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that beer to be had other than someone carrying it from Khandbari on his back. I had not seen, so far, animals put to this use. We had just started to enjoy how nice it was to sit with a beer in the hot sun after a day of walking up when, suddenly, without warning, it turned cold and windy and rain started to fall. It was as if, suddenly, we were in another day altogether, another day in another season. We moved into the shop where we had bought the beer and sat near a fire that seemed to have been burning all along, as if the people there knew that no matter how hot it got outside, eventually a fire would always be needed inside.
    Two things happened as I was sitting inside by the fire drinking my beer: A beautiful woman, with naturally glossed, long black hair, saw my own braided-into-cornrow hair and she found it so appealing that she came and sat beside me to touch my hair. She picked up my long plaits and turned them over and over, and using gestures, she asked if I could make her own hair look like mine. I did not know how to tell her that my hairdo, which she liked so much, was made possible by weaving into my own hair the real hair of a woman from a part of the world that was quite like her own. And then when the rain came, Dan had gone to make sure that all our things were protected from getting wet. When he returned, I noticed a big, dull maroon-colored spot on his calf. I thought it was a peculiar bruise, but it was a leech enjoying life on Dan’s leg. We all shuddered, Nepalese and visitors alike, with varying intensity, at the sight of it.
    The rain continued through dinner. Our dining tent leaked. We sat at our table, set with knife, fork, spoon, and paper napkin, and kept shifting around to avoid the water coming through our tent, eating by candlelight when from outside came the sounds of digging; it was our Sherpas making trenches that would guide the water away from our sleeping tents. It was so kind, so considerate. I had not thought of the possibility of drowning in my sleeping bag while traveling in the Himalaya.
    That next morning (it was the eighth of October, a Tuesday, but it had no meaning for me, no usual meaning, it was another day), we were woken up with a cup of tea. After washing, eating breakfast, and packing up, we were off at seven-thirty. It was eighty-nine degrees Fahrenheit as we started out and the sky overhead was that magical blue innocent of clouds, and clear, though over in the distance, a thick milk-white substance—clouds—continued to hide Makalu from my sight. A mile or so on, I would round a bend, and unless I came this way again, I would have missed my chance to see a natural wonder of the world, a wonder I had not known of before. It was then I had a new feeling, a feeling I had never had before. It was something like fear, but I was not actually afraid; it was something like alienation, but I didn’t feel apart from the immediate world around me or apart from my friends, Dan and Sue and Bleddyn. I had been away from my home less than a week, I had two children, I could see their faces in my mind’s eye, I had come on this journey all because of the love of my garden. The garden, indeed, for here was Dan furiously trying to photograph a bundle of fodder a man was carrying on his back. The fodder turned out to be Viburnum cylindricum, a plant he treasures in his garden in Kingston, Washington. It is a beautiful Viburnum, with lance-shaped leaves that are deeply veined and white flowers loosely clustered together. It would be too tender for me to grow in Vermont but right for his climate. Dan followed the man for a little while, clicking away with his camera, recording this fact: a garden treasure for him is animal fodder in its native land.
    Our porters had been late with our luggage the day before and so when we got to our campsite in Chichila we couldn’t change out of hiking clothes right away, and that had caused some irritation and the beginning of our