You cannot see any distant shores, only horizon. Mainland Asia lies over one thousand miles to the west. To the east, scattered pinpoints of northern Micronesia, and then open water until Hawaii. This is Saipan – island of dreams.

Floating way out in the western Pacific, the island has endured a tumultuous history. Coveted at times for its slaves and farmers, sugarcane and coffee, runways and radios, white sands and blue waters, the island survives. In 1972 it was voted to commonwealth status. A commonwealth may have a definition, but the reality is more nebulous. Saipan today is floating in a dream, hard to define, attracting a collection of drifters and dreamers, while the indigenous people work to reclaim their homeland and culture from the plunders of the past. The population is a melting pot, consisting in roughly descending order of Chamorro/Carolinian, Filipino, Japanese, Chinese American/Canadian, Korean, Russian, Bangladeshi, Nepali, and Thai.

It is an island culture full of bananas, papayas, and mangoes, big rats and wild dogs. There is sushi flown in from Japan, local tuna sushi, and SPAM sushi. There are deserted beaches and luxury golf courses. There is a big Hyatt hotel where people take refuge from typhoons, and there are tin roofed shacks that blow away. There are nightclubs and strip clubs, and my yard has pigs and chickens wandering through it. There is even one of the tastiest Thai restaurants in the world. You can function pretty well without shoes or even a shirt, and only get rare glimpses of neckties on the misplaced missionaries. There are betel nut stains, and a case of Budweiser cans cost 24USD, and at some point, Saipan drank the most of it per capita in the world. There is poverty with some people struggling to eat, and there are riches, mansions, welfare and corruption.

The island is a microcosm of the world at large, everything is happening, and nothing is. When you stare out at the lagoon after a long day, or watch another amazing sunset, all of the negatives seem to fade like a bad dream. And when you return from the outside world, after a long flight, like going to outer space and back through re-entry - you step out of the airport, the tropical humidity envelops you like a warm blanket, and the songs of the night insects are the loudest sounds you hear.

Suspended in a dream, the clouds float by on the trade winds, and the ocean sparkles. This is the island of dreams; full of people dreaming – living their dream, escaping their dream, realizing their dream, deferring their dream, lost in their dream, searching their dreams, dreaming big, dreaming small, or not even aware of their dreams at all. When you sail away, the island dwindles to a speck in the sea, and you wonder if it ever existed. There is a small sand and coconut palm islet in the lagoon, and when you stand on its fluffy, white sand beach, you can’t help but feel as if you are in a dream. When you wander into the jungle, and realize you are lost, an eerie dreamlike quality hangs in the still air. There are spirits everywhere in Saipan, all you need to do is take a walk in the moonlight and you will find them.

Like a dream, sometimes a lot of things happen, sometimes nothing does, and when you wake up, you never are quite sure what was real and what was dream –and still sometimes, you are not even sure if you are even stopped dreaming.

The Magic Island

2007-12-03T21:42:00.000-08:00

If you are seeking true magic, you need not look further than the once and future popular Bali. Lying just below the equator, the Indonesian island of Bali assaults the senses with dazzling arrays of color, smells, foods, and spirits. Look once and it's a tourist hot spot, replete with sunburns, Bintangs, beach-front villas, and perfect waves. Look again, and you aredeep in the animist jungle, face to face with monster-like deities and mystical temples. Or were you looking at a colorful Hindu funeral procession, or waking to prayer call from the neighborhood mosque? That is the magic of Bali. The moon looks different here, there are ylang-ylang trees aromating the air, and fried shallots stimulate the appetite on every
corner. You can drive from the heavily touristed and populated Kuta beach, through the more upscale beaches and shopping at Seminyak, then suddenly you are in the hectic bustle of Denpasar, then suddenly surrounded by quiet and
vibrantly green rice paddies, then warming yourself by an outdoor wood fire on the rim of a volcano, then lost on the back jungle roads, among wooden homesteads with outdoor kitchens, coconut palms, and you realize that time
has suddenly stopped. In Bali, if you are not paying attention, you can find yourself in ten places at once, or lose yourself in one place ten times over.

Bali has so many layers that the deeper you look, the more mystery you uncover. Magic here is staring you in the face and is hiding behind every corner. You find it in the exotic, and in the ordinary. Riding in a Denpasar bemo, sarong clad passengers grin with betel stained teeth, as the wafts of durian entice you. Or you may find yourself at midnight, entranced by the sounds of gamelan, surrounded by the surreal community temple, and thousands of fruit offerings. The volatile mix of animism, hinduism, and islam, on a volcanic tropical island, flanked by crystal turquoise waves, the shoreline dotted with temples, the air fragrant with incense and flowers - this is the recipe for magic. Head out to a secluded beach, a mountain jungle, or community temple, and immerse yourself - it is very intoxicating.

The Daikiretto

2007-11-15T18:16:00.000-08:00

Somewhere in the middle of Honshu, in Nagano prefecture, Japan, lies an amazing expanse of mountain wilderness. Thousands of acres of “wilderness” spread before you punctuated by countless granite peaks. In a country with the population density of Japan, this is indeed a blessing. I call it wilderness in quotes, because in Japanese style, it is dotted with elaborate mountain huts, cable cars, and has fixed protection bolted into the granite walls with the most daunting lines. Yet, standing atop Yarigatake at sunrise the day after a North Pacific low passed through, you feel as if you are at the doorstep of heaven. A sea of gray clouds spreads beneath you, barley touched with the pink of a new day. Black peaks, jutting through the cloudy blanket, mark the horizon and it is quiet, silent actually.

Jill and I hiked over these mountains, known collectively as the Japanese Alps, and into that mysterious and sacred world that hides in these islands. Just like the temple cedars that inspire silence, a walk into the Japanese backcountry transports you to a magical world. It is a world so peaceful and profound, that just sitting in it, you know truth. All questions are answered in that silence, and everything is beautiful. This is the world of Anime, of Shinto, and of Buddha.

Crossing these mountains is the ridgeline trail known as the Daikiretto. Depending on how you count, its 5 or 10 kilometers of ridge that crosses between Yarigatake and Hotakadake. Yet, this is no ordinary ridge. On either side there is wonderful exposure, valleys plummeting down thousands of feet, the bottoms often obscured by clouds. The trail, although bolted with ladders and chains to assist the unprepared over the hardest lines, is still mind numbing. Straight up and down incredible granite cliffs, it’s hard to pick the trail, even though it’s well marked with white maru’s. We were hiking with camping gear just to make it extra special. Every couple of hours or so, we encounter a mountain hut, usually rustic and wooden, but replete with chocolate, Asahi, and even camp style cafeterias. These huts were like apparitions, forgotten as soon as they were behind us. Sitting in camp, watching the alpenglow color the clouds orange and red, and the stars blinking on in sheet of purple, devouring a bowl of instant ramen, you knew it was good. In a warm sleeping bag I dreamed of the pine trees and the granite vistas and revisited the silence. The next day, we down climbed a large avalanche chute, slowly re-entering this world. There were birds singing, the sun was warming little granite outcroppings, and the river was collecting itself from the runoff channels. Flowers were bright blue and yellow, and a few maples were getting an early start into fall. Eventually we came out to the trailhead, suddenly stepping into a quaint little town. Already the memory of that place began to fade like a wonderful dream. If it weren’t for the smiling, moss covered Buddha statue offering a wooden drinking ladle, we would have wondered if it even really existed at all.