Word: annapurna
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...April again, which means Jan and I have just returned to Mill Valley from another buying trek through the Annapurna, an ordeal that has left us spent but elated. As always, you, our valued catalog customers, were never far from our thoughts--especially the evening we lingered over jasmine tea with a Mahayana Buddhist monk at the Four Winds Monastery, perched precariously above a roaring tributary of the Ganges. As we sipped to the rhythmic whirl of prayer wheels, I in my all-cotton, breathable Sahib Gear[TM] Punting Pants, Jan in her wind-resistant Amelia Earhart Aviator...
Days and years spent in places like those inspired the Bean line, or at least most of it. The parentage still shows--in the lobby of the store, a chalkboard announces upcoming special events. They include "Canoe Films Night," a talk on the woman's ascent of Annapurna, and a slide-illustrated lecture on the "Joy of Fly Fishing...
...liberties which would threaten the stability of an impoverished Third World country like Nepal. With an annual income of $110 per capita and a literacy rate of 18 per cent, Nepal is undergoing development at an unprecedented, albeit glacial rate. The mountainous terrain--Nepal, home of Mounts Everest and Annapurna, is flanked entirely by the Himalayas--provides for poor communications, medical services and transportation of the agricultural goods produced by 90 per cent of the workforce. Shah denies that the mere infusion of aid and technology will remold Nepal's political and economic institutions to conform to their Western equivalents...
Mountain climbing pits the individual against the mountain, not you-the-man or you-the-woman but simply you the individual. By setting themselves apart, the Annapurna team typed themselves as you-the-woman climbers. And by going alone they only succeeded in defeating their own purpose...
MOUNTAINS are impervious and brutal without bias. They don't know who "conquers" them, not can they care. Which isn't to say that we shouldn't. On the contrary, mountain climbers deserve all the respect we can muster. The women who climbed Annapurna accomplished the incredible, not because they were women but because they were excellent mountaineers. After all, Annapurna isn't just another New England foothill...