On September 21st, Peter and I parted at Joshimath, Peter to return to Ranikhet and I to return to the Bhyundar Valley to complete my botanical work. So ended the happiest mountaineering partnership of my experience.

It was a perfect morning as I strolled along the Alaknanda Valley. The air was charged with a new sweetness and strength. The humid, waterlogged vapours of the past two months had been replaced by an atmosphere of crystal clarity; the sun was no longer a fierce despotic tyrant, but warm and genial.

The last of the pilgrims were descending from Badrinath, and they too seemed imbued with the vigour of the atmosphere and greeted me cheerfully. In a week or two Badrinath would be evacuated for the winter, when snow accumulates to a great depth and renders the Alaknanda Valley inaccessible.

The cycle of life and growth had entered a new phase. Here and there were fields of millet ripening to a deep magenta, and the hillsides were tinted with brown and gold. The predominant note was the intense stillness. The streams after their turbulence had regained tranquillity; the weather, freed from its recent passions, had lapsed into a profound peacefulness; the air was entirely without movement, and a great hush had fallen on hill and valley.

Once again I crossed the crazy little suspension bridge over the Alaknanda River and climbed through the forests to the same camping place at the edge of the Bhyundar River.

Nothing had changed since I entered the valley three months earlier. The remains of the half-burnt tree-trunk were still lying there; the evening was the same with the distant peak alight between the walls of the gorge. Then, miracle of miracles, and I must ask the reader to accept this as true, the same little bird sang the same little hymn from the tree above my tent. In this changelessness lies Nature’s greatest message to men. Beside it our hurly-burly of rush and bustle can be viewed in its true proportions; our little snobberies, our puffed up self-importance, become as naught when viewed against this supreme indifference of Nature. Yet the message is not purely negative; it should not inspire hopelessness or passivity. In Nature we see a force building up from limitless materials to some unimagined end; we are part of a growth infinitely serene; why then should we not partake of serenity?

At the upper village next morning I met the old shepherd who had supplied me with milk. He and the other shepherds had driven down their flocks and were about to descend to the Alaknanda Valley for the winter. The grain had been reaped, and lay in golden piles on rush-work mats or in the flagged courtyards of the houses.

Above the village I saw no one, until I came to the pastures below the gorge where some goats were still grazing. Beyond these alps the valley was deserted, and it seemed strange that it should have been abandoned thus early; probably there are seasons when snow falls deeply early in October and the shepherds dare not risk their flocks later than the third week in September.

On the last occasion I had crossed the bridge below the gorge the torrent had raged furiously, but with the ending of the monsoon it had shrunk to peaceable dimensions, for winter cold was now gripping the high snows.

It was good to pass through the gorge into the upper meadows. Peter and I had left them under scowling skies, but now the sky was the colour of the gentians that were blooming in their millions at the base camp, except where a few light plumes and tufts of glowing cloud clung to the peaks or floated lazily between them. When I had left, green was the predominant shade, now it was brown and gold; the floor of the valley was enriched with soft colourings, varying from the deep red of the potentilla leaves to the yellow of the withering grasses and the faintest tinge of russet in the birch forest. Here and there drifts of white everlastings matched the snows on high, and down by the stream blue cynoglossum and deep red potentillas, growing from turf only recently evacuated by avalanche debris, were in bloom, hastening to complete their cycle before winter should come.

The predominant note was peace; not the faintest breeze ruffled the herbage and the silence was the silence of a vast ocean utterly calm, though always the sound of the streams came to the ear as a soft almost imperceptible cadence.

The evenings were cooler now and frost rimed the herbage at nights, so that I was glad of a fire. Otherwise there was little difference. The same evening mist swept up through the gorge, hurried along the valley and melted away as quickly as it formed, and the same stars looked down when the snows of Rataban had flamed and paled in the swift tide of night.

The morning after our arrival I set the men to work to dig up nomocharis bulbs. It was no easy task, as the nomocharis seems to prefer the company of bracken roots and grows a full six inches deep; ordinary forks and spades were useless, and ice-axes had to be employed.

Meanwhile I collected seeds. Unfortunately the sheep had done considerable damage and numerous plants that I had carefully marked had been nibbled down to the roots. Thus I had great difficulty in finding such plants as the Cypripedium himalaicum and even the Polemonium caeruleum, which had flourished in the vicinity of the camp.

Thanks to a friend of Peter’s, Lt. Robertson, I now had a rifle with which to stalk the Abominable Snowman. Alas, at Joshimath I had received a telegram from London which read “Tracks made by bear” so all that remained to be done was to search for the bruin. It was sad to have my romance rudely shattered, for I had long nourished the secret hope that there really was an Abominable Snowman and that he lived in the Valley of Flowers. I had wondered, too, what my legal position would be were I to shoot him, and had pictured an intricate argument in the Law Courts hinging in all probability on whether the Snowman was the man-eating variety or merely a devourer of yaks. If the former I could at least plead justifiable homicide, but if the latter my position would be intricate and difficult and I might have to face a charge of snow-manslaughter at the very least.

So far from being grateful to the scientists who had elucidated my measurements and photographs, I cursed them roundly as destroyers of my romantic illusions. I endeavoured to explain to Wangdi that the tracks had been identified as those of a bear by the scientific pandits in London, but he dismissed their conclusions contemptuously and said something in Tibetan which I was unable to understand, but which I am certain was derogatory to zoological science. He even evidenced a scepticism as to the power of the rifle and explained that even if I did not drop dead before I had time to fire it the bullet would pass straight through the Abominable Snowman without incommoding him in the least. It says well for his bravery that he did not hesitate to accompany me on my stalk.

It was a perfect morning when we left the base camp, with hoar-frost on the ground and the sun rising in a cloudless sky from behind Rataban. My plan was to climb the hillside to the east of the base camp, then to traverse more or less horizontally across the end of the glacier into which the tracks had descended.

Our best route lay up a steep and broken ridge, and we were scrambling up this and had arrived at the foot of a little rock step perhaps fifteen feet high, when of a sudden there was a rushing sound from above. Thinking for a moment that a stone was coming, we ducked in close to the rocks and next moment a musk deer jumped over our heads and was gone in a flash. I had a momentary glimpse of it as it bolted down the ridge with incredible surefootedness and speed, before disappearing from sight over a brow.

A few yards higher we found its cave, which was full of droppings and highly charged with musk. Except for this incident the ascent was uneventful, and we came at length to a boulder-strewn shoulder where we were surprised to find a cairn, which had probably been built by the Sikh during his survey of the Bhyundar Valley. A little higher the ridge ended against a sheer rock face, two or three thousand feet high. Here we halted, for the ridge was an excellent viewpoint and commanded a view of the glacier and mountainside to which the tracks had descended.

Needless to say there was no animal life to be seen, not so much as a barhal, though we had seen their tracks during the ascent, so we divided our time between scanning the hillside through my monocular glass and collecting seeds from various small plants which included androsaces, everlastings, dwarf potentillas and gentians.

Light mists had formed in the valley and between them the stream showed, a straggling silver line, but the sky was unclouded, a deep royal blue into which the snow-laden peaks rose unfuzzed by a single breath of wind. Gauri Parbat in particular loomed spectacularly magnificent, whilst the snow-peak we had climbed lifted a gleaming crest on dark-banded precipices dusted with winter snow.

There seemed little object in pelting across hillsides after a bear or even an Abominable Snowman when we could lie at our ease on the warm sun-soaked turf, and it was a full two hours later before we bestirred ourselves from our lethargy to continue with the hunt.

Having descended from the ridge we crossed the tongue of the glacier and traversed steep hillsides, buttresses and gullies until we came to another grassy ridge, which rose to a craggy top. It was a perfect luncheon place, whilst many plants in seed more than compensated me for any regret I may have felt at not sighting our quarry. So for the next sunny hour or two we rested there or filled envelopes with seeds, and what better way is there of spending an autumn afternoon on a hillside? Which would you prefer: a flower in your garden or a mouldering head on your wall?

Before returning to the base camp we descended to the buttress beneath which was the cave into which I had seen a bear retreat. The bear had left or was not at home, but on the buttress I discovered a gentian I had not seen before, light purple in colour and with a light green throat which I decided was worth any number of bears.

We arrived back at the base camp without having fired a shot, and for this I am glad. Long may the peacefulness of the Valley of Flowers remain undisturbed.

The days passed all too quickly and with their passing the autumn hues brightened until the valley glowed golden in the sunlight. Twice showers fell in the late afternoon and once thunder rumbled among the ranges but the weather otherwise remained perfect. I wish that I could convey some picture of this perfection. The sun shone daily from unclouded sides of indescribable purity, all Nature slept and dreamed and the very spirit of Peace pervaded the still atmosphere. As I had felt on the Mana Peak so did I feel now, that to shout would be profane, that this peacefulness in which we lived was a precious experience.

A clever friend once told me: “The trouble with you is that you feel more than you think.” If this is so, thank God for my disability. For solitude in the Valley of Flowers taught me the insignificance and incapacity for happiness of thought as compared with a meditation that knows no intellectual limitations, but is content to accept with childlike faith and delight the infinite beauties and grandeurs of the universe. So limited is the scope of thought when brought to bear on the splendours of the Universe that we must first of all rid ourselves of its ensnaring tangles before we can turn our eyes to heaven and read the message of the hilltops and the stars. What a man gains in cleverness he may lose in spiritual perception; he is indeed great who can conquer his own cleverness.

The day came when the Dotials arrived to carry my loads to Ranikhet. This was September 29th, my last day in the Valley of Flowers, and that evening I sat late by the camp fire. The night was supremely still and the smoke of the burning juniper stood straight up into the stars. The porters had long since ceased talking and were fast asleep and no sound came to me but little hissing whispers from the fire and the eternal note of the stream. All about me was the great peacefulness of the hills, a peacefulness so perfect that something within me seemed to strain upwards as though to catch the notes of an immortal harmony. There seemed in this peace and quietude some Presence, some all-pervading beauty separated from me only by my own “muddy vesture of decay.” The stars and the hills beneath the stars, the flowers at my feet were part of a supreme Purpose which I myself must struggle to fulfil. Poor little man, from ignoble depths to starry heights, from hill-top to valley in a reckless run; poor, slogging little man, how hard and wearisome the climb, how besetting the winds and difficulties. Surely the hills were made that we should appreciate our strengths and frailties? The stars that we should sense our destiny? Yet through all this tangled skein of earthly life must run the golden thread of beauty. Beauty is everywhere; we need not go to the hills to find it. Peacefulness is everywhere, if we make it so; we need not go the hills to seek it. Yet because we are human and endowed with physical qualities, and because we cannot divorce ourselves from these qualities we need to utilise them as best we can and seek through them beauty that we may return refreshed in mind and spirit. So we go to seek beauty on a hill, the beauty of a larger freedom, the beauty that lifts us to a high window of our fleshy prison whence we may see a little further over the dry and dusty plains to the blue ranges and eternal snows. So we climb the hills, pitting our strength against difficulty, enduring hardship, discomfort and danger that through a subjugation of body we may perceive beauty and discover a contentment of spirit beyond all earthly imaginings. And through beauty and contentment we gain peace.

It is the ugliness man creates that leads to discontentment and war; the ugliness of greed, and the ugliness that greed begets; a vast ocean of ugliness in which he perishes miserably. It is because men are beginning to realise this that they long to escape from an environment of mechanical noises, of noisome fumes and hideous arrangements of bricks and steel into the beauty and quietude of the countryside, to carry themselves naturally on their legs, not artificially on wheels, to travel at God’s pace, to listen to the song of Nature, the birds, the streams and the breeze in the cornfield, to look upon beautiful things, flowers, meadowlands and hill-tops, to live for a time simply and rhythmically in airs untainted by factory smoke, to discover the virtues of simplicity and goodwill.

Beauty, health, good comradeship, peace, all these had been mine in the Valley of Flowers. For a while I had lived simply and happily and I like to think, indeed I know, that those about me had been happy too.

Such memories are imperishable for they rely on their perpetuity not on physical action, but on a contemplation that reaches into the very soul of beauty. For I had seen many beautiful things and not least of these was the loyalty and devotion of my companions, those hard bitten men who were ready to dare all and risk all if by so doing they could further my plans and ambitions. Such loyalty as this is rarer than gold.

So I spent some of my last hours in the Valley of Flowers, seated by the camp fire, until the flames died down and the stars brightened beyond the hill-tops; and all about me was the serenity of God.