Big Top Bop...

Forest around Prince Tsangma's ruin

Cool Flower

Hands Across the Himalayas

Throwing Stones

Western View of Trashigang Area

Shampula and Dagme chu, in evening light

Sunset from Tsenkharla

Thursday June 13, 6:30 P.M

We have had a spell of sublime weather with warm sunshine spreading joyful nutrients on everyone and everything. A deep blue sky and puffy cloud formations that encourage the imagination to make forms and assign identities, I see this or I see that. Why can’t animals reside in the clouds or clouds in the animals just like the clouded leopard? Water is in everything including in those mountains that dance when no one is watching. It is a bluebird day as skiers would have it, or as Jonathan said of his bus trip from Wamrang to Yangtse proclaiming his journey was like a Disney Movie, “Leaves were waiving to me and saying hi Jon!” Well I can relate to that remark on an afternoon in middle June like this one. I didn’t make it far out of doors on my constitutional flopping in a grassy green terrace flooded with golden light overlooking Trashigang and Kanglung. The rays saturated each blade of grass in brilliant luminance and at that moment I wished to be a cow so to thoroughly enjoy that grass. I rolled about on it as it was the length of fare way turf and watched the billowing cloud formations wrangle in the sky.    

At school we read the Cherry Tree outside under a beautiful tree of our own. Sither an earthen girl was jubilant and barefoot as the boys threw grass at each other on the sly. The story takes place in the Indian Himalayan Foothills and as we read about a butterfly our very own butterfly fluttered by the students huddled in patterned gho and kira. (On a day warm as this I appreciate wearing slacks and a collared short sleeve shirt) The story is appropriate for their ability and can be easily related to the students own background which is a bonus. Before reading I had the students write and share about their experiences in the fields working alongside their family. I was talking with one class nine girl who lives in a tiny village with her brother on the Bhutan side of the border near the new Indian road. She hasn’t seen her mother or father (who live in the South) for five years and has been a boarder for three years. She transferred up from Kinney and now is acclimating at a new school. Can the reader imagine growing up at a boarding school away from the care of their family? They are a wholesome and hearty lot aren’t they? On the canal a group of primary students and some of my class seven kids were crouched in the shade of a pine playing a stone game where they toss stones into the air and catch them fast as they can. (They also play grassy sack with homemade balls of grass) Class seven is about the last time its proper for such games I’ve noticed.

Evening sun splashes Shampula washing out the border in dreamy light. At this exact place on the planet I find my essence somewhere among the hidden amulets and barren rivers bed. A hardscrabble existence on the fringe but a nice perk, the view is boundless!