Rock Climbing and Soil Making

Had visited Surendra ji’s farm near Jaipur some time ago. He had got an acre of land some years ago and has planted some Amla trees. I was there with Chunchun, Anupamaji, Ira and Surendra ji.

There are small hills and as we were working on the farm doing some mulching. Me, Ira and Chunchun began talking about climbing the hills. The seemed pretty steep. Ira talked about her own rock climbing/trekking experiences and Chunchun was getting excited hearing about them. We decided to go for a climb the next morning.

Ira gave us some interesting talk on some basic rules of climbers. As we reached the steeper part Chunchun felt that he didn’t want to go through the steeper path. Ira suggested he try and she will support him. She talked of some basic rules that always keep minimum three parts of the body in contact with the hill and move the fourth part to move you up or down. She also suggested to keep the body as close to the rocks for better balance. All this helped and Chunchun with his trembling hands moved from one point to the other and we reached the top. It was fun for all of us.

It was nice to see Chunchun who is spending lot of time playing video games where they jump and cross mountains on the click of the mouse do some real adventure. He was really excited about the experiences. There were thorns too and all of us got some small cuts.

The most interesting part for me was to see goat droppings on the rocks and next to it were small piles of soil in between the rocks and grass and other vegetation(‘weeds’) were growing. I was amazed at the way nature makes soil on the dry hills. The goats come up to help make soil with the help of their droppings. The cactus grow on the soil and their root structure binds the soil and the thorns keep animals away from the delicate soil which is being delicately built. At the same time the goats and sheep come with seeds sticking on their fur and plant them on the top of the rocks. The wind also brings the dust/soil/leaves and seeds. In one of the crevices there was dry moss in the arid region. I was amazed to see that too.

On that hill there were bee hives, holes where parrots were having their houses and roots of banyan trees were going under the rocks and were coming out from another gap and traveling in the air and falling down to enter into the rocks once again. There were monkeys and mongoose too and so much more vegetation(‘weeds’) and creatures.

After that day Chunchun kept talking of climbing and we have planned that one day we will go together for some togeather in the Himalayas. When we were in Chattarpur Self-Healing meet, there was a big banyan tree in the campus there, next to it was a tall palm tree. Chunchun climbed the banyan tree and by the second day he was able to move on to the top of the palm tree and came down sliding on its trunk. He was spending a lot of time on the Banayan tree and later got together with the other friends to make a tree house.

When he went for the climb the first time he asked me if he could climb the tree and moment the kids began climbing some adults came to stop them. I intervened and said that its fine if they climb and I too began climbing. Soon almost all the adults began climbing the tree and we all had a great time…