Beyond Earth and Sky - Zeppa

 

I don’t read many travel memoirs, but after reading Jamie Zeppa’s journal from her three and a half years in the country of Bhutan, "Beyond the Sky and Earth - A Journey into Bhutan",  I may need to read a few more...good writing helps and Zeppa has a style that makes reading her thoughts effortless.  Her insights seem brutally honest and clearly capture what she was thinking at the time, not what she could have thought through the reflections of a more  mature person looking back.  In this way she conveys her western bias and naïvety in real time as she struggles to justify the new life she found after leaving a comfortable middle class lifestyle in Canada to search for more meaning. 

To be truthful myself, part of my intrigue with her story was to discover what motivates young men and women to pick up and go abroad in this manner.    Alas, she didn’t really answer this question, and maybe that’s my answer, but we still should applaud those who do take up this challenging first step.  After the fact, one can certainly answer the question and therefore, this book, could be used to motivate other young people to step into the challenge of the Peace Corps, etc.  

Aside from a terrific  travel journal into the country of Bhutan, which by most accounts should be a must read for all those planning to travel there, Sky and Earth is both a spiritual journey and a love story.  The love story was credible and certainly the anticipated result of a young women  totally immersed in an alien world and entranced by the bewildering nature of such a beautiful place.  There can be no doubt she was under its spell...but she certainly wasn't there to throw here Western life away.    The danger of any such  quest, however, is not that we may find what we are looking for, but rather we may find something that we were not looking for...this something perhaps, is what her grandfather was worried about when she started out...finding something in the unknown that is better than the known.  Which has to be the most compelling reason for any quest.

When young people decide to go on these quests, or missions, or soul searching, something might be missing from their comfortable lives.  They want something more.  Are they running?  More than likely they are searching...and that is a perfectly valid reason to leave home, even if most choose a less exotic destination.  Although the story has been told a thousand times, young girl leaves home, struggles to survive in a place she is out of place, learns to love the place, falls in love, lives happily ever after.  The only thing missing from this story is that the man she falls in love with, doesn't turn out to be a Bhutan Prince, well at least not Royalty...but he seems to be a prince of a man.

On the Spiritual side, Sky and Earth is also an introduction into the religion of Buddhism.  By capturing the physical and mental lifestyles of the population that practice Buddhism, this memior serves as a tremendous account of Zeppa's deeper discovery of this beautiful philosophy of life, one in which all life is respected, and eventually, one to which she converts.

Sky and Earth is an exquisitely written account of someone who was all in.  The book itself appears to be written in great thanks to the Country and the people of Bhutan for what she experienced.  It is physically, spirituallly, and truthfully told and should serve as an example for all those who chose to write a travel memoir.  I'm really enjoyed this book.  I'm giving it five stars for the fearless way Zeppa tells her story.