We travel to satisfy an inner longing.

The final leg of our trip took us north and west, 50km from the Chinese border. 

We lived in a Hmong village for four days with Mama Chau and her family. The father, who we called Papa John, worked a series of rice fields. Together they had three adorable children: Foam, age 8; Banana, age 6; and Lily, age 3. The Hmong village was nestled into the side of a mountain south of Sa Pa. The valley ran south-east and north-west. The mountains on either side rose thousands of meters. In the north and off to the west in the distance was Fansipan, the tallest mountain in Vietnam, rising over 3300m.

Southward, on the other valley wall, were four large, fat fingers with huge draws, forming a green sausage-like hand resting on the slope. Rice terraces rose until they blended into one another, then ended completely in the solid green of the mountainside. Distant blue mountains became only outlines. Mud walls snaked their way down the valley, the water contained in the fields between them glistening in the sun’s fading light. In the evening the clouds swirled thickly at the crests of the tall mountains but further away disappeared altogether in mist. And in the morning the valley cradled the heavy, dew-soaked clouds, which rested on the valley floor before making the slow, arduous ascent higher and higher towards a bright blue sky. 

In the evening, as soon as the sun touched the horizon, spiders emerged. Life was such in the valley that they were no menace. They hung by the dozens from every corner. Inside they built webs from the rafters. If the door stayed open too long an enterprising spider spun her web across the entrance. There were no sterile walls, or cracks filled with grout, or men who sprayed for bugs. Man did not insulate and separate himself—he lived in the middle of nature herself. This meant things were never “clean”. The constant rain made the world a continuous mud bowl, and feet and legs were constantly dirty. The rice paddy dais walls were a mixture of large stones, smaller rocks, and mud, and the kids played all around these terraced fields, running on the mud walls with the skill and alacrity of gymnasts: chasing one another, rolling in the dirt, flinging mud balls. Houses were not fortresses to keep the world at bay; they were nests for men.

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The steep terrain precluded the formation of large, flat rice fields. As a result, the rice paddies were cut into the sides of the valley walls at varying height intervals, like ascending daises, giving the appearance of a topographical map. In the evening, under a pink sky, I watched the reflections float through those rice paddies—some fully seeded, awaiting harvest for dispersal; some newly planted, sparsely and at intervals; some full only of water; and finally those neglected dry mud pits needing water and care from a rice farmer.

Working in the rice fields is a family affair. The men do the heavier manual labor, forming the fields, moving the mud, and the women and children perform the planting. At first they seed only a few fields, leaving large muddy patches across the terraced paddies. When these first fields have grown thick, roughly eight inches tall, they pull all of these shoots and use them to seed the remaining fields. The shoots have two or three leaves, like long blades of grass, attached to a small, round, white bulb. Two or three of these bulb shoots are replanted in the barren paddies, squished in the mud at 4-6” intervals. These multiply and are used to seed new muddy fields.

The Hmong are a sturdy, lithe, hardy people. The women, who average 4’6” tall, jump naturally between mud walls or haul baskets of food and goods up and down the mountain pathways. Their smiles are broad and open; their eyes bright. I watched women in the market butchering full grown hogs, slicing heads, sorting organs, weighing meat. Others sorted fish in buckets and coolers. They chopped and diced and skinned and fileted. As I watched this Hmong family and the villagers around them, I realized they were producers, and that this was a producer society. They rise early. They work in the fields from sunup to sundown. They rake, hoe, and plant. They cook all of their food over fires in a separate kitchen. They laugh; they tease; they are industrious. They live in relative squalor yet I thought they understood their own meaning and existence better than I did.

We spent the days trekking across the valley, or over mountains, guided by Mama Chau or her mother. The walks provided the opportunity to think—to reach into the rice paddy of my own mind and pull my thoughts up by the bulb; to turn them over, inspecting them from various angles, really studying them, and then planting them again in the squelching, fertile soil of new pastures. I shook them out from their hiding places as one shakes out a rug, watching the dust fly through the air. I wandered through the gaps in my own education and development. I criticized myself and compared myself to the people around me. Did their happiness derive from their ability to produce? Was part of my angst the result of endless consumption? I wondered at the time how someone who had been afforded so much opportunity could feel so lonely and inadequate.  Thoreau said he went to the woods to front “the essential facts of life”. He isolated himself to explore life’s meaning and arrived at “simplicity, simplicity, simplicity”. I observed a certain amount of simplicity here. Were they any happier? Really, deep down beneath the surface. Were they?