The Valley

It was beautiful, the valley seemed endless below, shrouded by mist, a river hidden behind undulating green hills stacked with stairs of ingeniously formed rice paddies. Against my conscience, I led myself down little by little, passing H’mong children who would sell the shirts off their backs for the price it would catch. The game was in full effect, and it was more of the same. I was already disheartened by their situation, and I was feeling more and more like the problem. For some reason I kept going, I had a few hours until I motoed down to catch the train back to Hanoi.
So I crossed the old and swaying bridge to a path that climbed up by homes that hugged the hillside. It seemed I was alone now, only catching the attention of a dog, who let me know I was on their path. I crossed the crest of the hill and while descending towards another bend of the river, saw a young H’mong man coming down another close hillside. I stopped at the bluff to admire the view down to the river below, and up to the rainforest clad Mount Fansipan and beyond into China. He came right up to me, and he had his basket and long knife hung on his back. With no hesitation, he offered me some fruit he had picked on his trip down the hill. The fruit was green, and when you broke the outside, it had a viscous liquid so sweet which you sucked out. We couldn’t talk to each other, but I pointed to the mountain to make sure it was Vietnam’s tallest mountain, Mt. Fansipan, and he nodded. I mimed working with an imaginary knife and he nodded that that’s in fact what he had been doing. He nodded it was alright to take a picture with him, but looked shyly away when I did, as if this was the first time someone had taken his picture. After accepting some more fruit, I said goodbye, thinking it was better to stay out of his way, to let him get back to his life. After a second, he called after me, wanting to help me get out and back to the town. I followed him through this surrealistic setting, it seeming like a dream, me being led through exotic foreign lands by a person I would never see again, couldn’t really talk to, but with whom there was a connection made. When we encountered another bridge, he motioned that he would have to depart here, taking the path up into the hills. We waved goodbye- the dream ending abruptly- a grazing cow was on a controlled fall careening down the hill towards me being led by two kids no more than 10 years old! They passed, and I started to make my way backup the path, up out of the tall valley, taking the spine of it up and out, past more impossible rice paddies and houses, back to the main road. As I approached it, a man caught my eye and had something to sell- I was back in the tourist game.
But in that valley I was not a tourist, I was allowed to exist in the same consciousness as my H’mong friend. It was simple and true. We were human, and we met.