Four Signs at Thukla Pass
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Trekking up Thukla Pass at Sagarmatha National Park in Nepal, we crest a hill laced with fluttering prayer flags.
This is not unusual. Nor are the rock cairns, nor the stacked stone fences reminiscent of the Irish countryside. What is unexpected are the concrete and stone memorials that rise shoulder-level and higher. This site is filled with memorials for those who have died on Everest.
Inscriptions with names and dates are present in an array of languages. The math hits close to home; it’s sobering to see your own birth year followed by a number not far removed from the one you wrote on your entry visa. Many plaques ask for the remembered to rest in the arms of the Chomolungma, Goddess Mother of the World (as Everest is sometimes called), and requests for spirits to live on. One in particular stood out - that the departed “slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.”
I step carefully among the structures, clasp my hands behind my back, and breathe shallowly as if those noises would signal disrespect for those remembered, but not buried, here. Everest is not visible but some of their bodies remain up there where they worked so hard to climb. The mountain itself needs no monument - its presence surpasses the visual.
After a time, the weight of this place lays me down in the nearby field of cairns. The rocks are so carefully balanced that only a fingers width of each stone is touching the next. How precarious is their position, and mine. And everyone who stands here now. And stood here then.
I breathe deep. The air is spare, but for once, my ribs aren’t expanding from exertion. Not the physical kind, anyway.
The thinnest of clouds passes overhead. My mind is tousled from days at unaccustomed altitude and feels fabricated of that same mist. They are familiars, my thoughts and the wisps of vapor above. I used to watch clouds as a child, but no longer notice when they rearrange themselves from rabbits to dragons.
I tilt my eyes toward the horizon to find that those quick-dissolving clouds are streaming up from the leeward side of an iconic triangular Himalayan peak. The mountains are making their own weather and the vapor is unfurling into the same air that hovers over me and this patch of alpine land. This stretch of earth holds a remnant of the souls of people who tread the same trail as my friends and I.
“I have followed the same path. I’ve made my way from the winding valley below. ”
Pieces of the lost mountaineers’ spirits are here, and a piece of my mind is too. The clouds capture both, then swirl and scatter so slowly that with an assist from the sun, the leftover membrane of vapor turns into a faint rainbow. There’s a fourth component that can’t be seen, which is the air that contains the wishes passed through the prayer flags.
I am made of those messages too. And I am made of the clouds that formed, dissipated, and were built again as they were ushered up the valley and released from a granite ramp into the sky.
I have also taken as many forms as that cloud because I am the pieces of myself as a joyful child, a terrified teenager, a reticent young woman, a regretful middle ager, and someone who continues to grow forward regardless. I’ve also followed the same path as that cloud, making my way up from the winding valley below.
In this crescent of reminiscence, the cloud, the souls, the blessings, and I met for an instant of understanding. May those at Thukla Pass rest deeply in view of the mountains they came here to be among. May the clouds form as they wish and then let go. May blessings pass through flags both new and tattered and settle wherever they are needed most.
As for me, may I be granted the ability to recognize the times when air and water and souls and familiars overlap for a single, beautiful, sunny moment.
Inspired by events at the Chukpi Lhara memorial at Thukla Pass, Sagarmatha National Park, Nepal
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