Leaving for Ladakh - February 15, 2025
Himalayas from Bhutan on our 2017 journey
I write this as we get ready to leave for the airport on our way to Ladakh in the Himalayan section of northern India. Our goal is to track and photograph snow leopards, an endangered species who are only found at high altitudes in this region.
Weather for the Toronto area is calling for significant amounts of snow overnight tonight and through Sunday and, as our flight leaves at 20:00 I worry that we may not get away before the flight interruptions begin. I’ve firmly latched on to this particular worry since it’s a very nice replacement for the more permanent worry that most of us have been living with since January 26. If we do get away, it will be a real relief to park our more permanent concerns for a couple of weeks and deal with issues over which we actually have some control.
As I look back over the timescape of the last couple of weeks I’m jolted by the knowledge that Trump’s greatest social and political damage is being done by making the unthinkable normal. There are many who will succeed him who may be happy to take advantage of this and the consequences then become truly frightening.
I’m reminded of Zadie Smith’s writings in On Optimism and Despair in her brilliant collection of essays, Feel Free;
“All the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up,” John Steinbeck wrote to his best friend at the peak of WWII. “It isn’t that the evil thing wins — it never will — but that it doesn’t die.”
“Caught in the maelstrom of the moment, we forget this cyclical nature of history — history being merely the rosary of moments the future strings of its pasts. We forget that the present always looks different from the inside than it does from the outside — something James Baldwin knew when, in considering why Shakespeare endures, he observed: “It is said that his time was easier than ours, but I doubt it — no time can be easy if one is living through it.” We forget that our particular moment, with all its tribulations and triumphs, is not neatly islanded in the river of time but swept afloat by massive cultural currents that have raged long before it and will rage long after.”
Well worth a read…but I can’t wait to leave.
More to come!
