JOURNEY - on Mastering Ukemi (29 page)

Cho Oyo was only 7 miles due north, a monstrous mountain standing alone against the sky. Gyachung Kang, over 26,000 feet was slightly to the right of her, and to the east stood the massive triumvirate of Everest, Lhotse, and Lhotse Shar, all approaching 28,000 feet, with Mount Everest towering over them all at 29,100 feet. Further east stood Makalu, Ama Dablam and Thamserku. After all the weeks of clouds and rain and gloomy skies, after the nightmare that yesterday had been, I felt reborn. Thought left me and I could only stand in awe and let waves of wonder and humility wash over.

Finally I became aware of Christian. He looked in one direction and then the next, turning first toward the north and the amazing bulk of Cho Oyo and then spinning to search the sides of Ama Dablam and Thamserku. One direction and then the next; it was as if he could not embrace it all fast enough and needed to drink it all in with one giant gulp. Finally he stopped and looked at Mount Everest. It is Sagarmatha to the Nepali people – The Churning Stick of the Ocean of Existence. The Tibetans call it Chomolonga – the Goddess of the Wind.

Christian stood staring at the Mountain framed in the sapphire blue sky, its sides newly painted in a perfect coat of brilliant white snow and slowly he raised his arms. I watched as tears spilled down his cheeks, unnoticed and unacknowledged. He lifted his arms up and reached and reached outward in a nearly holy moment of epiphany and transcendence of spirit. He reached out with hands that were unlined, unscarred by time and life’s passing cruelties; hands that were free of the travails of a lifetime of work. He reached out with the simple joy and innocence of wonder and youth.

And so I quietly left him there, standing on the backbone of the earth, reaching out to touch the face of God.

Chapter 17

Arrival

Descending is always faster than climbing, even when your knees hurt and your quads get shaky. We passed Gokyo and did not stop until we reached Machermo where we ate a lunch prepared by the lodge. We continued on and finally arrived at Dole where we spent the night. It seemed as if years had passed since we had been there last, but it had only been three days. Each place we passed, Bim would go in and warn the lodges of what had happened. We did not want any others to suffer.

The next day I was able to check into the tiny hospital at Khunde. The doctor had an accent that I could not identify and was not in the least chatty. He didn’t seem to approve of me or like me, but he did start an I.V. and examined my face. The others continued down to Namche Bazaar. Before they left I reimbursed them all for the money that had been stolen and gave Bim enough money for all our expenses. A Sirdar’s job is to negotiate and handle all finances on the trek.

After three days I woke to find Christian sitting on the bunk next to mine.

“
How are you feeling?”

“
Sore, but better.”

“
I brought you some new clothes. And a coat…” He got up and opened a backpack and pulled out a small rucksack, like a sleeping bag. He opened it and pulled out a huge coat. It was an Eddie Bauer Expedition Weight, goose down coat, with a gortex outer cover. I was impressed. “Where did you get this?

“
Oh, I guess a lot of people just leave their stuff here after they’ve gone up the mountains,” he said. “They re-sell it. I hope the t-shirt and underwear are new, though.” He laughed his boyish laugh and I ruffled the hair on his head. He was unchanged. He seemed happy.

“
Sensei, I need to say something. I just want you to know that standing up to those guys was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen. It was really amazing. I feel humbled just to know you.” He stared at the floor.

I looked at him and needed to stop this nonsense.

“
Christian? What are you talking about?”

“
Just the way you said ‘no’. The way you refused to kneel in front of them. God, I was so scared.”

“
Well, Jesus, son, if they had told me to sit down on my butt I would have done it!”

“
What?”

“
I couldn’t kneel. I can’t get on my knees if my life depends on it. I would have sat down, though. They just never gave me a chance. I didn’t do anything brave, trust me. All I managed to do was put you guys in danger and get beat up. I was stupid, not brave.”

He looked at me with a questioning look and seemed confused. Good. That was all I needed. Just sow a little doubt. Imagination and the disappointments that we all experience, the disintegration of respect for the nobility of man… it would do the rest.

“
Well, I still think it was pretty brave.”

He helped me get up and I dressed slowly, grateful for clean clothes. On the way out I saw the doctor and told him I wanted to make a donation to the hospital. He didn’t seem very interested in the fact that I had removed my own I.V. and was leaving. “Yes? Just leave it in the envelope.”

I looked at the envelope. “It won’t fit,” I said, and threw the big wad of cash I had taken from the Maoist rebels on his desk. He was surprised. “This is for the people.” I said. “The Nepali people,” and then we walked out into a brilliant, beautiful world.

Christian walked beside me all the way back to Namche Bazaar and although my back was sore and I could really only see well from my right eye I thoroughly enjoyed the trip down to the old city perched on the side of the mountain. At one point I needed to stop and lean against him because I was so dizzy. He just stood tall and strong and held me like a friend. We were having lunch in the Thamserku View Lodge when the rest of our group showed up.

“
Oh Sensei, your face!” squealed Esra, and she and Celine both threw their arms around me. I have to admit I really enjoyed the attention. I’m still a man. The guys just watched with big grins on their faces.

I looked them over. In only five days their faces had taken the ruddy look of outdoors, sun and wind. They were ebullient, smiling and bubbling with happiness. Their young muscles had hardened. Their lungs and constitutions were now seasoned and at peace with the high country and thin atmosphere.

“
So where are you going today?” I asked.

“
We want to take the guys to the monastery at Tengboche,” said Esra. Her English was so much better I was amazed.

“
Really?” I asked. “Where are your Italians?”

She blushed. “Oh, well, you know…” Everyone laughed.

“
It sounds great. There and back in one day?”

“
Sure! It’s easy,” said Celine.

“
Go on,” I said. “Get out of here and make sure you take some pictures for me so I can see it.”

They laughed again and assured me they would and then were off. Five beautiful people I was proud to know. I sipped some more bad instant coffee and then a shadow fell over me.

“
I heard what happened up there.”

I looked up to see Buz Donahoo standing beside me in full kit. Back pack and hiking polls sat on him like a normal man wears a suit.

“
Hi Buz, you taking off?”

“
Yeah, it’s time for me to go down.”

Somehow that depressed me. I was hoping to spend some more time with him. I suddenly felt a little lonely.

“
That must have been something,” he said. He hunkered down next to me.

“
What?” I couldn’t imagine what he was talking about. I had to turn my head to see him with my good eye.

“
The whole thing. Going up there, getting robbed and beat up, then going back and getting your stuff back. I wish I’d been there! Man, what an adventure! A real shoot out with a rebel army? Hah! Then climbing all the way up the back side of Gokyo in a blizzard, at night, without a coat or any gear…?” He grinned at me. “You know, I almost envy you! I’ve been robbed by Maoists in Peru. They call themselves the Shining Path or some such, and I’ve been chased by pirates off the Spanish Main.., I’ve been robbed by whores… and bartenders…” he laughed, “...and I just keep going and going and think, what an amazing, wonderful life! What an amazing wonderful world!

“
Everything we do should be an adventure and you have to have the occasional rifle butt to the head once in a while in order to make you really appreciate the look of Cho Oyo after a blizzard. It’s a trade off, and it all comes out even. In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”

He was preaching to me about ukemi.

He stood up. “Okay, see you around, sometime.” He turned and walked away.

“
Hey Buz,” I called. “Maybe in Orlando or Winter Park???”

He turned, “How about we meet on some nice Greek Island like Santorini or maybe in old Havana?” He laughed and kept going down the bazaar and stopped a dozen times to speak to someone, shake a hand, or pat a shoulder. Then he was gone.

I sat and thought about what he’d said and decided that I agreed with him completely, and always had. Sometimes a rifle butt to the head causes your perspective to be altered for a time, but it wakes you right up if you let it. Perspective was returning.

Aikido is a metaphor for life. It is not a journey of its own, only a hiking pole to be carried along the way. Too many people train at aikido thinking that it is a worthy end in itself and if I can make an observation for all time, it is that aikido is meant to enhance the adventures in our life, not take the place of them.

Get off the mat and go to the train station. Take off your gi and hakama, go get your back pack and take off. You’re not getting any younger. The world is an immense place and everywhere you go, aikido will serve you as an ambassador, and a way of smoothing out the rough edges and maybe sometimes save your life. But the living of your life is your real job and aikido is only a small tool in your kit. Trust me, nothing you ever do on an aikido mat will match the surge you get from riding horseback over the Khyber Pass and then going hell-bent for leather into the Hindu Kush and exploring the Karakorum Mountains. Nothing on an aikido mat will fire up your spiritual light like a camel ride deep into the Anatolian Desert. There, you can slip into a thousand year old caravansary to watch Whirling Dervishes perform their ancient and secret meditation by candle light to the sounds of drum and flute.

Okay, you don’t have a passport. There are 53 mountains that exceed 14,000 feet in Colorado alone. Speaking of Colorado, the river has some awesome white water rafting. On the East Coast, the Appalachian Trail is a serious challenge or you can go the civilized route and go listen to one song in every jazz club in New Orleans. Just do something!

Aikido has two sides: nage and uke. Nage is like death, the dissolution of energy… a kind of entropy that diminishes our life forces as we train. A perfect nage contributes nothing and intercepts uke’s attack and leads it away until it is extinguished or until uke escapes. It is almost impossible.

A perfect uke attacks with all the energy, the life force, the juice, that makes nage look like he’s actually doing something when he should, in reality, be doing nothing at all. If you feel really energized after an aikido class, nage is adding too much juice to his throws and giving too much back. It isn’t aikido.

Everything in aikido begins and ends with ukemi.

It is the only martial art that embraces such a scheme and it is what, in my opinion, makes it unique. I don’t care about nage and what he does, anymore. After 45 years of training my experience tells me a good uke knows it all, anyway. Certainly he knows more than a nage that bunches his muscles and loads up to throw an uke so hard he bounces and makes a big noise.

The noise you hear is the ego of the nage, pounding his chest and saying ‘look at me!’ The truth is, aikido is really pretty boring if done right. And that’s good! So let me be the uke. That’s where the fun is, that’s where the joy is, that’s where the life is.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it

Afterword

Chris went back to work. The entire American Defense Community is relieved. Curtis, after years of engineering on-board changes to the Space Shuttle now heads a team of scientists searching for water in the polar regions of the moon. Celine and Esra went back to Turkey. I heard that Esra is dating a member of the Saudi royal family. That’s just perfect.

Christian went back to school, received his Doctor of Jurisprudence and is now my attorney. He’s the one who insists that I now tell you that
no one in this book actually exists. This is a work of fiction. Nothing that took place in this book actually happened. Every place in this book is fictitious
.