What was the catalyst that started you on this writing adventure?
After my husband’s death, adrift and wallowing in grief, I struggled to haul myself out of despair. In so doing, I rediscovered travel as a means of escape from grinding misery. The resulting adventures led to writing. In my first book, Pomegranates at 4800 Metres – Journeying at Home and Away, I describe the catalyst that ignited my writing journey:
In the dim shadows, between the door and the end of my bed, I spy a heap of yak wool blankets. I reach out and retrieve one, prying it from the frozen floor. It’s stiff with damp and cold and heavy with filth, but I heave it onto my sleeping bag then slide under the pile. This feels a little better. I take comfort that no bed bugs, fleas or other nasty vermin could be alive in this frigid place.
My body tries to sleep. High-altitude hallucinatory dreams blur with reality. My husband Mike comes into the room, knocking over my pack with his entry.
“Mike! You’re alive!” I cry out.
“No, sorry it’s just me. Bloody cold out there,” replies English Pete.
I peer at my roommate as he replaces my pack against the door. We’d met yesterday. He needed a bed, so I offered him the second in this hovel. “Sorry to wake you,” he adds, as he pulls his sleeping bag over his fully-clothed body.
“No worries,” I answer, unaware I have been asleep. I try to return to that state, but now painfully lonely, I crave Mike’s company. Missing him in every conceivable way, tears leak and my hand burrows through layers of clothes to the heart-shaped pendant I wear. My thumb strokes its smooth surface beneath which a few of Mike’s ashes shelter, warm against my skin. My mind drifts and I am doing avalanche control with my cohorts on Ski Patrol. My legs tangle in deep snow as I struggle to ski away from an explosive I’ve just tossed. I wake to the relief that I am really just freezing in my sleeping bag on a mountain in Nepal.
As the night creeps towards dawn, I entertain myself with memories of funny things that have happened in my life. Suddenly I’m dumping out of my kayak in surf off Vargas Island. I wake, struggling to the surface. As I catch my breath, the icy water of my dream is replaced by the real cold of this hovel. My thoughts continue to wander, seeking escape from the night’s misery. The idea of writing these tales germinates.
I wake again laughing at the antics of my sons, sneaking beers from our campsite cooler. I lose the joy of my dream-laugh when I try to take a sip from my water bottle. My bare hand sticks to the metal, the contents a lump of ice. I lie down again and try to forget my thirst. Drifting in and out of confused sleep, I further contemplate the idea of writing a book.
Tendi and Tsheri burst in at four in the morning. “Come quickly, we must go. It’s not snowing.”
I am barely out of my sleeping bag when they are stuffing it and my other paraphernalia into my pack. I shove my feet into frozen boots and hobble after their retreating backs. Up at the dining room, we are greeted by snoring porters and guides who are bedded down all over the floor.
“Is this where you slept?” I ask.
“Yes, but it is too noisy to sleep,” Tendi replies with his usual good humour.
They have rustled up some porridge for breakfast. Within minutes we are out the door and setting off under a starlit sky, headlamps illuminating our footsteps through the fresh snow.
“I am going to write a book,” I say to Tendi. “I think, first, we must go over the pass and down,” he responds.
Later in the day, the pass successfully crossed, I’m journaling while sipping a beer and
enjoying the warm guesthouse in Mucktinath. At a comparatively low 3710 metres above sea level, this is the most comfortable place we’ve stayed in a week. Tendi approaches and sits watching me.
“Are you writing your book now?”
I think for a moment. “Yes, Tendi, I am. This is the beginning, and I will call it Pomegranates at 4800 Metres.”
He smiles. “This is good name.”
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