At some point in one of our late evening talks keeping warm next to the stove I joked with Pema about what a bad Sherpa son-in-law I would make. Despite the fact that I don’t speak any useful languages like Sherpa or Hindi and that I’m way behind on my prayer beads, I wouldn’t do very well making a living since I’m comparably weak and I don’t like getting dirty all that much. I’d always be hitting my head on the door frames and I would spend all my money in town at the cyber cafe keeping up with my emails. Well, there are a million other reasons why I wouldn’t work out with an arranged marriage up there, but it’s a system that is still in practice and is still pretty successful. The idea is that the families get a clear view of the candidates and they make a match as they see fit. That practically guarantees the ties they make will be to their approval and the families will be much less likely to be in contention, which will trickle down to a supportive environment for the couple. I’ve been witness to a few American relationships that were beset by nosy and disruptive family elements. The parents never accepted the choice so they conspired to turn the relationship into barren soil. Of course an American couple has the freedom to move across the country and check the caller ID before they answer the phone and ignore their family, in the tight-knight Sherpa villages that’s not an option.

Somewhere around Pheriche at 14,000 feet I passed the previous record for my highest elevation. Four years ago on the Big Island of Hawaii I signed up for a tour of the top of Mauna Kea, one of two enormous dormant volcano mounds that brought the land mass out of the ocean. Astronomy is one of my favorite hobbies, so Mauna Loa was a special objective for me to see the world famous (to astronomers) telescopes built at the summit of the volcano at a little under 14,000 feet. I started the day at sea level in lush, tropical Hilo, drove a couple hours upwards and inland to more barren terrain, and parked at the visitors center at 9,000 feet. I met with the tour group and continued up to the summit to see the slowly swelling cinder cones and the desolate, Martian landscape. We piled out of the van and hurried to get a clear view of the sunset over the rest of the Hawaiian islands below, but before I could figure all of this out I was feeling pretty delirious. The tour guide had mentioned something about the effects of high altitude, but with the surreal view of looking down on Maui and looking up to an unbelievably clear view of the heavens I wasn’t sure what planet I was on anymore. The tour was over very quickly as we spent only about 20 minutes at the top, then the tour guide was intent on getting us back down. I know I was pretty loopy up there, so the tour is set up to slip in and quickly back out of the high altitude before we all pass out. The experience is still like a vivid dream in my memories, but it was good to get perspective of why Universities invest so much money in building astronomical observatories up there. The air is clear and dry since it is above much of the humid island air that can distort views of the faint specks of light in the sky.