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Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalaya
"Anyone familiar with Jamaica Kincaid's work knows that the natural world and, in particular, plants and gardening are especially close to her heart. Along with such acclaimed novels as Annie John and Lucy, she's also the author of My Garden (Book), a collection of essays. Now, in this travel memoir, she invites us to accompany her on a seed-gathering trek in the Himalayas." "For Kincaid and three botanist friends, Nepal is a paradise, a place where a single day's hike can traverse climate zones from subtropical to alpine, encompassing flora suitable for growing in their home grounds from Wales to Vermont. And as she makes clear, there is far more to this foreign world than rhododendrons that grow thirty feet high. Danger too is a constant companion - and the leeches are the least of the worries." For along with the narrow paths that skirt vertiginous drops, these mountains are haunted by Maoist guerillas, and when they appear - as they do more than once - their enigmatic menace lingers long after they have melted away into the landscape. And Kincaid explores the irony of her status as memsahib with Sherpas and bearers - and understands that the liberating, exotic pleasures of travel are inextricably intertwined with the everyday pleasures of home and family.
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
68 people are currently reading
1512 people want to read
About the author
Jamaica Kincaid
81 books1,820 followersJamaica Kincaid is an Antiguan-American novelist, essayist, gardener, and gardening writer. She was born in St. John's, Antigua (part of the twin-island nation of Antigua and Barbuda). She lives in North Bennington, Vermont (in the United States), during the summers, and is Professor of African and African American Studies in Residence at Harvard University during the academic year.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 117 reviews
July 4, 2012
Some readers liked this book for its simplicity, but I found the simpleness to be bland, bland, bland. The author's inability to remember or pronounce names lacked an empathy for the people she depended upon. Referring to one fellow as Table, because he moved their table and chairs from camp to camp, instead of by name was rude, plain and, well, simple.
I thought that I would learn a bit about botany, but despite the premise of looking for Himalayan flowers that would grow in her Vermont garden, there is little more than genus & species naming of the plants encountered. No pictures or illustrations and very little verbal description.
Not the travel book for me. I look for someone who takes something away from the culture being visited--whether that learning is historical, cultural, or personal, I need to know some reason for the author to have been present on a stranger's turf. This piece is more of a daily scribe's accounting of events.
I thought that I would learn a bit about botany, but despite the premise of looking for Himalayan flowers that would grow in her Vermont garden, there is little more than genus & species naming of the plants encountered. No pictures or illustrations and very little verbal description.
Not the travel book for me. I look for someone who takes something away from the culture being visited--whether that learning is historical, cultural, or personal, I need to know some reason for the author to have been present on a stranger's turf. This piece is more of a daily scribe's accounting of events.
August 24, 2013
This is the only book I've read by Kincaid so I have no way of comparing the style here to other works. This is rather an odd book in a way; part travel book, part nature quest in a search for plants, part personal crisis of identity at times during the trek in Nepal. Parts of the story are mesmerizing. Some of the description, especially of the nights, are glorious, but so much of the writing is full of repetition, not accidental or in error but obviously stylistic. I found this to be annoying much of the time. Occasionally it added to Kincaid's emotional intensity, perhaps her purpose, but seemed overdone.
I am not a gardener, but I do enjoy walking my neighborhood and taking photos of others plants and trees. I may not be the target reader. I'm definitely not a person who would trek into the Himalayas. While parts of this book were a bit lost on me, and I did wonder at times why Kincaid went through this ordeal, she provided glimpses of her reasons enough for me to be glad I read of her experience.
A couple of examples of her writing that I particularly enjoyed and that helped me understand her purpose.
"We had been walking for six days now and there had been
nothing substantial to collect. Nothing for me anyway. I
would have done this, even if I had not been interested
in the garden. Just to see the earth crumpling itself
upward, just to experience the physical world as an
unending series of verticals going up and then going
down---with everything horizontal, or even diagonal,
being only a way of making this essentially vertical
world a little simpler---made me quiet." (pp 76-77)
And a second excerpt:
"Leaving the pass was like leaving a great book, which
had yielded every kind of satisfaction that is to be
found in a great book, except that with such a book you
can immediately begin on page one again and create the
feeling of not having read it before, even though the
reality is you have read it before." (p 138)
I would recommend this only for gardeners and trekkers though I didn't dislike it.
2.5 to 3
I am not a gardener, but I do enjoy walking my neighborhood and taking photos of others plants and trees. I may not be the target reader. I'm definitely not a person who would trek into the Himalayas. While parts of this book were a bit lost on me, and I did wonder at times why Kincaid went through this ordeal, she provided glimpses of her reasons enough for me to be glad I read of her experience.
A couple of examples of her writing that I particularly enjoyed and that helped me understand her purpose.
"We had been walking for six days now and there had been
nothing substantial to collect. Nothing for me anyway. I
would have done this, even if I had not been interested
in the garden. Just to see the earth crumpling itself
upward, just to experience the physical world as an
unending series of verticals going up and then going
down---with everything horizontal, or even diagonal,
being only a way of making this essentially vertical
world a little simpler---made me quiet." (pp 76-77)
And a second excerpt:
"Leaving the pass was like leaving a great book, which
had yielded every kind of satisfaction that is to be
found in a great book, except that with such a book you
can immediately begin on page one again and create the
feeling of not having read it before, even though the
reality is you have read it before." (p 138)
I would recommend this only for gardeners and trekkers though I didn't dislike it.
2.5 to 3
July 15, 2012
For those who know Jamaica Kincaid from the opening salvo of A Small Place - a withering put-down of the tourists who descend on her island, blithely oblivious of what it is like to live there - this may come as a big surprise.
Among Flowers is an account of a trek she made in Nepal, for the purpose of collecting seeds she could plant in her garden in Vermont. She and her three companions are guided by sherpas and supported by a team of porters (whose names she can never remember) who do their best to meet their demand for creature comforts and keep them safe from the attentions of 'Maoists' (caricatured as menacing or infantile throughout) who threaten to spoil their vacation.
It is not easy to believe that they were written by the same person. Perhaps she has gotten more conservative as she has gotten older. It's not unheard of. Or perhaps we would find it more reassuring to believe that if the first was sincere, the second must be ironic.
I'm not convinced.
In one village she refers to the way she becomes the object of curious attention. 'One woman did make me understand that she thought I was wearing a mask, that my face was not my real face,' she writes. Maybe this is Kincaid reminding her readers that authors always 'wear a mask', whether it be that of the outraged local or the self-absorbed tourist. In each case, it is as if she is adopting a deliberately exaggerated persona and pushing it as far as it can go.
The first-person protagonist of this story is not unaware of the disparities of power and wealth that separate elite travellers from the people they meet (and rely on). Indeed, her disarming tendency to admit how much she moaned about the facilities or felt let down by the porters brings them into sharper relief than an account by a more 'sensitive' traveller who might have made more effort to appear to 'fit in'.
But even when she consciously reflects on these disparities - for example when she contrasts her own perspective with that of the Nepalese (what for her is treasure may be weeds to them, what is ornament, food, and what is exciting and new, dull and quotidian) - it is the way that these reflections unconsciously rob them of the possibility of finer feeling that is telling rather than the prosaic truth they express.
Above all, that these reflections never prompt searching questions of a moral or political nature - while a Communist rebellion gathers pace around her - may be more eloquent in its silence than an approach that offers simple solutions.
For this reason, I think the 'tourist' identity Kincaid assumes in the Himalayas exposes contradictions and paradoxes much more effectively than the 'local' identity she assumes in Antigua. Whether this is a deliberate strategy is another question, and possibly an irrelevant one.
Among Flowers is an account of a trek she made in Nepal, for the purpose of collecting seeds she could plant in her garden in Vermont. She and her three companions are guided by sherpas and supported by a team of porters (whose names she can never remember) who do their best to meet their demand for creature comforts and keep them safe from the attentions of 'Maoists' (caricatured as menacing or infantile throughout) who threaten to spoil their vacation.
It is not easy to believe that they were written by the same person. Perhaps she has gotten more conservative as she has gotten older. It's not unheard of. Or perhaps we would find it more reassuring to believe that if the first was sincere, the second must be ironic.
I'm not convinced.
In one village she refers to the way she becomes the object of curious attention. 'One woman did make me understand that she thought I was wearing a mask, that my face was not my real face,' she writes. Maybe this is Kincaid reminding her readers that authors always 'wear a mask', whether it be that of the outraged local or the self-absorbed tourist. In each case, it is as if she is adopting a deliberately exaggerated persona and pushing it as far as it can go.
The first-person protagonist of this story is not unaware of the disparities of power and wealth that separate elite travellers from the people they meet (and rely on). Indeed, her disarming tendency to admit how much she moaned about the facilities or felt let down by the porters brings them into sharper relief than an account by a more 'sensitive' traveller who might have made more effort to appear to 'fit in'.
But even when she consciously reflects on these disparities - for example when she contrasts her own perspective with that of the Nepalese (what for her is treasure may be weeds to them, what is ornament, food, and what is exciting and new, dull and quotidian) - it is the way that these reflections unconsciously rob them of the possibility of finer feeling that is telling rather than the prosaic truth they express.
Above all, that these reflections never prompt searching questions of a moral or political nature - while a Communist rebellion gathers pace around her - may be more eloquent in its silence than an approach that offers simple solutions.
For this reason, I think the 'tourist' identity Kincaid assumes in the Himalayas exposes contradictions and paradoxes much more effectively than the 'local' identity she assumes in Antigua. Whether this is a deliberate strategy is another question, and possibly an irrelevant one.
October 25, 2025
Jamaica Kincaid’s 2005 travelogue, AMONG FLOWERS - A Walk in the Himalaya ,
sports a magnificent cover photo. It is a visual befitting a National Geographic project.
But it has nothing to do with the contents.
The cover image has a misty quality giving the feel and look of the colorized
photos of the 1930’s. Just pretend the objects you see are simple shapes.
All triangles, squares and rectangles. Hard lines. Implied harshness.No
greenery. Cold. Barren. Ancient history.
But your eyes are drawn to the two young boys ,not yet ordained monks,
in their worn yet colorful robes ; contrast them with the aged stone, old
monastery, the faded prayer flags.
New meets old. New life keeping old traditions alive……
This is photography as art.
I admit I bought the book for the cover.
My wife loves all things Himalayan ; she would like this.
National Geographic logo……phew…..serious stuff.
Jamaica Kincaid . She’s famous, right ?
Inside the book ?
“We walked down now,going up also, but mostly we were going down. As when,at the
beginning of our adventure,attaining any height meant we had to also go down, so now
too, going down meant also going up.” (Pg. 160.)
Did no one read the manuscript before it went to the printer ?
We meet a reluctant traveler experiencing culture shock and separation anxiety from
her teenaged son .When not fearing for her life from the threat of Maoist guerillas or
leeches she retires early every night to avoid chores or socializing. She treats the
porters and locals as inferiors and admits whining constantly because she’s out of
her element technically, physically , emotionally. She complains about the local poverty
stricken villages when she is unable to buy souvenirs to commemorate the trip.
Perhaps the series could aptly be labeled " Famous people, lousy traveling companions."
She apparently signed on with some semI-professional botanists and serious hobbyists
to collect exoic Asian seeds compatible with her English garden. Nice thought.
Not realistic.
There are five rambling sections to the book. No chapters or breaks.
Nonsequitors,repetition,nonsensical sentences. The author describes
a beautiful young girl absorbed in patiently combing another young girl’s
long hair, looking for head lice. The next paragraph describes the author’s
plain but tasty lunch………
Congratulations,National Geographic- 5 stars for the photography !
My condolences on the loss of your editorial staff.
sports a magnificent cover photo. It is a visual befitting a National Geographic project.
But it has nothing to do with the contents.
The cover image has a misty quality giving the feel and look of the colorized
photos of the 1930’s. Just pretend the objects you see are simple shapes.
All triangles, squares and rectangles. Hard lines. Implied harshness.No
greenery. Cold. Barren. Ancient history.
But your eyes are drawn to the two young boys ,not yet ordained monks,
in their worn yet colorful robes ; contrast them with the aged stone, old
monastery, the faded prayer flags.
New meets old. New life keeping old traditions alive……
This is photography as art.
I admit I bought the book for the cover.
My wife loves all things Himalayan ; she would like this.
National Geographic logo……phew…..serious stuff.
Jamaica Kincaid . She’s famous, right ?
Inside the book ?
“We walked down now,going up also, but mostly we were going down. As when,at the
beginning of our adventure,attaining any height meant we had to also go down, so now
too, going down meant also going up.” (Pg. 160.)
Did no one read the manuscript before it went to the printer ?
We meet a reluctant traveler experiencing culture shock and separation anxiety from
her teenaged son .When not fearing for her life from the threat of Maoist guerillas or
leeches she retires early every night to avoid chores or socializing. She treats the
porters and locals as inferiors and admits whining constantly because she’s out of
her element technically, physically , emotionally. She complains about the local poverty
stricken villages when she is unable to buy souvenirs to commemorate the trip.
Perhaps the series could aptly be labeled " Famous people, lousy traveling companions."
She apparently signed on with some semI-professional botanists and serious hobbyists
to collect exoic Asian seeds compatible with her English garden. Nice thought.
Not realistic.
There are five rambling sections to the book. No chapters or breaks.
Nonsequitors,repetition,nonsensical sentences. The author describes
a beautiful young girl absorbed in patiently combing another young girl’s
long hair, looking for head lice. The next paragraph describes the author’s
plain but tasty lunch………
Congratulations,National Geographic- 5 stars for the photography !
My condolences on the loss of your editorial staff.
October 13, 2014
In which the Author goes trekking over the eastern part of Nepal, looking for seeds of flowers to bring home (though not all the flowers they meet will be suitable to bring back home) with some friends. The book was quite entertaining, though I would've wished for more pictures.
The author also didn't hide some negative sides, like jumping leeches, culture shock, Maoists and being grumpy (to put it mildly). And nighttime bathroom times. She was aware that the four of them could sometimes appearing spoiled in a First-World-travelers kind of way.
Perhaps it would've benefited also from wider descriptions (and as I mentioned, pictures), and I didn't feel like becoming her traveling companion in the end. It was useful in showing me how I would've probably not liked going on a trip like that, but it's a nice book to read of some people who do. Perhaps there's better book on traveling in the area they did, but this was pretty decent.
The author also didn't hide some negative sides, like jumping leeches, culture shock, Maoists and being grumpy (to put it mildly). And nighttime bathroom times. She was aware that the four of them could sometimes appearing spoiled in a First-World-travelers kind of way.
Perhaps it would've benefited also from wider descriptions (and as I mentioned, pictures), and I didn't feel like becoming her traveling companion in the end. It was useful in showing me how I would've probably not liked going on a trip like that, but it's a nice book to read of some people who do. Perhaps there's better book on traveling in the area they did, but this was pretty decent.
February 9, 2021
Perhaps it is always painful to hear a visitor describe a place that is so dear and known to your heart - they never are quite able to truely capture it. Although Nepal is not familiar I am so familiar with the himalayas. I have walked and explored and lived in those mountains and they are a place so etched in my heart that although I loved the reminders it was painful to have so little description of the sensatations of that amazing landscape. The way the landscape can be desolate and so full of life almost at the same time, the life other than plants, the way it can be blistering hot and then suddenly so cold, the sound of the river in the mountain valley - ever present. It felt like the author spent her whole time focused merely on the path in front of her feet. As much as my own mind transported me back to mountain peaks and shadowed valleys it was painful to not have it adequately described.
Also I found the level of colonial mindset that permeated the book so painful. For someone's name to be too difficult to even remember it or put in a book, I understand using nicknames or shortened forms but "Table"? The people were merely there to provider services or experiences and did not feel like people in and of themselves. Even the concept of visiting places to collect seeds.
Also I found the level of colonial mindset that permeated the book so painful. For someone's name to be too difficult to even remember it or put in a book, I understand using nicknames or shortened forms but "Table"? The people were merely there to provider services or experiences and did not feel like people in and of themselves. Even the concept of visiting places to collect seeds.
September 3, 2021
Better known for her literary fiction, Jamaica Kincaid is also an avid gardener. This is her account of trekking through the Himalayas with a botanist friend in search of unique seeds for her Vermont garden. I expected more lavish depictions of nature, particularly of the flowering plants of Nepal. Although she names the many plants she encounters, they were not described with sufficient detail for me to picture them. This is more about her experience on this two week hike, her excitement, frustrations and physical discomfort.
January 11, 2011
The author was asked by a publishing house where she'd like to go, and write about it. Avid Vermont gardener that she is, she opted for seed collecting in Nepal. A seed collecting gardener friend from the Washington peninsula goes with her.
I really enjoyed this book as a travelogue, personal journey and finding out about plant life in Nepal. Although her narrative is sometimes too involved with personal minutiae, it's a small complaint and also reflects her honesty about the difficulties (and joys) of the journey for her, despite training for months beforehand. If you want to know what it's really like to be a tourist on the trek in Nepal, this will give an idea.
July 10, 2024
Oh dear lord is this woman whiney? I was looking forward to reading this book, but could not finish it. Was this book written while oxygen-deprived? It plodded among complaining the entire journey. I was hoping for plant descriptions, but apart from a glorious description of a rhododendron forest, all she did was kvetch about all the plants that she could not grow in her Vermont garden --which is infinitely less interesting to the reader than hearing about the plants she was seeing would have been. A deeply unsatisfying read.
July 8, 2008
"a gardener is a person of all kinds, but in particular a gardener is a person who at least once in the gardening year feels the urge to possess completely at least one plant."
Among Flowers illuminates the lengths to which the consumed gardener will go to achieve this possession. As with many of life's endeavors, it turns out that the journey is more important than the end. As I encountered the previous quote not far from the beginning of the book (page 33), I was anticipating experiencing an awesome, magnificent floral journey with a good friend (for so I have found the recent writings of Ms. Kincaid).
When I finished the book—and it has been about a month now—I was a little disappointed, for aside from the many Latin plant names (a few of which I looked up—I would recommend searching flicr.com for pictures of some of the extraordinary plants mentioned), I didn't feel that Ms. Kincaid ever came to the point where she encountered the plant that she desired to possess completely. Indeed, most of the detail of plants (their Latin names) were not even the plants that she could grow. She does admit in the beginning of the book that some of the seeds she is growing in her garden now, but from the book, I have no idea which those would be.
Rather I found this book to be about walking, about discovering the world at the pace of a pedestrian. This was a pleasant, if disconcerting, discovery as I seem to have a walking theme appearing in my reading of late.
As always Ms. Kincaid's writing is fabulous, delicious, and top notch.
Among Flowers illuminates the lengths to which the consumed gardener will go to achieve this possession. As with many of life's endeavors, it turns out that the journey is more important than the end. As I encountered the previous quote not far from the beginning of the book (page 33), I was anticipating experiencing an awesome, magnificent floral journey with a good friend (for so I have found the recent writings of Ms. Kincaid).
When I finished the book—and it has been about a month now—I was a little disappointed, for aside from the many Latin plant names (a few of which I looked up—I would recommend searching flicr.com for pictures of some of the extraordinary plants mentioned), I didn't feel that Ms. Kincaid ever came to the point where she encountered the plant that she desired to possess completely. Indeed, most of the detail of plants (their Latin names) were not even the plants that she could grow. She does admit in the beginning of the book that some of the seeds she is growing in her garden now, but from the book, I have no idea which those would be.
Rather I found this book to be about walking, about discovering the world at the pace of a pedestrian. This was a pleasant, if disconcerting, discovery as I seem to have a walking theme appearing in my reading of late.
As always Ms. Kincaid's writing is fabulous, delicious, and top notch.
June 15, 2023
2005 gjorde den trädgårdsintresserade författaren en vandring i Himalaya. Syftet var att skriva en reseberättelse och att samla blomfröer att ta med hem till den älskade trädgården i Vermont. I år har Bland blommor (och blodiglar, som den skulle kunnat heta) översatts till svenska.
Det som lockar mig mest är att få reda på hur en turistkritiker motiverar att själv operera som turist, hon använder exempelvis bärare – någon så ung som fjorton år. (Sherpas är namn på en folkgrupp, många jobbar som bärare men inte alla.) Svaret är: det gör hon inte. Tvärtom berättar hon om hur hon – som är fullt medveten om turismens baksidor – är både gnällig och krävande. Hon tycker helst att tältet och bordet ska vara uppe och att teet ska vara varmt när hon kommer. Till mig säger Jamaica Kincaid att man bör inte turista och absolut inte vandra i Himalaya. Det här är en avskräckande reseberättelse och jag har aldrig känt mig så lite lockad att vandra i Nepal. Hon påstår dock att hon skulle vilja göra det igen. Kanske ironiskt dock?
”Flygplatsen verkade övergiven, eller tom på mänskliga känslor, eller bara obehaglig på ett kemiskt orsakat sätt, men jag hade inte svalt någon kemikalie av ovanligt slag, såvitt jag visste.”
Jag älskar Kincaids finurliga och ifrågasättande prosa och trots att varken bergsbestigning eller tusen växter på latin intresserar mig, tycker jag att Bland blommor är läsvärd. Hon är rolig och jag älskar att hon klagar och visar sig mänsklig i hela sin kropp och själ.
”Himlen överallt är på det hela taget blå; då och då avviker den från det; i Nepal avvek den mer än jag var van vid, och den gjorde det ofta med en snabbhet som påminde mig om en störd personlighet, eller bara vanlig psykisk instabilitet.”
Det som lockar mig mest är att få reda på hur en turistkritiker motiverar att själv operera som turist, hon använder exempelvis bärare – någon så ung som fjorton år. (Sherpas är namn på en folkgrupp, många jobbar som bärare men inte alla.) Svaret är: det gör hon inte. Tvärtom berättar hon om hur hon – som är fullt medveten om turismens baksidor – är både gnällig och krävande. Hon tycker helst att tältet och bordet ska vara uppe och att teet ska vara varmt när hon kommer. Till mig säger Jamaica Kincaid att man bör inte turista och absolut inte vandra i Himalaya. Det här är en avskräckande reseberättelse och jag har aldrig känt mig så lite lockad att vandra i Nepal. Hon påstår dock att hon skulle vilja göra det igen. Kanske ironiskt dock?
”Flygplatsen verkade övergiven, eller tom på mänskliga känslor, eller bara obehaglig på ett kemiskt orsakat sätt, men jag hade inte svalt någon kemikalie av ovanligt slag, såvitt jag visste.”
Jag älskar Kincaids finurliga och ifrågasättande prosa och trots att varken bergsbestigning eller tusen växter på latin intresserar mig, tycker jag att Bland blommor är läsvärd. Hon är rolig och jag älskar att hon klagar och visar sig mänsklig i hela sin kropp och själ.
”Himlen överallt är på det hela taget blå; då och då avviker den från det; i Nepal avvek den mer än jag var van vid, och den gjorde det ofta med en snabbhet som påminde mig om en störd personlighet, eller bara vanlig psykisk instabilitet.”
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March 26, 2023yeah this uhhhhh... didnt work for me. it tries to stay detached as a travel memoir but also frames a lot of situations that lend to interiority and then just refused to explore what she was thinking for the sake of the format staying detached.
This sacrifice of depth for the sake of being true to the travel memoir style is immediately betrayed by how candid & haphazardly she relates the trip - forgetting the names of plants, foods, people. misprouncing things and glossing over huge spans of time.
really just felt like once the preparations for the trip are over and it's purely about the events that took place (like page 70) the quality nosedives.
This sacrifice of depth for the sake of being true to the travel memoir style is immediately betrayed by how candid & haphazardly she relates the trip - forgetting the names of plants, foods, people. misprouncing things and glossing over huge spans of time.
really just felt like once the preparations for the trip are over and it's purely about the events that took place (like page 70) the quality nosedives.
December 16, 2024
I didn't love this as much as I hoped I would. I liked the concept of the book and I thought it had potential but I found it kind of flat and one dimensional. You never really got to know anyone else in the book (her travel companions or the locals they encountered along the way). It felt tight and largely concerned with her own "gardening agenda". Lots of beautiful descriptions and it definitely made me want to hike and explore the Himalayan Mountains.
January 31, 2022
It made me think back to my trip to the Himalaya--a trip not nearly as arduous, though, since I was only "camping" 1 (or maybe 2) nights; all the rest I slept poorly to well in small to medium hotels (which was strongly dependent on the number of feral dogs barking at dawn).
Very stream-of-conscious with lots of repetition, within sentences, paragraphs and/or pages later, but it served to illustrate the feeling of being unbalanced when in another culture, in another climate, with hardly any comforts of home. Still, I feel that it could describe that feeling instead of being right in it the whole time. In the end, it did not seem to bring it all together into any coherent conclusion... maybe one can never really recover from/make sense of such a paradigm-shifting experience. Some over-arching themes:
• How quiet, and yet how full of sound.
• Gardening is viscerally important to some people, but not to others
• Plants treasured in one culture can be fodder, firewood, or weeds in another.
• Space and time lose all meaning in this landscape
• Being spoiled to be able to go on this expedition (they even brought a satellite phone and had their underwear tailored while they were there)
• Needing souvenirs to make it the experience more real
• The locals were alternately warm/friendly...threatening...fed up...indifferent/did not even notice
• (paraphrasing): I might go back or travel to another place/I will likely go back/I'll never repeat X part of the trip and I don't care/ I will never see X again and it breaks my heart
• The joy of spectacle vs. the unknowableness of other people.
Favorite quote (perhaps even alternate title?):
"There will be leeches, but we will have so much fun."
Very stream-of-conscious with lots of repetition, within sentences, paragraphs and/or pages later, but it served to illustrate the feeling of being unbalanced when in another culture, in another climate, with hardly any comforts of home. Still, I feel that it could describe that feeling instead of being right in it the whole time. In the end, it did not seem to bring it all together into any coherent conclusion... maybe one can never really recover from/make sense of such a paradigm-shifting experience. Some over-arching themes:
• How quiet, and yet how full of sound.
• Gardening is viscerally important to some people, but not to others
• Plants treasured in one culture can be fodder, firewood, or weeds in another.
• Space and time lose all meaning in this landscape
• Being spoiled to be able to go on this expedition (they even brought a satellite phone and had their underwear tailored while they were there)
• Needing souvenirs to make it the experience more real
• The locals were alternately warm/friendly...threatening...fed up...indifferent/did not even notice
• (paraphrasing): I might go back or travel to another place/I will likely go back/I'll never repeat X part of the trip and I don't care/ I will never see X again and it breaks my heart
• The joy of spectacle vs. the unknowableness of other people.
Favorite quote (perhaps even alternate title?):
"There will be leeches, but we will have so much fun."
May 22, 2021
Decent read but I was a little annoyed with the fact that not only did they not carry their own gear, but they repeatedly complained about the porters who did and where the porters chose to set up camp. Yes, these porters are paid, but they are still humans schlepping someone else’s creature comforts through a treacherous terrain. At one point, the porters are far ahead of the hikers (because the hikers liked the feeling of walking into an already set camp) and the hikers DEMAND that the porters climb back up to where they are and setup camp there. The porters did not do this and I admit, I was proud of them for standing their ground against ridiculous demands. Of course, everyone has their own preferred method of travel, but this came up enough times that though I loved hearing of the beauty of the area, this is not a book I’ll read again.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Read
January 5, 2019Although Antigua-born Jamaica Kincaid is well-known as a writer of Caribbean fiction, this part memoir/part travel journal of hers failed to inspire. The plot: Kincaid, also a gardener, joins a group of gardeners on a quest in the Himalayas to hunt seeds. The seed quest displays a kind of rapacious, imperialist form of travel to claim the landscape. At many points in the book, the author comes across as another privileged, first-world traveler. She seems uninterested in connecting with the locals, often forgetting their names. She and the rest of her group also try to buy "souvenirs" from locals, even a woman's work apron, just to prove that they had been there, done that. Sorely disappointing.
September 21, 2022
1) I continue to be surprised that trekkers in the Himalayas use porters, rather than carrying their own gear. If you can't carry your own tent, sleeping bag, and food, should you really be out there on the trails? Hmmm - seems entitled. (Unlike some other author / trekkers whose books I've read, Kincaid acknowledges the imbalance between trekkers and porters.)
2) Given the widespread concern in the US over invasive plants, and the strong preference by many for natives, I'm also surprised that in 2002 the author and her companions collected seeds for ~500 exotic plants, presumably (?) without knowing which of these plants might become invasive in the US (or UK).
But, I did enjoy the book. The author did a great job of helping me feel how it must have felt to be on this trek.
2) Given the widespread concern in the US over invasive plants, and the strong preference by many for natives, I'm also surprised that in 2002 the author and her companions collected seeds for ~500 exotic plants, presumably (?) without knowing which of these plants might become invasive in the US (or UK).
But, I did enjoy the book. The author did a great job of helping me feel how it must have felt to be on this trek.
June 8, 2023
Funny, self effacing voice. Detail so accurate it feels like the tip of an arrow to a bullseye. You come with the narrators delight in simple foods or interactions, and also with her anxiety about fruit bats that look like prunes and medical problems. The scenes with the leeches were so viscerally awful. Descriptions of the scenery were stunning and her awe and shock transfer easily to the reader who marvels with her. Nothing epic but a simple and pleasant.l read. Finished in a day. Made me want to adventure and also felt very seen in her acknowledgment of the whiny moments of discomfort within awareness of the privilege of traveling.
July 14, 2018
I hoped this book would be more like Oliver Sachs' adventures with the bird watchers or studying trees, with a mixture of anthropology, botany, travel, and transcendentalism. Kincaid is strangely unreflective. The lists of botanical names of plants that I don't know, or the listing of the time and temperature, didn't do much to flesh out this otherwordly experience. She doesn't delve into what I'm curious about: the history of seed collecting, the colonial implications, or the ontology of "the wild" vs "the garden."
February 26, 2023
Could have been 2 stars for the writing/story (at best) if she wasn't a terrible person who explained that she never bothered to learn the names of the Nepalese locals who traveled with them so she called them "Cook" and "Table." How dehumanizing. And, digging a deeper hole, she went on to explain it was NOT because of a power imbalance, but only because of her own "anxiety" "unease" and "fragility" - Kincaid may not be white but she's steeped deep in white supremacy. Gross. Just so gross. No wonder she lives in Vermont.
[Saw another review that said she was peak "Ugly American" #cosign]
[Saw another review that said she was peak "Ugly American" #cosign]
February 6, 2025
A strange little book about a journey to the Himalaya, which obviously touched the author deeply. I didn't quite know what to make of it. Sometimes the writing was brilliant and insightful, but much of it was repetitive and boring. Maybe this sums up the honest reality of a long journey on foot? I thought the author came across as quite naive and self-centred at times and maybe unaware of her audience - I was left with a lot of unanswered questions at the end.
November 3, 2012
The language was very evocative but repetitive. We worry a lot about invasive plants here in the Pacific Northwest (think Himalayan blackberry). It made me nervous to think of what new horror they might be bringing back.
March 14, 2025
the ignorance of the American mind
February 26, 2025
I don't often pay attention to recommendations of "what to read after the book you have just read," but after reading Oliver Sacks Oaxaca Journal about his trip to Oaxaca to study the ferns there, I received a recommendation to read Jamaica Kincaid's bookAmong Flowers: A Walk in the Himalaya.
I really had enjoyed the Sacks book, and I loved the idea of walking the Himalayas to gather seeds. I wasn't familiar with Jamaica Kincaid so looked her up and found she had such an interesting life story, that I felt compelled to read her book.
Kincaid loves her Vermont garden and is friends with a nurseryman and botanist who offers her a chance to visit Nepal and collect seeds. Among Flowers is her book about the walking trip she took there in 2002.
I found this book to be just fascinating and loved Jamaica Kincaid's unique voice.
A distance of a city block meant going up or going down, and though Dan, especially Dan, and Bleddyn took to it very well, the extremely uneven terrain was trying for Sue and me. I complained bitterly to myself, and quarreled with the ground as I trod on it, but even then I knew I was having the very most wonderful time of my life, that I would never forget what I was doing, that I would long to see again every inch of the ground that I was walking on the minute I turned my back on it.
She talks a good deal about the plants that she sees and if they will work for her garden in Vermont. I loved hearing about them all.
We also get a picture of what the political climate was like at that time in Nepal.
I would suggest this book for anyone interested in plants, Nepal and slow travel.
I really had enjoyed the Sacks book, and I loved the idea of walking the Himalayas to gather seeds. I wasn't familiar with Jamaica Kincaid so looked her up and found she had such an interesting life story, that I felt compelled to read her book.
Kincaid loves her Vermont garden and is friends with a nurseryman and botanist who offers her a chance to visit Nepal and collect seeds. Among Flowers is her book about the walking trip she took there in 2002.
I found this book to be just fascinating and loved Jamaica Kincaid's unique voice.
A distance of a city block meant going up or going down, and though Dan, especially Dan, and Bleddyn took to it very well, the extremely uneven terrain was trying for Sue and me. I complained bitterly to myself, and quarreled with the ground as I trod on it, but even then I knew I was having the very most wonderful time of my life, that I would never forget what I was doing, that I would long to see again every inch of the ground that I was walking on the minute I turned my back on it.
She talks a good deal about the plants that she sees and if they will work for her garden in Vermont. I loved hearing about them all.
We also get a picture of what the political climate was like at that time in Nepal.
I would suggest this book for anyone interested in plants, Nepal and slow travel.
Read
June 8, 2024I know nothing about flowers or their names scientific or otherwise. This fact made the book a little hard to get through at points because I could not bring myself to look up the flowers being referenced on the authors trek. However, I very much enjoyed the moments of existential meditation and the way that Jamaica Kincaid writes about them. She was going through it and I appreciated the way she described these experiences breaking her brain. I was bored sometimes but that's ok, maybe I'll read it again someday with wikipedia open
July 9, 2024
“This account of a walk I took while gathering seeds of flowering plants in the foothills of the Himalaya can have its origins in my love of the garden, my childhood love of botany and geography, my love of feeling isolated, of imagining myself all alone in the world and everything unfamiliar, or the familiar being strange, my love of being afraid but at the same time not letting my fear stand in the way, my love of things that are far away, but things I have no desire to possess.”
My favorite parts of this book were definitely the first half of the Topke Gola chapter & then the last few pages. Otherwise, there wasn’t a whole whole lot of things that interested me in this travelogue as I don’t have a huge interest in horticulture or studying, collecting, identifying, & cultivating plants beyond my little herb & vegetable plot or whatever is naturally already growing in places for whose health I am responsible, but every now & then Kincaid would make an observation or share a consideration that really resonated with me or made me think very critically about my own ideas & preconceptions about things like travel, tourism, geopolitics, imperialism, the environment, camping etc. etc.
Click here to read my full review of AMONG FLOWERS complete with my full thoughts, further reading suggestions, and more of my favorite quotes!
★ ★ ★ ★ .5
CW // oh god, the leeches!
December 28, 2024
This could’ve been a cool picture book with plants
February 22, 2021
I chose this book because of a article in New Yorker about the Himalyas.
It quoted passages from Kincaid's book. I thought to myself I think I must have a copy and I did.
A good book to read in a time when we shouldn't travel. Not a trip I aspire to do but I enjoyed reading about it. I spent a lot of time looking up plants mentioned.
It quoted passages from Kincaid's book. I thought to myself I think I must have a copy and I did.
A good book to read in a time when we shouldn't travel. Not a trip I aspire to do but I enjoyed reading about it. I spent a lot of time looking up plants mentioned.
January 5, 2022
3.5 stars, rounded up because of the ways Kincaid's writing took my breath away at times, especially her way of capturing the essence of the impermanence of travel.
Read this book for Bookshop Santa Cruz's Winter Reading Challenge.
Read this book for Bookshop Santa Cruz's Winter Reading Challenge.
November 14, 2022
From time to time I lost a sense of who I was, what I thought myself to be, what I knew to be my own true self, but this did not make me panic or become full of fear. I only viewed everything I came upon with complete acceptance, as if I expected there to be no border between myself and what I was seeing before me, no border between myself and my day-to-day existence.
I had not read Kincaid before this, but I knew I needed to once I set foot on Antigua.
I would have done this, even if I had not been interested in the garden. Just to see the earth crumpling itself upward, just to experience the physical world as an unending series of verticals going up and then going down—with everything horizontal, or even diagonal, being only a way of making this essentially vertical world a little simpler—made me quiet.
A great piece of travel writing, full of sensations and sights, although no attempt to really learn or tell about the people or the geology or the science. Just a writer looking for plants for her garden.
Above us were huge boulders, and I couldn’t help but wonder what kept them in place. Ordinarily, I never question the ground I am on but in this place of determined verticals, everything seemed delicately perched, waiting for the day when it would come tumbling down. What if that day happened to be the moment when I was just passing by?
But the awe of the land permeates her book, and I felt like I was there.
Left to ourselves, we would have been lost in this sea of rocks and boulders, for this landscape was as familiar to me as the one on Mars. I found each plant, each new turn in the road, each new turn in the weather, from cold to hot and then back again, each new set of boulders so absorbing, so new, and the newness so absorbing, and I was so in need of an explanation for each thing, that I was often in tears, troubling myself with questions, such as what am I and what is the thing in front of me.
I have felt this feeling, like being on Mars, in Utah, in Hawaii, and Yellowstone. But also in Antigua. And actually, many of the first turns of the Blue Ridge Parkway in the Appalachians.
Had I been the first person to walk on the surface of the moon, I don’t think I would be able to speak for one hundred years afterward. As it is, I just went to Nepal on a plant-hunting, seed-collecting trek and the landscape at the foothills of the Himalayan mountains have left my tongue somewhat stilled, perhaps permanently so.
Did she or I mention that she went with botanist friends on a seed collecting mission, looking for plants that would flourish in Vermont? Isn’t that a grand thing for an Antiguan woman to do? If she had looked up the geology, she would have found the summit of Mount Everest is marine limestone, just like the karst and limestone of the Caribbean, only solidified beneath the surface and raised to unfathomable heights. The flags planted on the summit are placed over marine organisms present in the current Carribbean.
I met some native Antiguans on a tour of the island, influencers and employees of resorts and one older woman told us she made sure she and her family learned how to swim in the US when they lived there, because growing up in the Caribbean, the ocean was death and they stayed away except for people who made a living off of it.
I swam in the turquoise water of a beach on that tour and I think it was after I learned that.
I cried some tears into the sea for all of that pain and fear. The ocean had some waves and it wasn’t super tranquil like the bay we were staying at, and I have known oceans. I have known their power. I remember feeling seasick after being away a long time and then trying to swim in a cold North Atlantic ocean with some roiled up waves.
Leaving the pass was like leaving a great book, which had yielded every kind of satisfaction that is to be found in a great book, except that with such a book you can immediately begin on page one again and create the feeling of not having read it before, even though the reality is you have read it before.
To read a book about the Himalaya and be simultaneously in the Caribbean, the Atlantic, the Rockies, the Appalachians, well. That is an amazing book.
It was in the week after his creation, the eighth day, that the trouble began: loneliness set in. And so he made a garden, dividing it into four quarters by running water through it (the classic quadrilinear design that is still to this day a standard in garden design) and placing borders, the borders being the eternal good and evil: the Tree of Life, the Tree of Knowledge. One was to be partaken of, the other forbidden. I have since come to see that in the garden itself, throughout human association with it, the Edenic plan works in the same way: the Tree of Life is agriculture and the Tree of Knowledge is horticulture. We cultivate food and only after is there a surplus of it, which produces wealth, so we cultivate the spaces of contemplation, a garden of things not necessary for physical survival. The awareness that comes from that fact alone is what gives the garden its special, powerful place in our lives and imaginations.
I am back in the Himalaya with her and in her Vermont garden, and also my mother’s garden. Aren’t books magical?
Look at me: my historical reality, my ancestral memory, of which I am very conscious and which is so deeply embedded in me that I think the whole world understands me before I even open my mouth. A big mistake but a mistake not big enough for me to have learned anything from it. The plant hunters are the descendants of people and ideas that used to hunt me.
My tears left in the Caribbean were actually tears of joy, of a dream come true, of what in my mind is paradise. But now, they are for the atrocities the world has perpetuated on African peoples specifically.
I end here where I began: reading—learning to read and reading books, the words in books a form of food, a form of life and then knowledge, not a form of knowledge but knowledge itself.
I loved this book. I wonder if the author returns to Antigua or the Caribbean ever. I see the Himalaya as she sees it. I love the few pictures in the book, a few of her and some of the scenery or villages. She is not smiling in any picture, and this was 2002 so not ancient times when no one smiled in photos.
Only when I returned home did I notice that the sky above me hardly ever caused me to observe it with real anxiety, being mostly clear and a sad pale blue in the daytime and turning to a grayish black at night. If I made particular note of water, land, and sky when I returned home, it is only because when I was away, walking in the foothills of the Himalaya, that became the world I knew. I knew with certainty. There, I lived outside all that time; and the distinctiveness of it all, the wide and open spaces, were especially so when seen from far away and protected by an overarching and concavelike sky. And this wide-open space was then pursued by the unrelenting encroachment of the mountains, this landscape in the Himalaya.
Colorado has Himalayan skies, I think, from the way she described it. The first all Black team just summitted Everest, and I followed them avidly, so anticipating their triumph, and I wonder if she followed them. Colorado mountains are different than the Himalaya with lots of meadows, parks (really flat tablelands in between mountains), valleys, and partly due to being sculpted by glaciers in past Ice Ages. They are 60 million to 120 years old, and the Himalayas began growing 50 million years ago. And are still growing. The Appalachians are 480 million years old. There is something so stunning about the heights of mountains. Then think of their ages, and you have to practice deep time exercises before you really grasp that fact.
In Nepal, the sky is a part of your consciousness, you look up as much as you look down. As much as I looked down to see where I should place my feet, I looked up to see the sky because so much of what happened up there determined the earth on which I stood. The sky everywhere is on the whole blue; from time to time, it deviates from that; in Nepal it deviated from that more than I was used to.
Electric Colorado skies are part of my consciousness.
The ground was never level for long, and suddenly, or eventually, I was climbing again, going up and up, and the going up seemed sudden, surprisingly new, for I had not expected it. For those first few hours, I was expecting the landscape to conform to the landscape with which I was familiar, gentle incline after gentle incline, culminating in a resolution of a spectacular arrangement of the final resting place of some geographical catastrophe. But this was not so. I walked up toward a ridge, and I thought that when reaching the ridge my whole being would come to something, the something that had made me there in the first place. But this was never to be so. The Himalaya destroys notions of distance and time, I thought then, plant-hunting destroys all sorts of notions, but this I have always known.
Distance and time. I feel like I am flying vast distances in my car, and am on the land, and can feel the air. Time passes when you are in a flow state. As out of it. And I am back swimming in the Caribbean and hoping the author will forgive me.
The sound of the thunder was above and below us, far away and near at once, but whatever direction it came from, however near or far, it was not like any thunder I had ever experienced in real life or the imagination. There was that clapping and that roaring sound that I associate with thunder, but in this case it seemed to come from deep within the earth and the mountains that surrounded Num, and suggested that there was a more profound earth with mountains that was beyond Num.
The author wrote she could never pronounce Namaste. She spelled it Nemaste. This was 2002 when yoga was present and popular, but maybe not for her. This hurts, I wish her curiosity and bravery could have been less westernized and arrogant. But who am I, anyways. I am back in time a few years ago, learning some Thai and Cambodian to at least be able to say thank you and hello, another trip that helped me lose speech like the Himalaya did for her.
How good everything looked. The world in which I was living, that is, the world of serious mountains, the highest peaks in the world, over the horizon, if only I would just walk to them, the world of the most beautiful flowers to be grown in my garden, if only I would just walk to where they were growing. I was trying to do so.
It helps to focus on a place you love and feel safe when confronted with the highest mountains in the world, walking and walking into a wilderness with villages and potential warfare. I understand.
Only in the Himalaya would such a height be called a foothill. Everywhere else this height is a mountain. But from where we sat, we were at the bottom—for we could see other risings high above us, from every direction a higher horizon. The moon came up, full and bright. And it looked like another moon, a moon I was not familiar with. Its light was so pure somehow, as if it didn’t shine everywhere in the world; it seemed a moon that shone only here, above us. It sailed across the way, the skyway, that is, majestically, seemingly willful, on its own, not concerned with having a place in the rest of any natural scheme.
I see the moon. I see the moon she saw. Thank you for this sight.
Walking that day along the usual narrow path, in which it would be impossible for two people to walk along together side by side, concentrating hard so that I did not fall into the many yawning chasms that were a natural accompaniment to the path, I felt gloriously happy. Everywhere there was something that even I could see was worth collecting. The bounty included: Hydrangea robusta, a species of Lobelia, Rhododendron arboreum subsp. cinnamomeum (this was a rhododendron with peeled bark like cinnamon, or like the bark of Acer griseum), Meconopsis villosa, Arisaema propinquum, Rhododendron bureavii, Acer campbellii, and the much desired Daphne bholua. Twice, at two different times, Sunam tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to look over my shoulder, and once I saw a stark white pyramid set against the bluest of skies: that, he said, was Makalu.
Glorious happiness is lovely. I wish for us all to have it when we can, not always because we would grow used to it and it has a power that can energize and propel us. It can change us.
How I wanted reaching the pass, going up to it and then leaving it behind, to be something like that, the reading of a great book, the texture of it, the rocks moving under my feet, the flowers that I could never cultivate all full of collectible seed, the precariously standing boulders, each one looking as if it was just about to roll down on top of me and only me; the six-inch deep snow, the slipping around in it and falling down at least once, the clearest of blue skies above me, the sun hot even though I was in the midst of cold and snow, the herd of yaks, the hidden lake, seen by so very few human eyes for all its millions of years’ existence, its contents eventually joining up with the Ganges.
I had not read Kincaid before this, but I knew I needed to once I set foot on Antigua.
I would have done this, even if I had not been interested in the garden. Just to see the earth crumpling itself upward, just to experience the physical world as an unending series of verticals going up and then going down—with everything horizontal, or even diagonal, being only a way of making this essentially vertical world a little simpler—made me quiet.
A great piece of travel writing, full of sensations and sights, although no attempt to really learn or tell about the people or the geology or the science. Just a writer looking for plants for her garden.
Above us were huge boulders, and I couldn’t help but wonder what kept them in place. Ordinarily, I never question the ground I am on but in this place of determined verticals, everything seemed delicately perched, waiting for the day when it would come tumbling down. What if that day happened to be the moment when I was just passing by?
But the awe of the land permeates her book, and I felt like I was there.
Left to ourselves, we would have been lost in this sea of rocks and boulders, for this landscape was as familiar to me as the one on Mars. I found each plant, each new turn in the road, each new turn in the weather, from cold to hot and then back again, each new set of boulders so absorbing, so new, and the newness so absorbing, and I was so in need of an explanation for each thing, that I was often in tears, troubling myself with questions, such as what am I and what is the thing in front of me.
I have felt this feeling, like being on Mars, in Utah, in Hawaii, and Yellowstone. But also in Antigua. And actually, many of the first turns of the Blue Ridge Parkway in the Appalachians.
Had I been the first person to walk on the surface of the moon, I don’t think I would be able to speak for one hundred years afterward. As it is, I just went to Nepal on a plant-hunting, seed-collecting trek and the landscape at the foothills of the Himalayan mountains have left my tongue somewhat stilled, perhaps permanently so.
Did she or I mention that she went with botanist friends on a seed collecting mission, looking for plants that would flourish in Vermont? Isn’t that a grand thing for an Antiguan woman to do? If she had looked up the geology, she would have found the summit of Mount Everest is marine limestone, just like the karst and limestone of the Caribbean, only solidified beneath the surface and raised to unfathomable heights. The flags planted on the summit are placed over marine organisms present in the current Carribbean.
I met some native Antiguans on a tour of the island, influencers and employees of resorts and one older woman told us she made sure she and her family learned how to swim in the US when they lived there, because growing up in the Caribbean, the ocean was death and they stayed away except for people who made a living off of it.
I swam in the turquoise water of a beach on that tour and I think it was after I learned that.
I cried some tears into the sea for all of that pain and fear. The ocean had some waves and it wasn’t super tranquil like the bay we were staying at, and I have known oceans. I have known their power. I remember feeling seasick after being away a long time and then trying to swim in a cold North Atlantic ocean with some roiled up waves.
Leaving the pass was like leaving a great book, which had yielded every kind of satisfaction that is to be found in a great book, except that with such a book you can immediately begin on page one again and create the feeling of not having read it before, even though the reality is you have read it before.
To read a book about the Himalaya and be simultaneously in the Caribbean, the Atlantic, the Rockies, the Appalachians, well. That is an amazing book.
It was in the week after his creation, the eighth day, that the trouble began: loneliness set in. And so he made a garden, dividing it into four quarters by running water through it (the classic quadrilinear design that is still to this day a standard in garden design) and placing borders, the borders being the eternal good and evil: the Tree of Life, the Tree of Knowledge. One was to be partaken of, the other forbidden. I have since come to see that in the garden itself, throughout human association with it, the Edenic plan works in the same way: the Tree of Life is agriculture and the Tree of Knowledge is horticulture. We cultivate food and only after is there a surplus of it, which produces wealth, so we cultivate the spaces of contemplation, a garden of things not necessary for physical survival. The awareness that comes from that fact alone is what gives the garden its special, powerful place in our lives and imaginations.
I am back in the Himalaya with her and in her Vermont garden, and also my mother’s garden. Aren’t books magical?
Look at me: my historical reality, my ancestral memory, of which I am very conscious and which is so deeply embedded in me that I think the whole world understands me before I even open my mouth. A big mistake but a mistake not big enough for me to have learned anything from it. The plant hunters are the descendants of people and ideas that used to hunt me.
My tears left in the Caribbean were actually tears of joy, of a dream come true, of what in my mind is paradise. But now, they are for the atrocities the world has perpetuated on African peoples specifically.
I end here where I began: reading—learning to read and reading books, the words in books a form of food, a form of life and then knowledge, not a form of knowledge but knowledge itself.
I loved this book. I wonder if the author returns to Antigua or the Caribbean ever. I see the Himalaya as she sees it. I love the few pictures in the book, a few of her and some of the scenery or villages. She is not smiling in any picture, and this was 2002 so not ancient times when no one smiled in photos.
Only when I returned home did I notice that the sky above me hardly ever caused me to observe it with real anxiety, being mostly clear and a sad pale blue in the daytime and turning to a grayish black at night. If I made particular note of water, land, and sky when I returned home, it is only because when I was away, walking in the foothills of the Himalaya, that became the world I knew. I knew with certainty. There, I lived outside all that time; and the distinctiveness of it all, the wide and open spaces, were especially so when seen from far away and protected by an overarching and concavelike sky. And this wide-open space was then pursued by the unrelenting encroachment of the mountains, this landscape in the Himalaya.
Colorado has Himalayan skies, I think, from the way she described it. The first all Black team just summitted Everest, and I followed them avidly, so anticipating their triumph, and I wonder if she followed them. Colorado mountains are different than the Himalaya with lots of meadows, parks (really flat tablelands in between mountains), valleys, and partly due to being sculpted by glaciers in past Ice Ages. They are 60 million to 120 years old, and the Himalayas began growing 50 million years ago. And are still growing. The Appalachians are 480 million years old. There is something so stunning about the heights of mountains. Then think of their ages, and you have to practice deep time exercises before you really grasp that fact.
In Nepal, the sky is a part of your consciousness, you look up as much as you look down. As much as I looked down to see where I should place my feet, I looked up to see the sky because so much of what happened up there determined the earth on which I stood. The sky everywhere is on the whole blue; from time to time, it deviates from that; in Nepal it deviated from that more than I was used to.
Electric Colorado skies are part of my consciousness.
The ground was never level for long, and suddenly, or eventually, I was climbing again, going up and up, and the going up seemed sudden, surprisingly new, for I had not expected it. For those first few hours, I was expecting the landscape to conform to the landscape with which I was familiar, gentle incline after gentle incline, culminating in a resolution of a spectacular arrangement of the final resting place of some geographical catastrophe. But this was not so. I walked up toward a ridge, and I thought that when reaching the ridge my whole being would come to something, the something that had made me there in the first place. But this was never to be so. The Himalaya destroys notions of distance and time, I thought then, plant-hunting destroys all sorts of notions, but this I have always known.
Distance and time. I feel like I am flying vast distances in my car, and am on the land, and can feel the air. Time passes when you are in a flow state. As out of it. And I am back swimming in the Caribbean and hoping the author will forgive me.
The sound of the thunder was above and below us, far away and near at once, but whatever direction it came from, however near or far, it was not like any thunder I had ever experienced in real life or the imagination. There was that clapping and that roaring sound that I associate with thunder, but in this case it seemed to come from deep within the earth and the mountains that surrounded Num, and suggested that there was a more profound earth with mountains that was beyond Num.
The author wrote she could never pronounce Namaste. She spelled it Nemaste. This was 2002 when yoga was present and popular, but maybe not for her. This hurts, I wish her curiosity and bravery could have been less westernized and arrogant. But who am I, anyways. I am back in time a few years ago, learning some Thai and Cambodian to at least be able to say thank you and hello, another trip that helped me lose speech like the Himalaya did for her.
How good everything looked. The world in which I was living, that is, the world of serious mountains, the highest peaks in the world, over the horizon, if only I would just walk to them, the world of the most beautiful flowers to be grown in my garden, if only I would just walk to where they were growing. I was trying to do so.
It helps to focus on a place you love and feel safe when confronted with the highest mountains in the world, walking and walking into a wilderness with villages and potential warfare. I understand.
Only in the Himalaya would such a height be called a foothill. Everywhere else this height is a mountain. But from where we sat, we were at the bottom—for we could see other risings high above us, from every direction a higher horizon. The moon came up, full and bright. And it looked like another moon, a moon I was not familiar with. Its light was so pure somehow, as if it didn’t shine everywhere in the world; it seemed a moon that shone only here, above us. It sailed across the way, the skyway, that is, majestically, seemingly willful, on its own, not concerned with having a place in the rest of any natural scheme.
I see the moon. I see the moon she saw. Thank you for this sight.
Walking that day along the usual narrow path, in which it would be impossible for two people to walk along together side by side, concentrating hard so that I did not fall into the many yawning chasms that were a natural accompaniment to the path, I felt gloriously happy. Everywhere there was something that even I could see was worth collecting. The bounty included: Hydrangea robusta, a species of Lobelia, Rhododendron arboreum subsp. cinnamomeum (this was a rhododendron with peeled bark like cinnamon, or like the bark of Acer griseum), Meconopsis villosa, Arisaema propinquum, Rhododendron bureavii, Acer campbellii, and the much desired Daphne bholua. Twice, at two different times, Sunam tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to look over my shoulder, and once I saw a stark white pyramid set against the bluest of skies: that, he said, was Makalu.
Glorious happiness is lovely. I wish for us all to have it when we can, not always because we would grow used to it and it has a power that can energize and propel us. It can change us.
How I wanted reaching the pass, going up to it and then leaving it behind, to be something like that, the reading of a great book, the texture of it, the rocks moving under my feet, the flowers that I could never cultivate all full of collectible seed, the precariously standing boulders, each one looking as if it was just about to roll down on top of me and only me; the six-inch deep snow, the slipping around in it and falling down at least once, the clearest of blue skies above me, the sun hot even though I was in the midst of cold and snow, the herd of yaks, the hidden lake, seen by so very few human eyes for all its millions of years’ existence, its contents eventually joining up with the Ganges.
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