#sherpadreaming

In my dream: I am working, very high up on a very high mountain

Himalayas, Everest, Sagarmāthā, working here on “the mountain” the name does not matter. Shrouded in mist and clouds the view is always the same, day after day, all around us, white. Here in my lucid dream I have been working with an international crew of bad ass sherpas, helping to remove all debris from this mountain. We will bring it off of this mountain, all of it, piece by piece, one frozen block after another. In my dream we have been working here for weeks, maybe months, removing piles and piles of frozen solid, long forgotten debris. Lobbed down from thousands of feet above me, each slippery piece will be tossed and caught a hundred times.

There are dozens of us working here together, strung up and down the mountain. Summit to base we are all joined in this common goal - to remove any thing that was ever brought here - Leaving No Trace when we go. All of us are extremely glad to be here. It is an excellent job in all aspects; pay grade, experience, camaraderie, karma, lessons learned and paychecks received - all very good. And it *feels* good to me, helping to remove this MOOP - this, Matter Out Of Place. Our work honors the mountain and those who work here are honored. 

Spoken language is simply understood - or perhaps we are using some form of telepathy. No one ever feels left out of the loop. There are always easy, natural, clear communications. Whether we are relating critical information or bawdy stories, sharing one liners or hopes and dreams, no one is offensive or finds offense. Always fun, fantastic crew cohesion and jubilant camaraderie. The laughter is absolutely riotous!

I am truly happy here, perfectly content up here on this mountain doing this work. It is difficult work, difficult to see, difficult to move, the gear is comically bulky. Everyone wears thick parkas and big heavy gloves; five fingers spread wide, I can barely use my thumb. Just enough dexterity to handle these flying blocks of deeply frozen, similarly sized chunks of stuff - pieces of technology, radios, medical equipment, gas canisters, items long beyond identification, all matter of anonymous debris, frozen for decades or centuries. 

All these big solid blocks of MOOP, one after another are being tossed and caught, efficiently chained off the mountain by our practiced crew of sherpas. Although the conditions are “miserable” I am perfectly warm, comfortably cocooned in my gear, just catching and tossing, tossing and catching, piece after piece, day after day. We are working in mostly white out conditions, the wind blowing snow and cloud all around us. Sometimes I can barely see the sherpa above or below me through my frozen goggles.

Another piece is lobbed from above - -

Hhooosaa! “HEADS UP” I reach out, but the piece comes down directly between myself and the nearest other sherpa, slamming down onto a crack in the terrain - which then immediately opens up into a deep, thin crevasse and the frozen block disappears from our sight!

“Oh no!” I cry out (or someone cries out) now asking “—is it worth trying to retrieve?” (starting calculations in our risk assessment minds) And suddenly the most veteran sherpa laughs “BWAAHA!!” his SUPER LOUD laugh. “No.” he says, continuing to chuckle. “It is worth no more and no less than any other piece here, all equal, the same.” And #boomshmack just like that, I get it! In that moment of our shared laughter I realize that further up the mountain - up there - some of these uniformly shaped, deeply frozen flying blocks, used to be entire bodies. They have been carefully cut into similarly sized chunks, sawed into simply more anonymous, unidentifiable pieces of stuff to be removed. I contemplate for a moment, helping to prepare these anonymous pieces of nameless bodies, the tools used, that job and working my way up to it. Carving these flying blocks of deeply frozen flesh, making sure they are simply uniform sized pieces of debris, that will eventually be separated from the recycling that’s headed down the mountain. So many brave adventurers, after decades or centuries, having been used as nameless landmarks, silently waiting, frozen solid, practically petrified, are finally going to attend their sky burial. They are being taken now, in pieces, across to another summit, where they will all eventually be sorted out somewhere far above us.

“Holy shit! This job is such an honor!” I wake myself up laughing. The sudden realization that these frozen chunks I've been hucking around like so many fish at a Seattle market - - 

The boss’s voice comes back to me, “All equal, all the same.” ..that it is ALL of OURS to deal with, this OMOOP, Our Matter Out Of Place. It seems to me that we should attempt to remove all of our debris, all of our matter out of place, from this or that mountain.. or neighborhood.. or desert.. And though we are certainly not trying to drop anything down the cracks (because, nothing goes away here). We need not worry about a scattered piece or two, because like the boss said; everything, eventually, no matter what, will be returned to that state of being as it was before there was us. Like eons before…