Ann Ambrecht’s fascinating ecological memoir, Thin Places: A Pilgrimage Home, looks at the stories and culture in rural Nepal from an eco-anthropological perspective. The book is soon to be in paperback, and here’s an excerpt. You can also find the book here.
While studying anthropology and while first living in Hedangna, I believed that I eventually would understand enough to say something conclusive about another culture, at least about the women in that culture or the children or the educated men, or even something conclusive about another person. I was looking for a place where I could gain a bird’s-eye view of the cultural landscape. Instead, everywhere I turned, I discovered ambiguity, fields and rights overlapping, truths that looked different depending on where I was standing. This awareness was deeply unsettling, not simply because I began to doubt my reasons for having gone to Hedangna in the first place and my ability to communicate what I had discovered, but because the one truth I had been raised with was that there was a truth and that I should tell it.
When I tried to write about Hedangna—about Devimaya, Dhanmaya, Raj Kumar, or Amrit—I often thought about how, as an anthropologist, I might explain the choices I had made. Everything that seemed to matter most in my life, all the decisions I was making, emerged from the most intimate and private moments of my life, from things beneath the surface, the things I chose not to share with others, particularly outsiders. I thought of the different voices speaking to me at each step along my journey— those of Brian, my mother, my father, my sisters and brother, my advisers, and my friends; those from books I had read; those of Devimaya, Baiseti Thuma, and Chute Rai; those from my experience as a witness to Julie’s journey—all these voices clamoring for a say in each choice I made. And, most important, especially in understanding my unexpected decisions—going to Nepal, climbing into the cab in Kathmandu—I thought of my own voice struggling for a say amid the rest. That listening to my voice was difficult, yet essential, that speaking not simply in private but in secrecy was easier, was connected to my personal biography, not to anything meaningful that might be said about my culture. Certainly there were things I could say about my place in the social structure, about my education and my class, or, to be slightly more specific, about where I had grown up and had and had not t traveled. But none of that revealed very much, or at least not the things I was interested in knowing. All the voices, each expressed and repressed for different reasons, were what mattered. How could anything so particular to my own journey ever add up to anything meaningful that I might say about my culture?
I thought of the shaman’s journey to Manguhang, a journey into the heart of the world. I wondered if I might find what I was seeking by going more deeply into life, into each moment—into the details—rather than stepping back and removing myself from the context and searching for a vantage point from which I could perceive the whole. I wondered if the essence I was seeking—an essence that transcended the particular—could be found only in the particular.
ur mainstream American, or even alternative American construct of time and space. What happened there? I’m not sure although I have some hope that telling you about it will help me know more. Where were we? In some place constant and occasional, ancient and ahead of its time, ceremonial and ordinary, Tennessee and beyond Tennessee. In many ways, the road trip to the congress — all 10 hours of driving plus numerous stops — meant t
unneling into the world in the center of the earth, and now we’re out again, back to the surface, and I have to say I’m just a little heartbroken to be apart from the congress and all of you who were there (as well as all of you who have been there and simply must be there next time and haven’t yet been there but will be there in the future).
others found took us away from our time together; the dancing and singing; the food, which was tasty, but jeez, I seriously missed butter; the long talks heart to heart; the smiles across the circles; the sitting
ow it when I’m there, and especially when I’m not anymore. The circle if the room where I live best. Hearing each person speak — whether in the opening circle when we crowded into the big room, lopsided and earnest, saying our names and where we were from, or later in the spiral of the women’s circle, when we spoke about being a woman, living as a woman’s body at this age — shows me who we really are together, and who I am apart: a part of the circle.
from some place two hours away, complete with accordion and tutus, to sing, dance, and slip down the
nd and youngest in the center; both circles
together, when we crossed over to some common and complex understanding as one, when barriers dissolved and we saw ourselves as being in congress together continually, this meeting a continuation of one that began in ‘84 and will never end, I hope.
spent 13 years spreading bioregionalism through the arts througout Central and South America).
energy of the Mexicans,” and who kept reminding Laura Kuri and me that we were his Ninja Muses because when he first arrived, looking just a little confused, Laura and I leapt up and hugged him, and stood — one of us on each side of him — during the opening circle, telling him we would protect him as Ninja Muses.
after, David and Alberto pressing their foreheads together, crying over the loss of this great and enduring spirit, our own dream of the earth.
* The beautiful site committee and how much they did to make it all work: Greg, Jennifer, Susan, Alayne, Biko, Roberta, and (forgive me, I can’t remember all the names) so many others: THANK YOU!
oned understandings, misunderstandings and eventual clearings, old hurts and new healings, and above all, something that transcends how we live in the non-ceremonial world and shows us how to bring the village we make
Juan-Tomas, Bob, Stephanie, Andy, Albert; Natalie and Nyela (Sadie’s baby); Laura and Helen (from Mexico); Natalie as cat; the fairies arrive on All Species Night; more All Species (note the porcupine); Bea and me; Gesa; Mark, Richard and the bioregional quilt (started in ‘84, quilted by the men); Fabio and Laura with Stephen Gaskin; Ken, Curtis and others; David and Alberto; Leonor from Venezuela; Stephanie and me; the welcome tent; Gary working on Alberto.
