Ann Armbrecht - Thin places : a pilgrimage home

THIN PLACES

A Pilgrimage Home

ANN ARMBRECHT

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
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Copyright 2009 Ann Armbrecht
Paperback edition, 2011

All rights reserved
E-ISBN 978-0-231-51829-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Armbrecht, Ann.

Thin places : a pilgrimage home / Ann Armbrecht.
p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-231-14652-4 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-231-14653-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-231-51829-1 (e-book)
1. Yamphu (Nepalese people)NepalHedangaSocial life and customs.
2. Hedanga (Nepal)Social life and customs.
3. Armbrecht, Ann.
4. Women anthropologistsUnited StatesBiography.
5. Women anthropolgistsNepalHedangaBiography. I. Title.
DS493.9.Y36A76 2009
305.89549dc22
2008023537

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DESIGN BY MARTIN N. HINZE

IN MEMORY OF JULIE BETH GOLDMAN

DECEMBER 31, 1962SEPTEMBER 18, 2000

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;
what is essential is invisible to the eye.

ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPRY, The Little Prince

There are moments when the walls of my mind grow thin;
when nothing is unabsorbed.

VIRGINIA WOOLF, The Waves

there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

RAINER MARIA RILKE, Archaic Torso of Apollo

M any years ago, two brothers stood at the edge of an icy-blue lake high in the Himalayas in a pass marking the border between Nepal and Tibet. These brothers, called Minaba and Sepa, were the sons of Yamphuhang, a Kiranti prince who had been chased with his brothers from their fathers kingdom in Kathmandu by Mughal invaders from the south. Yamphuhang and his brothers had fled to the eastern reaches of their fathers land, where they then headed north, following different river valleys in search of the lands they would eventually claim as their own. Yamphuhang, the second son, chose the middle valley, that of the Arun River. He traveled for days, wrapping his arms and legs in the bark of trees to keep warm, climbing through the mountains until he eventually reached the Tibetan Plateau. He settled, married, and fathered two sons: Minaba and Sepa.

Once Minaba and Sepa were old enough to claim their own land, they decided that the arid Tibetan Plateau was too harsh and the life too hard. And so they had come to this lake in a pass called the Popti La. Standing at its edge, they threw a wooden bowl lined with silver and a walking stick into the lake. They watched as the bowl and stick spun slowly around the center of the lake and disappeared beneath the surface. And then they swore that wherever the bowl and walking stick resurfaced, that place would be their home.

Singing, singing, looking, looking, they began to climb down the mountains. The two brothers flew like birds, the stories say, soaring over the narrow ravines and steep ridges of those rugged lands. They traveled for dayswalking, walking, watching, watchingstopping only when they finally saw the reflection of a lake through the forest. Minaba and Sepa climbed a ridge to get a better view. The bowl and stick circled in the center of the lake. The brothers looked around. Huge boulders covered the steep slope. Life did not look any easier in this rocky land than it had on the high Tibetan Plateau. They were being led by the ancestors, but certainly they had some say in the matter. They threw the bowl and stick back into the water and once again set out to the south.

Walking, walking, watching, watching, the brothers came to a ridge north of the land now known as Hedangna. They stopped to catch their breath and to rest. They finished up the last of their roasted barley and then climbed a tree to get a better view. They saw a deep-blue lake. This lake was so blue and so big and so surprising to see in the middle of the dense, dark forest that Minaba and Sepa were afraid. They looked closely at the water. In the center, they saw the wooden bowl and walking stick slowly spinning. The land surrounding the lake sloped more gradually than did any land they had yet seen. It faced the rising sun. There were still huge boulders, bigger than a house, but not as many as in the north. It seemed like good land. The brothers looked back at the lake, with the stick and the bowl circling in the center. They then climbed down from the tree and knelt by the spring that fed the lake. Each drank deeply from the cold, clear water. Together, Minaba and Sepa swore that as long as they lived, as long as their offspring lived, this land would be their home.

As long as I can remember, I have longed to touch some sacred essence I did not have words for, something I knew only by its presence and mostly by its absence. This longing led me from my home; yet ultimately, I believed, it would lead me home, bring me to a place in the landscapea place outside myselfwhere, like Minaba and Sepa, I would want to stay. And so I set out on my journey, traveling, as so many before me, to the Himalayas, and led, like the two brothers, by a longing for home, like them watching for signs that I was on the right path.

Thin Places explores what I encountered on my travels. Most broadly, it asks what it means to come home to a place in a culture without deep ties to the natural world. I asked this question during my fieldwork in Nepal; I asked it more urgently after I returned to the United States and a dissolving marriage. I found that truths that were easy to study as an anthropologist were more difficult to embrace as a way of life. I realized that I could understand the ways that others relate to the environments in which they live only by reflecting on my own relationship with the environment and that I could best understand that relationship by considering my relationships with others, particularly those to whom I was closest. I came to see that both sets of relations, with the earth and with others, required similar efforts and challenges and that I could really understand those challenges only by exploring them in my own life and choices.

I experienced the sense of connection I was seeking in those moments when the veil between worlds lifted, in those thin places where I could feel the presence of the divine. I came to understand that Minaba and Sepas story about finding a home was really a story of pilgrimage, a journey that involves a stripping away to reveal the sacred essence of life. And I discovered that the ability to discover the sacred at homeliving life as a pilgrimageis what can turn any place into a home where it is worth swearing to stay.

T his book has been many years in the writing. I cannot begin to do justice here for the support, encouragement, and guidance I have received on what has been a much longer journey than I ever imagined it would be.

The research on which this book is based was made possible in the most immediate sense by the generous financial support from the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University; the Harvard Institute for International Development; a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship for Doctoral Research; the Joint Committee on South Asia of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council, with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Ford Foundation; the Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship, administered by the Wenner-Gren Foundation; and the generosity of my grandmother Calvert Truxtun Holloway.