“November 14, 2014; Kathmandu, Nepal
Today I saw Chomolungma (the mother goddess of the world), Mt Everest, for the first time in over five years. There “she” stood (somewhat tongue in cheek here), neither caring one way or another that a name of Everest is held by an idealistic and semiotic cultural presence (of the humans). What name does that mean to the mountain? Does it feel or know? It has shifted and changed its features—the very material that makes that mountain, has reconfigured because of the discursiveness of Everest (e.g., the avalanche last spring). I sit there staring at a mountain, not sure it should be called that. Chomolungma is the natureculture that brought me here initially, entangled in an adventure of cultural milieu. The entanglement is politics and power, gendered notions of a mother goddess of protection, of bucket lists, entitlement, of families struggling through poverty and death, and of globalization. This mountain, this Everest, is not inanimate, it has been determined and bound by the human and the culture, for better or for worse.”