Signs of the Season

Shakmasgogh's furry leaves have grown slowly and given flowers, so that now hillsides of rock that seemed bare are a blooming haze of purple stalks no more than a foot high.

Our boulder porch garden is aflame with poppies and flowers of many colors, and full with usu (cilantro) and dill.

The slopes to the West and North of Tar are revealed to be truly bare, as many unexpected high slopes turn green.  The great slide to the east of the village is flushed with green and purple, and its wall gives way in one valley where the walls of the peaks open.  Up this valley, the other day, a pair of wolves came straight for the herd I was minding, sitting quietly on the slope.  I heard rocks tumbling, dislodged by their descent from the mountain, then saw them, large canines, sleek and swift, reddish and gray, the one of them dark, with long muzzles.  I stood and shouted at them, and they stopped instantly.  One gave up immediately and headed across slope to the south.  The other waited, until I called again and then he too followed, leaving the herd in peace.

The umbu has given a second round of flowers from its continually growing, long leafy stalks.  It grows in the lowest areas of the rubble of the streams, and dominates where it takes hold, growing as a shrub to a height of ten feet.  The leaves smell rank, but the flowers are a delicate and lovely scent.  Its little green fruits have opened in some places, revealing seeds that are born on the wind.

Yellow, gold, or karpo "white" has come to the barley of Tar, as the plants slowly turn.

The rain, and the fear of the rain.  Flooding has hit villages, knocking out irrigation channels and even roads, weakening the foundations of houses.  The Indus has swelled nearly to the footbridge, at least six feet, and it tears by the gorge that leads up to Tar, brown and thick and strong.  Everyone agrees that this weather is strange, and didn't use to happen.  Barely and wheat are laying in the fields, still growing, still connected.  First in patches, now all of it, knocked down by wind and rain.  Roofs are dripping through, made of timbers, plant matter, and earth.  "We didn't have plastic tarps before," the villagers say.  That is unimaginable now -- everyone has them and needs them.  We're bringing a new one back from Leh today.  Everything inside would be dripped upon with water and the mud of the roofs.  "Ladakhi buildings are made of earth -- they fall down when it rains," says Sonam Tashi.  There is real fear around the rain here, and the sky continues to fill with darkened clouds and lightning.

We gave manure a third time to our gardens.  Potatoes are large and flowering.  Women give water every 3-5 days, fully flooding the fields.  The July sun is hot.

We had visitors: a young Swiss student, an English teacher working at a monastery for two months, who visited once before, met Caitlin, and came back to stay with us for a night just before she left the country.  A middle-aged college professor from LA now from Oakland, with whom we rebuilt a wall and had a lovely evening of singing, inside at our house, protected from a light rain.  A group of teenage travelers and their leaders, with whom we picnicked and pulled weeds for Ane Chomo in the morning.

And another group of young people around the age of twenty with three leaders, who stayed three nights in homestays in the village and worked with us.  Beautiful space opened with them for reflection on our experience here, and we both felt deeply heard and appreciated, as well as deeply listening to them and where they are in their lives' journeys.  One young man longs to stay in this place and says he will return for three or four months to work and learn Ladakhi here in Tar.  He should be back in a week or so, when his program ends, and I wouldn't count on it except his heart seems really strongly set.  We are so joyful to welcome such a hard-working and eloquent young person into the community.  He was concerned about being a burden, another mouth to feed, and his host mother's response to our question "He wants to stay and work" was utter nonchalance: "Tig rag," she said ("sounds good"), and went back to listening to the radio program.  "Las mangpo yod," she added, after a moment, "there's a lot of work."  He was overjoyed.  Harvest of alfalfa has begun, and we spent a day and a half harvesting barley already in Khaltse, which is lower elevation, with a daughter of the village and her family.  Harvest of Barley will start in about ten days, and the season will be full on plus many hired workers for a month and a half or two months, we figure.  If he does return his work will be much appreciated.  And we look forward so much to all we will learn in harvesting, curing, threshing, and winnowing in the next months.

This from Caitlin:

The valley changes, and changes again, every time I journey through it.  The aromatics send forth flowers, white, pink, mustard-golden.  Iskilling like lavender but more vivid in its color, tiny flowers on long stalks making a haze of indigo.  The apricots ripen; in Nurla they are ripe, and boxes line the streets in Leh.  Sun comes, hot and intense, and rain: five nights ago lightning as frequent and intense as I have ever seen it lit over the mountains for more than an hour before it opened into rain.  We had laid a bed in our garden near Abi Dolkar's house, camping in the village while the students were with us.  Returning from a late dinner, Abi met us outside.  She was distraught, fragile-looking without her goncha, head bare as I have rarely seen it.  "Where have you been?  I woke up and felt afraid," she told us.  "I've been saying prayers, made offering...you can't sleep out there!" she said to Jason.  "What if the stream rises?"  "Could it really come all the way up, into your garden?" he asked her.  "Of course it could, it takes fields, it takes people!" she insisted.  We slept inside that night, hearing the rain, the tenor of it changed by all it means in this place.

Harvest: Cutting Hay

     In the last week of July Ache Tsering called her parents in Tar from Khaltse, a short way west down the Indus valley. "We will harvest barley today-- please, come." Ama Dolkar had already gone to the mountain for wild onions, and Aba Stanzin was left looking after the animals. But we had told her at plowing-time that we would help and so, waking early to this message, we walked down the gorge and arrived mid-morning to the work.

     "The three months of autumn are yellower than gold," one of the folk songs promises.  We watched the green of summer come-- greener than turquoise, it had said-- and now, slowly, this next change arrives. The grain, ripening, was in the fields of Khaltse, fields become a patchwork of this bright barley and the wheat, still deep green. Off of the road as we arrived in town a large field was in process, many Nepali workers harvesting with great speed, bundling, carrying huge loads with ropes. A man with a rototiller came behind them, turning the soil again. The bazaar was busy, trucks and buses arriving and departing, fruit and vegetable stalls full, rich with things we had not seen yet: carrots, new potatoes. I felt longing to be home, safe in the high valley.

     A man in the bazaar closed his shop for a moment to lead us to Ache Tsering's house. She and her husband Phuntsok had just finished eating-- they set food for us again, quickly, apologizing that it was bought bread and not home-made. "Tus ma tob," Ache said. "I couldn't find time." There is more gasoline in Khaltse, and I think that things move faster because of it. She made tea to carry, filled a cloth bag with sngampe, and we went together to the field. They told us that the barley had dried by mid-afternoon the day before, after hard rain in the night. They two of them together had been harvesting since then-- hard work with few hands. I felt intensely glad that we had come.

    All day then we knelt among the tall stalks, pulling them up by the roots, laying them in neat rows on the ground behind to dry. Acho Phuntsok cast seeds ahead of us, buckwheat on half the field and a fodder crop on the other. Khaltse is warm enough for two harvests, the second coming near the end of September. Pulling the barley turned the soil and integrated the seed perfectly, an elegant union of works. I asked about the rototiller I had seen in the other fields, and they were surprised, telling me they didn't know why it would be used. They never used to plow with dzo before the buckwheat. Their young son, on summer holiday from school, played by himself, spinning in circles, pretending to be a bird, throwing himself at times onto his father's back. Ache Tsering left to bring water to the cow and make lunch; she carried back delicious paba and thukpa which we at with peas from the garden, popping them from their shells. The remnants of tea and food stood as markers, showing our progress through the rows.

     We left for their home before it was too dark to see, gathering things into a basket in the fading light. I carried vegetables for dinner and an armful of bolted greens for the cow, washing and chopping things while Ache Tsering milked and finished rinsing clothes. We made skiu together, pinching thumbprints of dough in the light of a hissing gas lamp, Jason and their son both sleeping hard. It was past ten when we ate, leaving dishes for the morning, laying a bed in the fullness of body exhaustion.

     We woke with first light and returned to the field after cups of tea and sngampe, finishing the last of the work that stood waiting for us there. By the time that heat had risen into the day we were nearly finished, and four young Nepali men came to join us. They had been hired for the day's carrying work, but harvested abreast with us through the last rows. When the whole field lay flat we stopped to rest and drink tea, then began over the crops again, beating soil from the roots of the plants and laying them in heaping bundles. All of the barley would be carried up to dry in the threshing yard near the house, standing leaned together in the sun. As the harvest was brought in in Europe, also, some many years ago.  

     After breakfast we bought eggs for Azhang Tundup and butter in the bazaar, and began the journey home. A group of American students was arriving that afternoon, and we needed to be there to receive them. Ache Tsering filled our basket with vegetables, apologizing that the apricots weren't ripe yet, making us promise to return to eat of them when they were. We left as the young men carried the first loads through the market and up the hill, shining bundles dangling fat, square seed heads like falling water, twice or three times as wide as the men's thin bodies.

     Descending to the lower valley is like travelling forward through time, anticipating what will be in the weeks to come. The students were with us for three rich, sweet days, in which I remembered the particular magic and nourishment of teaching-work. In that time heavy rains fell twice in the night; in the morning, the first-plowed fields began to shift unmistakably towards yellow. But it will be some time, yet, before the grains are fully ripe; the time has come in Tar for cutting hay.
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     We arrived to Ama Yangzes' fields as the sun came above the ridge. She fed us tea and warm rounds of fried bread, and then the three of us began work. Ama and Jason worked ahead with sickles, cutting and laying alfalfa and mixed grasses and weeds in heaps along the slope. It was mine to make chumpo, neat bundles wrapped and tied in two places with long stems of alfalfa. Yellow flowers stood bright against dark green leaves, curling seed pods just beginning to form. Most people wait to harvest until the seeds are full-set, but Ama Yangzes will always move against the grain of village wisdom, and her cows seem not to mind the fodder. I stood the chumpos in pyramids on the fields to dry, with prayers against the rain.

     After eight we were joined by Nobin, the Nepali man who moved to Tar six years ago. His friend, the carpenter, came with him-- an incredibly beautiful young man, silent, smiling, called "the mystery" by everyone in town (this means housebuilder in Hindi, but it seems appropriate). With five of us the work went apace, Jason and I both bundling as the others cut under changeful skies. This work is different than haying in America, but similarly intense, and coming in the heat of the season. Beforetimes, there was no fear for the weather, sun shining strong and reliable through the summer, drying everything easily to be stored on rooftops. But we worked under an impending thunderstorm, with no dry barn to which to bring the alfalfa in the end. Ama Yangzes shrugged, placing what chumpos she could under the scant protection of rosebushes in the fields. Some of it will rot, maybe, she said. But what else can we do? We finished in the late-stretching evening light, drinking chang from round silver vessels beneath the apricot trees.
___

    Days, and days: long-stretching sun, work from light to light's end. Down in the lower village I harvested with Abi Tsewang and her two beautiful daughters-in-law, learning the sickle-work into my body. Three-year-old Padma Itses was with us, tiny child-play making work half-play by necessity. The young women, Abi, Meme, all took a turn at cooking food and carrying tea. I have loved their small compound since the first day of plowing: the bower of cut willow branches shading a place for eating and sleeping out of doors, the ancient apricot trunk built into the corner of the kitchen, supporting a shelf for water offerings, the prayer wheel spun by water just above the dishwashing trough. We slept all together on the ground outside, bed made soft by many piles of blankets.

     The next day Ache Kunzes and hers came down to cut their lower field. They were our first family and hosts in Tar, and it was all sweet reunion to be among them again. Their young son doted on Padma Itses as their two families worked, picking through fields at least half high-standing thistle to cut the alfalfa among it there. The long, hot morning was full of singing, and the high thin strains of Ladakhi folk and pop songs channeled in on Palmo's telephone. We ate lunch in the cool shade by the river, little brother wading, crying out with cold, tea boiling on a fire built between three rocks. By three the sun was behind the ridge, and the evening watch felt easy, cool and sweet. "Nyochs," Acho Phuntsok had told Jason in Khaltse. This is the feeling that comes when you have worked so hard, so long, it doesn't feel like effort anymore.
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The Dalai Lama came to Ladakh to offer prayers, and so we've come to Leh, this last brief inhalation before the fullness of the harvest is upon us. Our hands will be full, these next months, and I'm not sure when we'll next look up from the labor of the fields. But we are thinking of you, as we're in this place. In love.  

   

 

Giving the Water

 

Photo by Isabella Pezzulo

The first water was given two days before the plowing, carving a lacework of rivulets in bare soil as it flowed over the surface of each field.  Women with the skirts of their gonchas tucked up in their sashes worked to direct the water's course, opening and closing gates made of stones and torn clothing, spilling water from the canals over dry earth.  Downslope, light and precise with tiny shovels they would draw a ridge, a channel, guiding the flow with the barest movement of soil.  The patterning of the water echoed the branching of roots, echoed the branching of veins through the body.  It echoed the spreading of water through the village, from the vital artery of glacial melt to the stone canals that fed each tier of terraces, to the furrows plowed into the fields.  Tokpo to yura to rimo and then over the gentle, intentional slope of the land, gravity and human hands working in concert to bring life.

I gave water first to Abi Rinchen's fields, working with two other grandmothers and two younger women, watching the skill alive in their hands, learning.  Abi Tsewang sang softly to the water as she worked, constantly, a half-tuneless hum: "Skyot, chhu skyot," "Come water, come," using the respectful form.

Plowing transformed the village, fields turning from pale grey-brown to rich black.  Just as the first small shoots began to rise, the landscape transformed again, a subtle artwork spreading over the terraces.  "Shau tapches," they called it, planting shau into the ground.  Working with elegant wooden tools we made spaces for the water to fill, soft ridges of soil tracing or crossing the contour of the land.  From the yura that ran one long edge of the field, rimo swept out in bowing arcs, carved there by the plowmen and the dzo.  We dug them deeper, piling earth into a ridge along the lower edge, then shaping another shallow channel that ran beside.  The women's tool, the panka, is made of apricot or walnut wood, handled with a short rod of willow.  Men worked ahead of us, smoothing the surface of the soil.  The held rbat, long willow y-sticks headed with narrow crosspieces.

Ache Chorol and Ache Tashi pushing rbat for shau

 Finished, the men would leave, and we would take up the rbat.  One woman moving in each of the strips between the rimo, we pushed small lines of earth into place so that the water might flow against them, and be held.  I had never seen the summer water and so worked in blind mystery, following the lines of the woman above me instead of reading the imperative of the slope.

Before the shau were finished in the later fields, the first watering began.  We used khembo now, long-handled like a shovel, the narrow wooden spade fixed onto its shaft with a strip of willow bark.  Six women working together could water one house's fields between the sunrise over the mountains and the dark.  As with the shau-making we worked descending the field, each of us in one of the bands between the rimo.  But now the water came.  I learned the art of opening the rock gates just enough, shifting stones into the yura to turn the water aside.  At each shau square we would build a gate of four stones in the rimo, using the khembo to open a passage and close the way down the field.  One by one the shau flooded, women easing the water's way as it flowed among the barley.

My hands and feet dried and cracked, and I rubbed apricot oil into them each night.  Sun came, and cold, passing over us, reflected in the water on the fields.  In the wind that blew as we worked the last days, the apricot blossoms fell and scattered.  The water ran white with them, catching and clinging among green shoots of grain.

The second watering was easier, needing only two or three women together to reopen all of the rock gates halfway, pulling the water then where it was hesitant to go. The barley and wheat had grown to six inches high in some places, icy water sweet on the body under hot sun. By the third watering each woman worked alone. Abi Dolkar came to help me water Somapi zhing, our wheat field that she had gifted. “It’s a difficult one,” she said, kindly. I watched her, amazed, fast and fluid with her shovel, making water seem to run uphill. We pulled thistle from the edges and flooded the thirsty alfalfa, spilling water over the bank with a shredded winter jacket to block the yura. 

Now the fourth watering has passed and I, too, work alone. By the art of the first work, now when the gates are opened the water flows easily and evenly over the whole of each field. I have learned the paths to bring the water from the glacier stream to our barley and our wheat. The mustards flower yellow among the grains, and the women harvest them into bouquets for the cows as we wait for the flood to complete.  

The light is as long as we will ever see it in this place, lingering orange on the mountains for more than an hour after it goes behind the ridge. Apricots swell and blush, and the barley has begun to set seed, awns thin and shining green. Vegetables grow, and weeds; in some ways, at least, this land is not so different from the one that we come from. And the waters run. This year-- for one more year, at least-- the glaciers live, and the waters run down from the mountains.

Shepherd

Photo by Isabella Pezzulo

Imagine for a moment the alpine garden of Mt. Washington in New Hampshire.  Windswept almost constantly, the few plants crouch between rocks, sneak into crevices, put up tough short flower stalks, make their leaves waxy, grow in clumps, all to protect themselves and each other from the bitter wind and blowing snow.  Rock readily meets the eye, no plant is taller than a mouse on tiptoe, and the views of the surrounding mountains of rock are clear and open.

Now imagine this scene as the bottom of a valley.  Extending upwards in all directions are great steep slopes, evenly planed slides of rubble, and above them cliffs.  The peaks are distant and daunting to climb.  This may help you get a sense of this landscape, the place where Ladakhi people farm.

This land is drier, certainly, and the climate is a little warmer, even though the valleys here are about twice the elevation of the alpine garden (we are further south).  The plants that grow wild are sparse: rose bushes (now blooming and fragrant throughout the lower valleys), honeysuckle, mints of many kinds in delicious abundance, a wild onion like chives but stronger, many colonies (clumps) of low herbs whose aerial parts dry into persistent thorns.

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The sheep and goats are above me, grazing sparse vegetation on a 35-40 degree slope that sweeps down to the flat valley floor, where I sit alone.  They are thirty-four in number, one less than two days ago when a sick one stayed home with Azhang (Uncle) Tundup and, wandering the slope just above the house, was taken by the snow leopard.

Up on the slope now.  I can see through notches to the northeast distant jagged ridges shaded gray, the closer ones darker, lighter as they recede and blend with the sky.  Some snow on the highest farthest ridge.  Those are on the other side of the Indus River, lost to sight deep in the valley, which flows from Tibet and through Pakistan to the Ocean.  To my right, the sheep and goats are on a blocky, orange-grey, jutting ridge of bedrock that emerges from the sheer, perfectly planed sand slide on which I sit.  Above them in my view stands Urtsi, framed by two intervening rocky ridges on each side, its grand pyramidal slopes all laden with snow and dark rock.  The sun shines on us, though I can see that across the Indus it is raining. Thistle and wild rhubarb grow from the sand, as well as a primitive low branching plant that reminds me of what in New England is called horsetail.

The rhubarb has huge leaves that lie flat on the slope and sometimes shine in the sun, and tall yellow-green many-branched flower stalks.  The flowers are tiny, hundreds to thousands per plant, with five to seven petals the same color as the stems.  The seed pods are bright red or magenta, ridged with three sides.  Inside the seed is tear-shaped, dark red at the point, fading to white at the fat end.  La chu is the local name.  The stem tastes wickedly sour, but the base that lives underground is sweet.

Running down these sand slopes is just so much fun.  My feet sink deep into sand, cushioning a leaping descent.  It reminds me of skiing in Jackson Hole.  Now I’ve startled the herd.  They gallop and float down, clouds of dust in their wake.  I never imagined what we think of as “barnyard” animals being so at home in a mountain landscape.

We reach the valley floor, the sound of rushing water loud in our ears.  This valley slowly rises, and it is the main watercourse that feeds town and allows human life and the flush of green that surrounds people in this landscape. 

Caitlin has remarked about how different these sheep are from the ones she cared for at Chewonki in Maine.  The biggest goats are the size of a collie, and the sheep weigh around 30-40 pounds each.  They tolerate us being very physically close to them, while at rest or while walking, which is different from what she’s used to.  They are fed far less than American sheep, and they will readily eat peeled willow bark or even dry leaves.  They are incredible mountain-climbers and cliff-bounders.  And, whether by breeding or training, they don’t stop to eat.

Their regular pattern is to slowly walk and graze – the two actions are inseparable.  So when they pass an area, they nibble, grab a few choicest bits, and move on.  This means I can walk up and down the same valleys with them day after day, and their impact is light and spread out.  The native large herbivores, the skyin or ibex, graze similarly, covering huge areas and searching high slopes and washes for food, always alert for predators.

Small hail comes, followed by light rain.  It is not unusual to get a short spell in the afternoon, though this one is a little longer and heavier than normal.  Long enough to sit and eat my lunch under a rose bush, the only cover.  Long enough to make the sheep  shake – the first time in eight days out with them.

I have taken the herd alone now for about ten days, and two days with Nyilza Angmo (Caitlin).  This allows Azhang Tundup to rest and do other work, like cut thin willow branches for the cows to eat.  He is about 65 and moves over these mountains like they’re a part of his body.  He whips a sling like a pro, and spins long goat hair into yarn with his fingers as he walks with the herd in the mornings.  I’m glad to be able to help him in this way, and I wonder how long all the young men have gone to school and not tended the herds.  Azhang stables and cares for several houses’ animals, and I take Ama (Mother) Tsering Dolkar’s sheep too, so it really is community work.  And this work is needed: for meat and rich manure for the gardens and fields.  I’m earning meat for the winter.  This work feels well suited to me – I love to walk and wander in the mountains.

Sibskyang Lu and the Ibex

Sibskyang Lu towers above the village to the east.  This morning a group of twenty Ibex clings to the cliffside, and another group of ten are silhouetted against a cloudless blue sky glowing with the light of a rising sun.  The "skyin" of the large group make their way down, moving together like a stream.  We watch, all the men standing around a pile of manure holding shovels, waiting until the ladies return with empty baskets on their backs.  The animals are large and powerful and dark brown, with long, elegantly curved and ridged horns that sweep back from their heads.  Their movements on the steep rocks are smooth and dramatic, plunging headlong and then quickly drawing up to observe the valley or the rest of the herd.

I'm collecting trash this morning.  We're getting towards the end of plowing, and the terraced fields all over the village are turning from a parched sandy tan to rich brown with water, manure, and the plow.  People know plastic is tsok po, which means "bad" or "dirty" or both, but still batteries and plastic wrappings show up in all the streams that tumble through town, all the soil of the fields.  Not much, but some.  There's a garbage dump just up and outside of the village under Sibskyang Lu, so with a basket full and a disintegrating plastic burlap sack also full of rescued styrofoam and bottles from the stream, I walk up the ridge after spreading anutre on the fields we will plow today.  The morning light of the now risen sun fills the air, the sky an utterly cloudless blue which shines white around the sun.  I dump the load off a small cliff and note that a 100-year flood could wash all this great pile over the cliff and down into the stunning canyon that is the only entrance to the village other than days' walking over the passes.  The pile of graying labels and broken plastic jugs sits beside wide carved channels of gravel where water occasionally flows from the basins of snowy peaks.

I look up to see the Ibex family of earlier moving fast and close.  Open terrain lies between us, so I stay standing still and watch.  They descend to a notch in the valley and disappear.  It is the blessed free time of day when villagers milk their cows, between pre-breakfast (wake-up tea, manure spreading, second tea) and the ensuing day of work and tea and feasting that goes until hours after dusk.  So I am free to follow.  As I walk across the sandy slide with quiet steps, I assume they are going up the valley, staying low, but I am not thinking like an ibex.  Suddenly I realize that six of them are in view, not visibly scared of me, walking their muscular bodies up the other side.  Some smaller tan ones are leading, and they head up the valley to forage, I imagine.  They stick to the cliffs of Sibskyang Lu at night, I am told, because the wolf and snow leopard don't go there.  I sit to watch, and am distracted by the ringing, piercing call of a grouse (shak pa), calling from the rock top of a ridge very close, then leaping into space and gliding across the deep gravel wash.

A minute later, when I look back up to the ibex, they have just leaped into motion, six of them bounding down the slope.  Then in a moment they stop still, listening in a cloud of dust so fine it looks like a white mist.  A few others below are grazing.  Two large brown adults walk calmly above them.  A desire arises in me to walk into these valleys and be silent for days, carrying roasted barley flour and just enough to sustain a body.  Those days will come, but not until the steady hard spring work of plowing is finished.

A Coming

 

Photo by Lobzang Dadul

A wooden footbridge hung with a thousand flags spans the Indus just above the town of Nurla, making a passage to the valley and village of Tar. Ascending first along water, among boulders, crossing and re-crossing the stream, the path leads out to broader, open areas with stalk-dry, aromatic shubs the goats graze in the summer. Sometimes the way will split around a Mani wall, passed always to the left, stones upholding stones carved in prayers. Turning back Ang Pu stands framed by the walls of the valley, the snow mountain to the north.

Just more than half of the way to Tar, the valley widens enough that a few terraces of fields lie out, and a cluster of houses above them. This is the Yok-ma, the lower summer village where a few families will move for the season. Above the houses an enormous, ancient cedar spreads, green against the grey-rising cliffs behind it, a blessing on the village. I wonder how long it has stood in that place; I wonder if its seeds might sprout, if planted. The whole is held in a bowl of unbelievable mountains.

Valley narrowing again, the water falls among willows and many, many roses. They are called thorns here, and valued chiefly for the strength of their long, arched wands. Climbing now steadily, the way leads to a place where a fast-running stream pours out, running over the path and down to the stream. An upturned teacup sits on the rock above, for thirsty passers-by. Prayer-flags mark the crossing. The water is cold and sweet, without the earthy taste of the springs of New England, water moving cleanly over hard, smooth rock.

Above the spring the valley closes further into a tight gorge, sheer walls on either side of the stream. The stone path turns upon itself in switchbacks, flags flying now in many strings. Smooth bowls and hollows carved above the level of the water show how it must have run once, or must run in some seasons. In several places, the drops make small waterfalls.Above one face of stone many, many khataks are tied, and a small shrine with a butter lamp-lantern made in an alcove. Once, the image of twenty-one Taras appeared there, stained on the rock face. People still journey to make offerings.

Up and up, half-breathless, and then the gorge gives way again to Tar. Fields spread in steep terraces below the houses, large and straight-walled and white, each one beautiful and well-made, well-kept. There are twelve, and several more for the summer, above as well as below. “Lep-le,” Chondol’s father Namgial said, sitting to rest at the head of the path. “Arrived.”

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The afternoon of our coming we worked with Namgial and Chondol to rebuild a terrace wall that had collapsed. A grandfather of the village came, speaking to us, shaking Jason’s hand emphatically. Jason writes of this, “I stood on top of a terrace, ready to finish the section of the nine foot vertical wall that had tumbled during the winter.  Suddenly a dark-faced, grinning, eyes-bulging, wrinkled man stepped up and began laughing and talking and asking questions.  "Kane yin?" (Where are you from?) he said, slapped my back at my response, grinned and laughed and looked deep into my eyes and said "Yok la thores zhing smo chen le; nyerang skyod he le!!" (We're plowing my fields in the lower village tomorrow; come please my friend!!)  How could I refuse?  Of course the answer is yes." 

We had arrived just in time for the beginning.

We woke the next day and found Namgial looking out the window with binoculars. “Ibex,” he told us. “Many.” It too me a long time to see their sand-colored bodies against the mountain, but finally I caught their motion. We watched as they moved up a grand slide and over rocks, across a cliff-face that seemed impossibly sheer, up again. We heart a whistling noise, that sounded like a bird of prey, almost—Namgial told us it was the skyin’s (ibex’s) warning call, which they make through their noses. It meant, he thought, a snow leopard was near. “They walk over that slope,” Chondol told me, gesturing to the mountain very near the house.

After tea we went with Namgial, four young cows, and a herd of village sheep back down through the gorge to the Yok-ma. As we entered the wider part of the valley just above, we saw more skyin on the slope to our right, very close. They looked to me to be the size of small horses, but massive, like dzo; I could see their shaggy coats, and the incredible arc of their horns.

 Leaving the animals in the scrubland, we descended to find tea laid outside of Abi (grandmother) Tsewang’s small, simple earth brick summer house: an outdoor chansa made with low tables and Tibetan rugs, set between running streams. We rose to spread manure on several fields, moving in pairs, carrying lut shoveled onto burlap sacks. I carried often with Jason, sometimes with a young man named Rigzin, the son of the house, whose smile made me wish quickly to be friends.     

We ate breakfast where we had drunk the morning tea, a single square tarp protecting Azhang’s (uncle's) Bodhic prayer book from the light-falling snow. His voice steadily intoned the prayers, and people sat, listening, looking at the world around them. He paused to grind a mixture of fresh mint, cilantro, and green onion when it was handed to him, the mortar almost flat, heart-shaped, hollowed just a little by its use. Then the courses of food began, after the blessings and tossing bits of food and drops of chang with a dipped juniper twig.  Our attention turned to each other, and to the meal. We ate paba, steamed bread of barley and pea flours, yogurt, thin tagi (wheat bread), and thukpa, noodle-soup with delicious summer-dried cheese and Ladakhi peas.

Plowing happened much as it had in Takhmachik, and I felt intensely grateful for all we learned in our weeks there. The stream-sound was loud, and sight in every direction was an amazement, cliffs, and scree-slides of blushing purple stone. Washing my hands before lunch, I saw a small prayer wheel above the washing-place, wooden paddles turning it with the water’s flow.

The day was filled with song, and dancing too, Abi Dolkar doing a fantastic bent-backed wheeling dance on the field edge when entreated, Kunchok Palmo and Dechen Angmo graceful, with perfect hands. We sang Ladakhi folk songs and, as in Takhmachik, people were delighted—but unlike Takhmachik everyone sang together with us, and sang more songs as well, old ones and new ones both. And most of all there was the continuous song of the work, people singing instead of speaking, calling out to each other, thanking each other, narrating, teasing, all in the form of nonsense-songs, matching the rhythm of the labor. Ache (older sister) Tashi sang us a song, courting us, telling us of the house they would help us build, the fields they would help us prepare, the babies we would have, if we stayed in Tar forever.

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We walked together back up to Tar in gathering dusk, a long, slow line of people and animals, stopping at the spring to drink the water rising fast from the ground. Coming out of the gorge and into Tar just as the dark was full, we brought the sheep home to the first house in the village, and then went inside.

For many hours then we sat and drank tea and chang, the first after-plowing gathering of the season here. Jason sat at the head of the room with Meme, the grandfather who had invited us to the plowing: “The old fellow laughed and slapped my knee and grabbed my shoulder, and spoke to me loud, and laughed hysterically when I grinned back and said ha ma go (I don't understand) and drank chang and rum and sang Ladakhi folk songs in a wavery voice late into the night.”

 At some point Rigzin put music on a set of speakers—someone carried speakers up here!—and the gathering turned into a dance party. I think I will never love loud music from machines very much, but if it happens, let it be like this: grandparents present, laughing, involved, and little Padma Itses in arms, passed around among the dancers.

At one point Ache Tashi and Ache Palmo disappeared, and came back dressed in costume, tattered goncha and huge sunglasses, carrying a basket and a baby-carrier. Ache Tashi had a moustache painted on in charcoal. They introduced themselves as travelers from Changthang (eastern Ladakh), and proceeded to put on a comedy sketch that made me weep with laughing, even missing much of the language. Ache Tashi stopped dancing only long enough to pretend to drink glass after glass of the uncle’s chang, taking it from their hands. Dechen Angmo, at the stove, invited the Changthangpas to stay for dinner, which was ready. In hilarious parody of Ladakhi social custom they made the fastest exit they could, refusing everything, bent almost double, touching their hands to their foreheads again and again in an unending stream of "ju-le"s. At long last, after delicious, rich chu tagi, we went home, joyful and exhausted, to sleep. 

Plowing

Photo by Izzy Pezzulo

An old man spreads seeds on the bare field in handfuls.  The earth is dark; it was watered two days ago, and it is covered with a thin layer of manure.  He tosses barley, a spray of seeds, and they lie thickly, pale against the darkness of rich watered desert soil.  A cry goes up "Norbu nyis ka!" (You two golden ones) from the young man holding the plow handle, and he steps on the plow blade, sinking its upside-down spade head into the earth on one edge of the field.  The head, about five inches wide by nine inches long, points below horizontal at a slight angle, and it willingly enters the soil, raising up a wave of clumped earth and small stones and countless seeds.  Locked into the vertical shaft between handle and plow is a three inch thick, seven foot long poplar shaft that leads forward to the yoke and the team of two dzo who pull it.  They pant and grind their teeth at times, hundreds of pounds of black-hair-clad muscle and smooth, upward-curving horns.  A young man (sometimes an elder man, sometimes a young woman) walks just before them, holding a rope tied between their two nose rings, guiding and sometimes dragging them where they need to go to line up these furrows, back and forth.  The horns of the dzo are oiled each morning of plowing, and their foreheads anointed with barley paste and a handful of tossed flour as a blessing. 



The song of the plowman is urgent, often kind, and full of thanks.  It also carries the harshness and angst and madness or desperation of masculine energy.  Voice cracking and wavering, soft now, loud before the lash, whip in hand.  In trying this art my sense is that when they are tired, the dzo must believe you will hurt them to keep moving.  The voice lifting in mock anger convinces them and they quicken their steps.  The whip lashes through the air to remind them to pull hard.  The whip lands on their backs to assure them of the pain that comes from the man behind them when they don't move.  Most of the time the memory of pain, their training, and the plowman's reminders are enough to keep them going.  But there is a continual vying of wills that the plowman and the dzo must rise to.  These animals live quite a good life.  They have enough to eat, freedom to roam much of the time.  And yet I wonder if there is a way to work with draught animals that does not rely on what, if it were used on humans, we would call a device of torture.  I want my relationship with animals to be different from this.

Jason and Konchok plowing in the gong ma (upper village) where the Americans stay

Women work their way across the field, bent low at the waist, short-handled picks (thokse) in their hands, bashing clumps and raised furrows of earth, plucking out balls of roots and ferociously digging out tough ones.  (An abi [grandma] standing resting next to Caitlin as she digs at an alfalfa root, saying "shante rag, nomo le" [feels tough, little sister]).  I tried this tool for as long as they would let me (about ten minutes: it is not a tool for men) and I felt it, hard and sore in my lower back.  These women are tough beyond belief, some are working this way at fifty, sixty, and they have the hardest work in plowing time.

Ama Tinles, Ama Gunzes, & Ama Yangzes

The thokse wielders flatten the soil surface somewhat, and they stack the large stones in piles.  These are used to block and direct water during irrigation.  Then a group of lighter workers moves in with long-handled all-wooden rakes called rbat, and with these they flatten the soil as best they can, preparing for later, dryer work with earth-flattening tools to make the surface truly beautiful and flat and form the low walls that surround each small (three to six feet to a side) section of the field, called shau.  These sections have special canals, built also when the soil is a bit dryer and the crops' shoots are emerging, that feed and flood each section at the right time.

Making shau (and serving chang)

Little kids are there on the field, toddling around, getting pulled out of the way of the dzo by women who shriek but understand that the men are paying attention too.  Elders have their roles, easier on their bodies yet essential to the work.  Men have their work, women have theirs.  There is a little crossover, but very little.  We break for rest and tea and chang and snacks many many times a day, tossing spoonfuls of roasted barley flour (sngampe) into our mouths.  The people tell each other to sit down and rest, while they work tirelessly.  The scene is quiet: birds sing, the plowman's melodic song rings out, people talk easily and sit drinking tea within feet of where the dzo pass.  The dzo easily navigate huge boulders in the fields and the edges of sheer rock walls that fall often six feet to the next terrace below.  They can place their front feet on a stone terrace three feet high and jump their huge bulk and their back legs up.  There is no way machines could replace this way of plowing.  It is a living practice.  Our first morning of plowing I was close to tears with the beauty of it.

Jason and Konchok (the view is down toward the main village)