bhutan rising
There's only one other place where I have heard the spirit trembling sonorous roar of thunder that is more profound than a storm in the Eagle Cap Wilderness of NE Oregon. It was in the southern Himalayas, in Thimphu, Bhutan. A deep valley that sits at 7,300 feet above sea level flanked by mountains rising straight up to the east and west. Through this valley, the Thimphu Chhu (river) rushes south towards the Paro Chhu. They meet at Chhuzom forming the new and ever onward Wang Chhu that flows south through Bangaladesh and India joining the Brahmaputra River in West Bengal. Bhutan is a place where there is nowhere to go but up. This simple geographic truth has informed my experience since I first found it as a speck of a country on a small scale world map.
I's about time I wrote this story. Blog-by-Blog that is. I’m starting today rather than ten years ago when the timeline started. I’ll bounce around with the blogs/stories because they are all connected anyway.
The distance from Baker City, Oregon, where I live, to Paro, Bhutan where the international airport sits is, according to Google, 11,363 kilometers – about 7,060 miles. The seeds that sprouted and grew into this journey started in Baker City in June 2015.
A random, one-off event at the local art establishment: Crossroads Carnegie Art Center included a Rinpoche (beloved monk) from Bhutan who would bestow prayers, chanting and talks, a fire ceremony, lama dancing, pet blessings, and the construction of a sand mandala. As a photographer and videographer – I was fast to jump on an opportunity to support this effort and received permission to document the entire ten-day event. Thus began my journey; drawn to the billowing red robes of a busy monk on a mission. In hindsight, we were both on a mission. His was to raise money for a cause, mine was to vicariously experience the mysterious place sometimes referred to as the ‘last Shangri-La’, the land of Gross National Happiness, place of Treasure Revealers, and by Tibetans, back in the day, the Southern Medicine Land. I knew where Bhutan is and was inexplicably drawn to it.
This is the video I produced after the ten-day experience in Baker City where dozens of citizens joined in the Bhutanese experience. It included an 8-mile hike to a pristine high-Alpine Lake where I interviewed Lama Karma Namgyel Rinpoche under a tree as birds sang nearby and fish jumped in the most perfect forest setting imaginable. That was the day I learned the word ‘Beyul’ and what it meant.
By the time he and his small team were packing up to leave Baker City I became a pest – a literal mouthy ‘chilip’ (white person) who repeated a four-word mantra: “Take me to Bhutan.” Afterall, I produced the lovely video at no cost, wrote an article about you in the local paper, and took you on that heavenly hike to Dutch Flat Lake. I would bring along my friend Joe. We would document his life as a monk, his effort to raise money, the place he was born and places he visited. We would pay our own way I assured. Please just make it possible, get us a visa and be our guide.
In July 2016 Lama Karma Namgyel Rinpoche came back to Baker City. I became his guide. I took him to the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center. Imagine that? A monk from Bhutan walking on the still visible dirt ruts upon which the early pioneers from Missouri came to the American west from the 1840’s to the 1850’s. Those dates and that short distance in past time meant nothing for a Lama whose monastic studies opened windows to an ancient world of flying tigresses, hidden treasures, marvels, and miracles that bestowed upon the Land of the Thunder Dragon (Druk Yul = Bhutan) a legacy of saints and sages whose enchanted lives date back to the 8th century. Bhutan has their thunder dragon and beloved raven, but the US has it's buffalo and bald eagle. This later became the inspiration for the logo of Bhutan Cultural Exchange.
In November of that very same year (2016), I boarded a plane with my young friend, side- kick, adopted kiddo, talented photographer. videographer Joe Bryant, 40 pounds of camera gear, and a drone for a transpacific flight bound for Seoul, South Korea, Bangkok, Thailand and then Paro, Bhutan.
Here we are upon Landing
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