The Season of Passage

  love to be my guides. It seems they had gone on a number of religious pilgrimages to the temples in the Himalayas.

  'Five days later found us in Gangotri, a tiny village about two miles above sea level. It's way back in the mountains. By then I'd seen many a temple and met many a sannyasi -the saffron-clad monks who inhabit all of India. I was having a wonderful time. I love to travel, and the people I had spoken to about the Himalayas had been right about the special feeling you find in those mountains. I was not having religious experiences by any stretch of the imagination, but I felt like a kid again. I wanted to see and do everything. I wanted to stay. Still, I hadn't met any yogis who had impressed me as enlightened or possessing supernatural powers. In that respect, I was somewhat disappointed, but I hadn't given up hope.

  'I was up early one morning, strolling down the cobblestoned street of Gangotri, when I met a sweet old man. He looked over a hundred. He had been educated in England, at Oxford, and we sat together and talked for hours. He didn't have a tooth in his head, but he did have a habit of breaking into fits of laughter that would last five minutes at a stretch. He was wonderful company.

  'He told me about a valley I should visit near the Gaumukh Glacier. The glacier lay only twelve miles northeast of where we were seated, and the valley beneath it was supposed to be filled with flowers of a hundred different varieties. He spoke of it as an enchanted valley, and said many ills could be cured just by walking through it. By the way, the idea of the therapeutic nature of smells was not new to me. In Ayurveda - that's ancient Indian medicine - there are whole sections of text devoted to aromatic cures. The old man told me he had gone for a walk through the valley on his eighty-fifth birthday, when he was about to die, and that had been ten years ago and he was

  feeling great. He called the valley Devashan - the dream of the gods.

  'I was sold. I dashed back to my room at the ashram and told Panda and George about the valley. They shared my enthusiasm for the trip. Within an hour, toting our camping equipment, we were on our way.

  'We made excellent time that day. I told you this was June, and the bridle path we followed was free of snow. My companions were experienced mountaineers. But the sun began to set before we could reach the glacier. We camped that night in a rock hollow just off the path. I remember falling asleep that night with a million stars in the sky. I felt at peace, and I slept deeply.

  'The next day we reached Devashan. The old man had been right - it was one uninterrupted sheet of flowers. It stretched for several miles, half a mile below the lip of the glacier. I know it may sound odd, so many blooming flowers so near a bank of icy snow, but the glacier does in fact melt several feet in the summer. Although it was sunny, the valley was still cool.

  'I cannot describe the smell of Devashan to you. It saturated the air, but I would be doing a disservice to the place to say I felt smothered in aromas. The air was wonderfully stimulating. I bounded forth into the valley, with Panda and George at my heels. But we might have been too hasty. George stepped on a stone and twisted his ankle. It was not a bad sprain, and there was a nearby stream where he was able to soak it in the cold waters. He did not feel like walking any more that day, though, and his brother wanted to stay behind with him. I told them I would walk just a few miles into the valley and then return. I figured we could camp by the stream where George was soaking his foot. I believed a night's rest was all he needed to recover.

  'There was hardly a cloud in the sky as I climbed down into the valley. But after I had been walking less than an hour, the sky suddenly clouded over. Summer storms know a special kind of sorcery in the mountains. When I say suddenly, I mean it. Thunder roared, lightning cracked. I was soaked in seconds. I turned around and started back. Then things started to get interesting.

  'Devashan normally had a strong smell. I have already made that point. I can't say the rain actually increased the strength of the odor. It may even have decreased it. However, when the water mixed with the many flowers, it sent different smells into the air. Indeed, I found myself taking in lungfuls of intoxicating aromas. But I use the word intoxicating reluctantly. I didn't feel stoned. In fact, I felt more awake. The sky was a dreary gray, but now the flowers appeared to be glowing. Everything was beautiful, illuminated. I know what you must be thinking. That I had fallen under the influence of a hallucinogenic. I can't argue the point, except to say that it was a hallucinogenic unlike any I have ever read about. It seemed to have no side effects. But now I'm going to totally contradict myself. I couldn't find my way back to Panda and George.'

  'Why not?' Lauren asked.

  'I don't know,' Jim said.

  'Were you walking in circles?' Gary asked.

  'No,' Jim said. 'I headed straight back the way I came. The only problem was, when I got to the stream it was gone. So were the guys. The glacier covered the whole area.'

  Gary snorted inside his helmet. 'You were stoned.'

  Jim smiled. 'If you think that now, wait until I finish my story.' He paused to clear his throat. 'I began to walk south along the glacier. I did not know what to think. By the position of the sun I knew I had not walked to the other end

  of the valley by mistake. I could pinpoint it as the clouds began to clear and the rain stopped. Then I really began to wonder what was going on. Devashan is a valley beside a glacier in the Himalayas. Yet it is not surrounded by towering peaks as you might imagine. The region stays between the elevations of nine thousand to eleven thousand feet. That's high, of course, but not for the Himalayas. As the clouds blew away, however, I found myself surrounded by peaks of staggering grandeur. There were literally a dozen of them. What was even more surprising was that I didn't recognize any of them from the maps I had studied. Yes, I know, I was hallucinating, but they were there nevertheless.

  'I finally decided to climb a nearby peak to get my bearings. There was a low one not a half mile across the glacier from the valley. I trudged across the ice worrying about Panda and George. I knew they would think I had fallen and injured myself.

  'As I worked my way up the side of the peak, I noticed that my watch had stopped. It was a good watch - the rain shouldn't have affected it. Then I saw that it was getting dark. That threw me completely off balance. It had been eleven in the morning when I had left Panda and George and walked into the valley. At worst I figured it must be three or four in the afternoon. But you can't argue with the sun. I spotted a cave and went inside, planning to spend the night there. Once again, I was not worried about myself. I have been lost many times in my travels, and have always managed to find my way home. The soil on the floor of the cave was soft. The temperature inside was pleasant. I regularly suffer from insomnia, but I curled up inside that cave and fell asleep in seconds.

  'When I awoke it was morning. The sun shone directly into the mouth of the cave. I stood and stretched, and it was

  then I noticed someone sitting further back in the cave. I hesitated to disturb him. I figured he was a yogi. He was sitting in the lotus position with his spine held perfectly erect. I had been warned in Gangotri never to interrupt a yogi when he was meditating. However, I didn't want to just leave. I was completely lost. I had my canteen, but no food. I was hungry. I took a few steps toward the man.

  'He must have heard me coming. I heard a soft intake of breath and saw his eyelashes blink. He glanced over at me. He was far enough back in the cave that the shadows were outdoing the morning sun, but I could see right away how handsome he was. He had long black hair and a long black beard. He appeared to be about twenty-five. Unlike most Indians, he was tall and well-muscled. His skin was also remarkably fair. In fact, I wondered if he was from India at all. Yet I was convinced he was a yogi, although I hadn't spoken a word to him. The feeling that surrounded him was enchanting in its gentleness. He smiled at me and I felt welcome.

  'I told him my name and apologized for disturbing his silence. His smile broadened at my words. He answered in a language I did not recognize. That was not a major surprise. In
dia has so many different dialects, a man could go crazy trying to learn them all. I had spoken to him in Hindi, the most common language spoken in the Himalayas, and now I switched to Tamil. Again he answered me in the same peculiar tongue. I puzzled over the melodious nature of his speech. I know a great deal about languages, and his was unlike any I had ever heard before. It was almost as if he were singing a song to me.

  'He sat and watched me for a bit, smiling faintly. He wore a dark blue robe. It was wrapped tight at his waist, but hung loose over his shoulders. His feet were bare and heavily callused. His eyes were as black as space. I must tell

  you again how beautiful he was. Although I could not understand him, I still felt very much at home with him.

  'Finally he rose to his feet. He pointed deeper into the cave, indicating we were to go that way. By chance I had a small flashlight in my back pocket. I took it out and showed him how it worked. He seemed amused. He stepped to a corner of the cave and emerged with two thick wooden sticks that were wrapped at the top with oily cloth. They were obviously torches, but as we walked deeper into the cave, he made no move to light them, relying instead upon my flashlight. You might ask why I started to follow him in the first place. I don't know, I had no other place to go.

  'The passage narrowed. It wound sharply and led us downward at a steep angle. The walls were covered with a fine dust. When I scraped it away I found a yellowish marble underneath. Several times we came to spots where we had to duck our heads to get by. Yet on the whole the way was comfortable. The yogi walked on my left, slightly before me. His stride was graceful, and he hardly seemed to breathe. He could have still been in meditation. I know, it's strange - he was leading me far underground. Yet I trusted him. He was so peaceful, and his smile was so warm.

  'We walked for over an hour, when I began to notice two things. First, my flashlight was slowly dying. Once more I was puzzled. I knew the batteries were fresh. Also, the temperature was increasing. I removed my jacket and tied the arms around my waist. Even though the yogi spoke to me from time to time, I made no progress in deciphering his language.

  'I was in good shape at the time, preparing for this trip to Mars. Perhaps that was the reason why the further we walked and deeper we went, the fresher I felt.

  'The flashlight continued to dim. I found myself bumping the walls. Finally the yogi stopped and held up his two torches. In one swift move he smashed the heads together. Immediately they caught fire and burned with a white light. Because of the color of the light, at first I suspected the torch heads were coated with a magnesium powder. I figured the chemical would soon burn away and leave us with ordinary orange flames. Such was not the case. The torches continued to burn white and bright. I was dumbfounded.

  'He handed me a torch, and we continued to walk deeper. We could have walked for maybe two hours. The yogi maintained a brisk pace. More and more I began to sense an energy radiating from him. That is a poor choice of words, but it gives you an idea of how vibrant it felt to be in his presence. I also believe the place we were exploring had something to do with how I felt. The silence was uncanny. When we had traveled better than six miles, a quarter of that in the vertical direction, the air underwent a sharp rise in humidity. It got thicker, more satisfying. I smelled a very faint fragrance. It reminded me of camphor. Yes, camphor - the stuff parents rub on the chests of children when they have chest colds. It may very well have been camphor, for all I know.

  'Abruptly the wall on our left vanished. One moment it was there, the next it was gone. A few feet later, the ceiling of the cave also disappeared. The yogi now took care that I stayed near the right wall. He didn't want me falling off the edge. I was excited. We had obviously entered a vast underground space. Our torches continued to burn bright, but their light showed nothing beyond the edge of the path.

  'My amazement continued to grow. We walked downward for a long time before a floor appeared. To your average geologist, such a large cavern would be considered almost an impossibility. I brushed aside the film of dust on the right wall and discovered the same marble-like

  substance, only now it was laced with streaks of clear quartz crystal. The marble material was hard. I tried scratching it with a pocket knife I carried and failed.

  'Finally our path leveled as we stepped onto a flat plain. I knelt and examined the ground. It was like a carpet of compressed blue grass, soft and springy.

  'We headed away from the path, out over the plain. I must say something about how my perception of the yogi was changing. He still looked the same, naturally, but when I first met him, it was his gentleness that had impressed me. That quality remained, yet it was now overshadowed by a sense of high lineage. What I mean is, now he seemed like a king. Indeed, I felt as if he were taking me on a tour of his kingdom. I could tell he thought of the place as his own.

  'After some time we came to a barrier of water. I couldn't tell whether it was a lake or not. I don't think it was a stream; it wasn't flowing in either direction. With the yogi's permission, I stopped and took a long drink. The water tasted faintly of the camphor I mentioned a moment ago. It was not unpleasant. The yogi indicated that we were to swim across. He removed his robe and I stripped down to my shorts. Standing tall in nothing but a loincloth, the yogi looked like a young Greek god. He took my torch as well as his own and waded into the water, holding the fires safely above the surface. He swam using the power of his legs alone, which you know is hard to do. I followed as best I could. The water was warm and clear, although I could not see the bottom.

  Soon I felt ground underneath my feet. We climbed onto a silent shore. The yogi handed me my torch and we continued forward. At first the terrain was the same as before - perfectly flat. Then I began to notice shapes in the dark. They appeared to be nothing more than huge boulders. However, as I looked closer, I believed I saw subtle shapes. You might ask, did I see carvings or not? I tell you, I'm not sure. Being an archaeologist, I was tempted to think I had been led to the ruins of an ancient civilization. But the boulders might just have been boulders. I know that's not a satisfactory answer, but it's an honest one. Everywhere I found the same marble-like material I had seen in the cave, only now it was free of dust and it was whiter, and laced with greater amounts of quartz crystal. Yet, once again, I could not conclusively say I was examining anything that had been fashioned by human hand.

  'Eventually we came to an oval pool of water. It was large and symmetrical. I forgot to mention earlier that while we were undressing to swim across the water, my companion indicated that I should bring my canteen. Standing at the edge of the oval pool, he took the canteen from me and emptied its contents on the ground. He submerged it in the pool until the canteen was full. Then he replaced the cap and handed it back to me. I made a move to drink from the pool, for I was thirsty again, but he stopped me and shook his head. I was surprised. I gathered from his gestures that I wasn't to drink the water in my canteen, either.

  'When he shook his head, it was the first specific gesture that showed he knew anything of modern culture. But upon reflection, I think he had learned the gesture in our short acquaintance. I had the impression he understood everything I said to him, but that he didn't have the means to answer me. I guess it was the way he smiled at me.

  'We walked around the pool. I was curious to know its depth, but when I reached down to feel for the bottom, he gently restrained me. I got the idea that the pool was sacred. I found the whole place fascinating, but my biggest surprise was yet to come.

  'On the far side of the pool was a block of marble. It was flawlessly white and literally a perfect cube. Resting on top of it was a single silver ring. The yogi indicated I should pick it up.

  'The ring's appearance was remarkably ordinary. True, it was exquisitely polished, but its design was plain - a simple silver band. I placed it on my finger, half expecting something extraordinary to happen. We've all read fantasy stories about magical rings and the wonderful powers they give to those who possess them. I guess being whe
re I was, I believed those stories could come true. Of course I felt no different with the ring on.

  'But new understanding did come to me then. Constantly, while examining the strangely shaped stones, I looked for evidence of an ancient civilization. Now that I held the ring, I had such proof, although it was far from conclusive. The yogi could simply have put it on top of the marble block. He could have shaped the block for that matter. But in either case, I began to see the cavern in a new light, not as being incredibly old, but as being incredibly young, not yet born. Does that sound strange? I know it must. But in the square block I began to imagine a sculptured table, as if in the future it would be that way. I could see the boulders that lined the pool as being pillars in a grand palace. The springy turf we had been walking over would be blooming grass, even bushes and trees. I got quite carried away with myself.

  'The yogi indicated that I should keep the ring. Then he pointed to the torches, which had finally begun to dim. He gestured in the direction we had come. I protested. I wanted to look further. But then I imagined what it would be like to explore the cavern without light. I agreed we should go back.

  'There is little to say about our return journey. We

  retraced our steps at a good pace. At what I estimated to be sea level, my flashlight began to work again. I imagined that in the place I had just visited, twenty-first-century technology didn't operate. To this day I think of the cavern as belonging to a separate time, a different reality, with its own laws of nature.

  "The sun was high in the sky when we arrived at the mouth of the cave. I had walked far, but felt little fatigue. In fact, I wasn't even hungry anymore. The yogi pointed toward the valley of flowers. He indicated I should walk the length of it to get back to where I was supposed to be. He was such wonderful company - I did not want to leave. I asked if I could come back and visit him again. He shook his head and pointed at the sky. I know the gesture could have been interpreted in a number of ways, but at the time I had no doubt that he understood I was going to Mars. He hugged me, touching me briefly between the eyebrows, and then walked back into the cave. I never saw him again.