Tomorrow I hop on a plane for the first significant trip I've taken--distance wise--since my flight here last July. For the first time since then, I'm leaving the country that's about the size of my home state. For the first time since then I'm in reasonable shape to do so. Still, it's appalling to consider that the lazy bag of bones I've become is going to Nepal. How contrary to everything!
But how do I pass up the opportunity?
Sure, my legs are twiggy and my ribs still cast shadows. But I want this to happen.
It's not going home, not the sort of ease and respite, the succor and comfort i've been dreaming of since, oh, July, but then again, going home would be more drama and strife than I care to encounter (from my
perspective, weighing 90 pounds and being able to walk up a staircase without lugging the rails is a good thing and improvement. Different story for those who knew my pre-Thai self).
It's going to the mountains. The biggest mountains in the world. And it's hiking from hut to hut with a bag as light and variable as my plans. Without my photo gear, the pack weight is just about double the
pack's empty weight. With the gear it must weigh more than ten pounds.
Granted, cold weather gear from Nepal will weigh rather more than my super-light 800fill down sleeping bag, but somehow I don't shy from such weight like I would were I packing it here. And at the end of the trip, the heaviest things--and the most important (boots n bag n probably cold weather gear)-- will get shipped stateside to save them from moldering through the tropics. And by the time I get back, maybe
the voices that tell me what I'm doing will have some sense of what that might be.
And wouldn't that be an exciting change.
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| Hardly any ribs showing through the new Thailand souvenir tee |
Sent from Speedy the ipod.
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