A Single Connection 

Nepal. Halfway around the world. The Annapurna Circuit.  7 days in and 4 days walk from any road. Its easy to detach from the world back home. Tom and I often have long periods of silence throughout the day. We’re both okay with it, we’re doing the same thing. Detaching. When we do talk, I steer conversations away from anything outside of Nepal. Complete isolation from what my world has been up until this day, until this next footstep. A single piece of paper in an envelope and a small laminated card with a poem written on it are the only things I choose to keep me connected. The card was a gift from my parents, but the letter is not something I brought intentionally; it was delicately placed in my pack somewhere in Los Angeles, 10000 miles away. Every night is the same. The last thing I do before I go to sleep is retrieve this envelope from my pack, and the card from my makeshift wallet. These things tell me that I have made a difference in someone’s life. That I had brought happiness. That I had been appreciated. That someone felt their life will be missing something while I’m gone. The undertones in the letter compliment the atmosphere of the Himalaya. I specifically remember one night, transferring my eyes back and forth between this letter and Manaslu, a 27000 foot Himalayan giant, framed within the teahouse window and shimmering against a deep blue night sky. I soaked it in. It did not help me realize the importance of people in my life, that was something I feel that I have come to appreciate in recent years. But it did remind me of the unimportance of everything else, something that can be easily forgotten in the business of normal life, or even in the dreams of escaping that business. I had much to look forward to.