The Highest High

When I researched Mount Everest, I discovered a very fascinating fact. So fascinating, that by all standards it is unbelievable. If you read my prior posts on Mount Everest, you would know that at the summit, it is a death zone with an atmospheric pressure about one third of sea level pressure, meaning there is about a third as much oxygen available to breathe as at sea level.

So what if I told you that there is a life form that can survive in that hallowed air space where other life forms meet their demise? It would hard to believe wouldn’t it? It is hard for me to believe and I saw it in print.

Flying high over the would-be record breakers and human debris are bar-headed geese - the highest-altitude flying birds in the world. They migrate over Mount Everest.

At 29,028 feet, Mount Everest can provide an arm’s length to heaven and every spring, flocks of these high flyers fly from their winter feeding grounds in the lowlands of India through the Himalayan range, directly above Mount Everest, on their way to their nesting grounds in Tibet. They fly 1,000 miles a day - one way.

These stunning birds with two horizontal black stripes on the back of their white head slightly resemble a Zebra just starting to get stripes. Being powerful flappers, as opposed to soarers, they are masters at utilizing tailwinds to propel them to their destination and can fly 50 to 100 miles per hour.

Bar-headed geese have such a determination that they can even fly in crosswinds without being blown off course. It’s all in their grand design, especially the flapping. They propel themselves across the skies and over the mountains by sheer will. In doing so, they generate body heat, which is retained by their down feathers. This heat, in turn, helps keep ice from building up on their wings.

Their stamina and tolerance for thin air gives them an efficient oxygen uptake as they circulate inhaled air through their lungs twice. Their unique hemoglobin absorbs oxygen quickly when they are at high altitudes.

Isn’t the universe perfectly calculated? More than Sir Issac Newton’s second law of motion that states, the rate of change of momentum is proportional to the resultant force producing it and takes place in the direction of that force - but in a way that is beyond all science and all reason. An equation entrenched in the wonders hidden in the sky and the mastermind behind that wonder.

It’s a mystification that dares to be demystified, a puzzle with undefined pieces - a labyrinth of consciousness and spiritual refinement.

For the same reasons man cannot survive at Mount Everest altitude are the reasons the bar-headed geese can survive - universal perfection.

Somewhere between the spiritualists and scientists are uncharted answers. Answers that lie there without explanation. Answers that just are. We can’t explain them, we can just accept that there is a force behind the curtain directing the show.

Why else would one man’s meat be another man’s poison and one man’s descent be another man’s ascent? It is perfectly calculated as the cycle of life - birth - death - rebirth. At any given moment, we are all experiencing them.

The bar-headed geese are unsurpassed in their ability to survive. They have conquered that sacred space, that corner of the sky which we can all master - between self and God.

Life teaches us how to fly. It gives us wings so we can rise above situations. We fly when it's good, we fly when its bad. Even when it’s bad, it’s not really bad - just a shift in perception. We just have to keep flying.