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Jim Klobuchar: My Friend, My Sherpa from Shangri-La

 A friend phoned the other day with news from a land which the two of us whimsically call Shangri La. It was the mythical place of towering snow mountains and exotic green valleys where goodness reigned; and the people were blessed with long and quiet lives of innocence and mutual respect, with no wars and no bank overdrafts.
      The land of Nepal is no such paragon. It is one of the poorest countries on earth, squeezed now between the powerhouses of China and India with scant natural resources except for the magnificent Himalayas, with their lofty silver summits and forests of rhododendrons that inspired the fictional tale of Shangri La.
      Among the visitors who come to Nepal each spring are hundreds of climbers and trekkers who invest their energies either in high altitude mountaineering or in hikes that lift them thousands of feet into incredible scenes of high altitude fir forests, glaciers and snow summits.
      I’ve been one of those. Over time Nepal has become part of my life, not so much because I have climbed there and escorted trekking friends there but because of the admiration and trust I’ve found in the Sherpa companions with whom I’ve walked; that and their fundamental decency. 
       One of my trekking partners in Minneapolis called with news that a Sherpa guide of the mountain village of Phortse, who had led my trekking parities for more than 20 years, had been diagnosed with a potentially fatal disease by doctors in the capital city of Kathmandu. They were said to have suggested chemotherapy and other treatments that might be available to him.
       “They said he declined. I don’t know if it’s his Buddhist faith or he just doesn’t want to stretch things out for his family,” my friend said. 
A few minutes later I fumbled fruitlessly with my cell phone, knowing it couldn’t carry to Nepal and a mountain slope nearly three miles in the sky beneath the summits of Everest, Lhotse, Ama Dablam and Themserku. He had built a little tourist lodge there, his home village, where my trekking groups often overnighted. He had built it with his guide money after raising a family of six children. The oldest had become a Buddhist monk in the historic monastery of Thangboche. One of the youngest, is now a high altitude Sherpa guide and load carrier who has reached the summit of Everest at least 15 times.
        But his dad is old school Sherpa, still guiding beyond the age of 60. We met in the years when he had just graduated into the role of lead guide and not completely comfortable with it because of his uneasy grappling with the English language. In the years when he was apprenticing, the Sherpa kids rarely went beyond a few years in grade school, some of it in the schools built by Sir Edmund Hillary of New Zealand in gratitude for the fame he acquired being the first to reach the 29,000 foot summit of Mt. Everest with Tenzing Norgay in 1953.    So while today’s modern Sherpa guides are relatively fluent in English—which opens them to opportunities and relationships their forebears lacked—my friend had no such ease of access.
          But we became genuine pals. I admired the care he took with those in my groups who were intimidated by the altitude or the sound of a distant avalanche. He was a simple man, totally committed to the safety of those he led, and a man of devotion in his Buddhism. Often we walked together. He would recite while touching each bead of what Catholics would call a rosary. And after a time, stirred by the joy of the trail and the immensity of the Himalayan geography, I would join him with an amusement he understood, having memorized the words he recited each time he touched another bead. All of this was done in good will and fraternity. And after awhile we would recite together, “Ohm mani padme hum.” In this form of Buddhism from the Sanskrit, the prayer seeks a kind of purification through generosity and patience. It amused him to hear me joining in his chant but he understood it was being offered respectfully.
      We were less guide- and- trekker than two friends drawn from separate cultures and religious practice. By now I know his family and he knows our vulnerabilities; also out habits and our observances. A few years ago we woke up to breakfast on the trail on what we would call Easter morning and found little woven baskets containing ribbons of plastic grass filled with candy eggs. A few years later one of my trekkers organized a secret birthday party for me in the dining tent. My friend the Sherpa got wind of it and, worried that his Sherpa hosts might commit some kind of high altitude faux pas, he rattled my tent before dinner. Realizing he was blowing the cover of the party schemers he asked, “Jeem. “where can I find 82 candles?”
     I told him one medium size candle would probably do the trick.
     He has spent a lifetime of service to men and women from parts of the world where luxury, although declining, is still available on a scale he couldn’t imagine. His younger Sherpa partners are now much better educated than he is. But there is a sense of welcome among the elders of the Sherpa clans that I cherish. I discovered it years ago when I learned there is something more in that extraordinary land than the might of its mountains reaching five miles into stratosphere. We were hiking in the Annapurna Range through the refracted light of a forest of sycamores and hanging moss. The late afternoon wind and swaying trees created eerie sounds, secret moans and creakings. In my childhood I would have imagined these as sounds of a witches’ forest. But in the Himalaya this was not the domain of the wicked queen. Annapurna ruled here, the goddess nurture and harvests in the natives’ observances. Some of the trekkers felt uneasy.
       But the reality I remember most vividly from that forest was a Sherpa guide named Ang Nima, in his 40s then, a man who years before had refused to leave the bodies of four climbers struck by an avalanche. He stayed through the freezing night, praying his mantras, keeping his vigil, faithful to his commitment. He was a quiet little man walking the trail with us, making himself useful. As we neared camp, close to his village home, he disappeared into the forest and emerged a few minutes later, his brown face in a smile. In his hand he held three wild orchids, and gave one to each of the three women in our party. It was a bouquet; a gift of the forest that said, “this is from my house to you.”
         One of the women wept. As I remember, so did I.

About Jim Klobuchar:

In 45 years of daily journalism, Jim Klobuchar’s coverage ranged from presidential campaigns to a trash collector’s ball. He has written from the floor of a tent in the middle of Alaska, from helicopters, from the Alps and from the edge of a sand trap. He was invited to lunch by royalty and to a fist fight by the late Minnesota Viking football coach, Norm Van Brocklin. He wrote a popular column for the Minneapolis Star Tribune for 30 years and has authored 23 books. Retiring as a columnist in 1996, he contributes to Ecumen’s “Changing Aging” blog, MinnPost.com and the Christian Science Monitor. He also leads trips around the world and an annual bike trip across Northern Minnesota. He’s climbed the Matterhorn in the Alps 8 times and has ridden his bike around Lake Superior. He’s also the proud father of two daughters, including Minnesota's senior U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar. 

by origineight