This is the place where elevation invented stairs. Several prototypes can be found abandoned in the forest. Be careful not only where you walk but how.
Elevation in these parts has a reputation for being a bit unruly.
This is the place where treeline marks its territory.
While typically benign, it’s reported that the mark can cause dizziness and disorientation to those unfamiliar.
This is the place where the Yeti used to keep her winter home, her welcome mat made from trekker’s discarded fleece.
Three trails converge at this place.
One goes east for four hours to a place where they keep the nearest electricity.
Another wanders north, ending at Chomolungma, which you better know as Everest.
The third runs west to a rather famous monastery.
Here, marooned is a noun.
Here, home is a verb.
Here, love is an adjective.
In 1977, Sir Ed Hillary built a school here, and when it started falling apart, he asked me to fix it.
I’m not done yet.
In early 2000, the political situation here deteriorated, a royal family’s garishness becoming more than many could bear.
Shortly thereafter, people from other regions began arriving here, wearing clothes locals found strange.
No robes, or woolen trousers, the newcomers wore denim pants, militant green under black patches, big pockets, each one stuffed full and buttoned closed, with pant legs tucked into leather boots laced to their knees.
Out of one of those pockets, a man pulled a little red book made famous by a dead Chairman from the country to the North. He read passages that were repeated by people who never learned to read on their own.
Slogans were painted on walls.
On the walls of my school, the one Hillary built, they wrote “YOU WILL LEARN NOTHING HERE,” in Mao’s fabulous red.
We tore that wall down.
A boy, so young that he would have been in school if he was from this place, jumped up on the Stupa, his boots blackening its seraphic white.
“Mao says set up in hills,” he screamed, “organize in the forest. Strike the city. Return and hide in peasant farms!”
They chose hills above this place.
He spoke in English.
He spoke in Chinese.
He spoke in Hindi.
The people listened in Sherpa.
At the Cheese Factory, women gossiped over tea.
“They walk around the Chorten the wrong way.”
“They refuse to eat with Monks.”
“I hear they have guns.”
23 November 2001, 2500 Maoists trolled out of the forest, gathering at the spot where trails join. Tart smells rose from apples being loaded into early winter storage. Kids stained school uniform knees ocher with mud, urgently pulling potatoes that were not yet ripe.
On a normal day, I would have made a big deal about the stains, shaking my head in some crazy way I hoped would make an impression, telling the kids to take better care.
“Papa told me to pull the potatoes before school, Don Dai.”
It was not a normal day.
This is the place, Ringmu, Nepal, where the Maoists started marching. My school was the first place they stopped. From there, they marched to Phaplu, surrounding offices, two banks, and the Army Outpost. They attacked the airport, destroying its famous concave dirt runway. They killed the District Chief, thirty-one police, five village elders, and two Monks who refused to move out of the way.
That afternoon, the Yeti packed her bags, shuttered her widows, and slipped out the back. I’ve heard she’s been spotted sipping Barolo at an outdoor cafe in Courmayeur, gazing dreamingly at the Grand Pilier d’Angle. I hope she is happy.
Boys over 12 disappeared.
Girls the trolls called pretty were carried away, never to return. Years later, I saw one working the street outside a Bangkok hotel. Her bare arms were scarred at the wrists, her veins ripe with needle marks, and though I first met her the day after she was born, and had known her most of her life, that day she no longer knew me.
Other girls were taken to the forest. There they learned the word ‘no’ has no meaning.
That morning, I counted 150 students at Morning Song. We were singing Kookaburra when the Maoists arrived.
Yesterday, 10 voices sang.
