Article July 21, 2008 Issue

CLIMBING SPIRITUAL SUMMITS IN NEPAL

TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY NATHANIEL WILDER

While touring Asia a couple of years ago, my brother, Forrest, and I embarked on a trek that would carry us to a mountain base camp high in the Annapurna Mountains of central Nepal.

The altitude gain, and particularly fears about altitude sickness, was something that had preoccupied my thought days before we'd begun the trek. And now, walking up smooth, stone stairways through the subtropical mountain landscape, I was tempted to carefully monitor our gain — even converting meters to feet to keep perspective.

Simultaneously, however, I was keeping track of a simple spiritual equation I'd learned in Christian Science: God is Spirit, and man (meaning all men and women) reflects God, so therefore man is spiritual. Most of the time I was successful in holding to this. I found praying with these ideas was more helpful than measuring my progress by counting my steps.