The Community of You

You think you're alone in that body of yours. Oh, but you're not alone, not by a long shot. You've got company. Not just a few guests, you've got a few BILLION guests. And I'm not talking about the few billion people on the planet - I'm talking about the few billion microscopic life forms that inhabit your very body. Do you feel like an independent, do-it-yourself kind of person? Well you may want to revise that idea as well, because the overwhelming majority of these critters are beneficial to your healthy existence, and many are vital. You are not alone.

 

I was fascinated to read about this in an Indian newspaper. The genesis was a book written in 1969 by Theodor Rosebury, "Life on Man." By the time we reach adulthood we may have an astonishing 50 TRILLION microbes (and 1,000 different species) in and on our body, gleefully inhabiting our darkest and most personal body-bits, where we wouldn't normally consider entertaining a crowd. 

 

You've probably heard of the earth described as Gaia, as a sort of living organism, and not the individual bits and bobs that we typically think of. I always thought that was a stretch, but look at the parallels to our body and its microbes. Your armpit is a Gaia all of its own, whether you include the rest of your body or the rest of the planet. Up to an incredible 90% of the combined cells of this amalgam we call a body are bacteria. Our vision of our cherished self probably doesn't include this bacteria that make life possible. But shouldn't it? Theodor Rosebury put it, "All life is a single community." And gene experts at Genomic Research claim that we are not entirely human, but "truly symbiotic organisms, relying on one another for life itself."

 

Where is this "separate self" that we spend most of our lives defending? If we believe in a self, shouldn't we know where it begins and ends? I ate porridge this morning with a mango cut up in it. As of yesterday, I'd never met this mango before. Now, that mango is not separate from me - it is me. Yesterday it was clearly not me, and today it IS me. How does that work?

 

Too much love,

Dave

 

Below are eight photos:

 

 

Hiding behind her sister, she's not so sure about me.

 

 

 

This kid had a really cute and playful personality.

 

 

Women with woven baskets walking up the trail, along the Pindari Glacier route.

 

 

 

A Hindu priest.

 

 

 

This man had a wicked and cutting sense of humor. He was hilarious, but you'd want to stay on his good side!

 

 

The daughter of two professors from Delhi.

 

 

This guy had been painting a utility tower. All the painters were covered in this silver paint.

 

 

They look like they're playing, but it's work. I tried pumping the water for a few minutes, and it was really hard. There are a tremendous numbers of houses without running water, and before the monsoon gets going, water outages are frequent in some communities.

 

 

(The End)

 

Pindari Glacier trekking photos

There are 11 photos below:

 

A hillside in the mist along the trail.

 

 

This is our trekking lodge manager in the pink hat. Somehow the people in this valley cooked some spectacular meals over wood fires. This was around 10,000 feet elevation, and it was COLD when it rained, and down to about freezing at night.

 

 

Some big snow-covered mountain. I don't pay that much attention to the names. It was probably around 23,000 feet at the top, which makes it over two miles vertically above our heads.

 

 

The valley just as we approach Pindari Glacier, which can be just seen in the upper middle of the photo. At the bottom of the rockfall in the center, you can just make out some buildings, which are an ashram that a very friendly and sturdy Hindu saddhu (holy man) started 20 years ago. He lives there, at 12,000 feet, year-round, and for four or five months a year he couldn't get out of the valley if he had to because of the snow. For a couple of months he doesn't even come out of the small ashram. He just meditates, eats very little, and according to him, doesn't sleep at all during the winter.

 

 

Me with the glacier moraine behind me. The knife-edged hill to the left of me is what the glaciers leave when they recede. Two feet to the left of me is a several-hundred foot cliff, also left by the glacier. These areas are notoriously unstable, and make for some great rock-rolling! I mean, if you're into that kind of thing.

 

 

Jennifer, facing back down the valley we'd come up, along with the mountain dog who'd followed us for a few days.

 

 

One of the chai stalls along the trail.

 

 

Bamboo is cultivated in the area, and is a big business, of sorts. It's cut when it's small, split into slits (which this boy is doing,) and then woven into floor mats or baskets.

 

 

The village of Kathi, where we stayed for a week total. Great food and really nice people. This was taken on the way back from the glacier, which is down the valley that you see in the center.

 

 

All the moms looking at this are instinctively grabbing for a tissue!

 

 

This girl was washing her hair under a natural flowing tap of water.

 

Love,

Dave

 

(The End)