My Day with a Goat--A Love Story

Hanging in my room is a photograph I took several years ago when I spent a summer in Southeast Asia. Most people would pass by the picture without even noticing it. There's nothing spectacular about it by any means. It's a black and white shot of a wet road. The road curves to the left and disappears into the tall trees that line it. The scene could have been captured anywhere....backwoods Mississippi, or the Oregon coastline, maybe. Nothing would distinguish it from any other stretch of shiny black tar. However, sometimes when I take the time to look at it with more intent than just in passing, I remember why I hung it in first place.

I remember that day quite clearly. It was a Saturday. I had been in Nepal for 4 or 5 weeks at that point, and had already traveled most of the Kathmandu valley region. On this particular weekend, a large group of my travel companions had gone to a tourist-attracting mountain village where they could watch satellite television and sip luke-warm orange sodas under the cloud shrouded spanse of the Himalayas. My pal Emily and I weren't interested in this excursion, so we had opted to find something else to busy ourselves with.

As I recall, we had become frustrated with everyone's quest for things "like home". Despite the fact that Nepal is a third world country, and is barely approaching the technology we had mastered by the mid-60's, the presence of the Western world is there if you look for it. There were several restaurants in the valley that served "American" food, for example. Of course, it didn't taste American. Or smell American. Absolutely couldn't fool your stomach into digesting it as if it were American. But how could we resist eating psuedo pizza in a semi-air conditioned room with soft rock mixes of Phil Collins and NSync humming in the background? Sometimes a dose of the familiar was what we needed to make it through a rough day.

Most of us had become acutely aware of the habitual dangers of residing in our comfort zones. Crazy Tina had been carrying a bright red flag to remind us all of this. Crazy Tina was a spoiled mama's girl from Tampa. None of us knew why she decided to join a group of strangers in the heart of the third world that summer. She had apparently been under the impression that she would be "roughing it" in the luxury of a Motel Six and taking long soaks in non contaminated jacuzzi tubs. (Motel Six was the freaking Ritz compared to The Hungry Treat Hotel and the closest thing I ever saw to a jacuzzi tub was gurgling sewage on the side of the road....every road.) Upon realizing her tragic misunderstanding, she had taken to hiding out in a European-owned coffee shop every afternoon and in her room every night with the curtains literally taped shut to "block out the city". Her insanity showed itself in many other hilarious, infuriating, obnoxious ways, too. My personal favorite memory of her was when I sarcastically called her "Miss America" on the Fourth of July and made her cry. But.....I digress.

So, it efforts to decomfortize ourselves, Emily and I let our spontaneity take over. We threw some faux- filtered water bottles and flimsy paper maps into our backpacks and took off. I don't think we even told anyone where we were going....I guess we figured the American Embassy would magically know where to find our mangled bodies in the event that we suffered an attack from a Yeti. We climbed into a cab, offered up all the rupees we could afford to spare, and basically asked the driver to take us as far as he could with that amount. We drove for about an hour.....maybe 90 minutes....out of the city and into the desertion of mountainous village roads. He finally dropped us off, probably mumbling "crazy white girls" to himself as he drove back home.

There was no turning back....our abrupt plan was set into action by default. We would be walking all the way back home. We kinda sorta knew where we were....map reading had become a survivor skill for us, so we weren't worried. During our 9 hour trek back home, we had all sorts of mini-adventures. And every single one of them unfolded in the pouring monsoon rain.

We befriended a herd/pack/swarm/pod of loud and affectionate mountain goats that stayed on our heels for several hours. A group of kids showed us a lake where, as Hindu legend has it, an evil snake king lives with his minions. (I think the story was that he had fallen in love with a human woman and pulled her into the depths of his kingdom so that they could reside together for eternity. ahhh....snake love....) We found ourselves in an open clearing surrounded by water buffalo; who, thankfully, didn't see the point in ramming us with their muddy horns. From a cliffside, we looked down on a factory of some sort that I'm sure I've seen in a cheap horror flick since. Monsterous trucks would pull into a warehouse every 15 mintues or so, and unidentifiable smells bellowed out in smoky curls. We were immensely intrigued by it for some reason. We watched a (very) elderly woman single-handedly plow a field with just a combing tool draped over her shoulders. Wearily, we crossed a wobbly wire bridge that had been erected over the choclatey Bagmati River.

I know none of these things sound all that thrilling, and, in truth, they weren't. Emily took a picture of me that day....I still have it. My hair was Jamie Lee Curtis short at the time and my cheap rain jacket had done little to keep me dry. So, I looked like a half-drowned 15 year old boy waiting for his school bus. But...I look really happy. I WAS happy. I don't think I've had many other days that were enlightened by such free-spirited spontaniety. That photograph on my wall reminds me that I should have more days like that.