OUT OF EDEN WALK

We panted over snow passes and followed the newly improved caravan road past the big, blocky, slate houses of yak shepherds, where women dressed in long, warm Tibetan coats invited us into their homes to rest and sip butter tea. Bored villagers, men and women, sat beside the new road every two hundred yards, wearing the bright red brassards of fire wardens on their upper arms. It was a government make-work project. They were guarding against anyone who dared toss a cigarette out the window of a passing car. Only there was no traffic. And we were high above the tree line, with only willow scrub and no forests to burn. Farther on, we came to the Milestone recording spot, and the only human being anywhere nearby was an old Tibetan woman. We tried to talk, but she stood outside her house, one hand anxiously on the front door handle, waving us off. Her dog barked at us—two filthy and rumpled walkers inching north toward the old Silk Road town of Kangding. “She is a little afraid of us,” explained my walking partner, Yang Wendou. And there was nothing else for it. Loneliness under a cooling grey sky. We kept going.