On the Roof of Indo-China, Fansipan Mountain, North Vietnam

The mist roams up and down the valley, cloaking peaks occasionally glimpsed through the canopy. The roof of Indo-China… truly this is it, the first giant 10,311 foot (3143m) step in a staircase of mountains rising from the Gulf of Tonkin and eventually culminating in the Himalayas. Far in the north of Vietnam close to the Yunnan border, Fansipan (Fan Xi Pang) is known by botanists for its large number of highly specialized and endemic species. Floristically with one foot in the steamy South East Asian jungles and another in the icy crags of the worlds highest mountain ranges, the area draws me with promise of the best in both these realms- cold-adapted versions of tropical flora.

And through the wet tree trunks and dark fog the tableau emerges: Schefflera meets Rhododendron, Polygonatum epiphytics on the same mossy perch with the gesneriad Lysionotus, gingers and gentian. It is as if this were the meeting place of two secret lovers, kept apart elsewhere by altitude and temperature beyond their control. I stride along paths littered with the red flowers of towering Rhodoleia and spent Magnolia floribunda petals, stopping to smell the Daphne, and wonder to myself that this is January.

The porters and I stop for lunch at 6600 feet (2011m), soon after a huge Rhododendron flowering red over a stream. Then up through an area covering much of the north side of the mountain burned decades ago. Aralia, Rubus lineatus, Viburnum cylindricum, Lindera and stinking Eurya have begun to colonize. The ghosts of the virgin forest stand somber, charred stumps rising out of bamboo thicket. We end day one having reached a hovel composed of tarps, poles and bamboo. Over dinner a small deer is butchered beside the table as I eat. I retire to my tent as the head is hung over the fire.

By first light I find myself collecting red Aucuba chinensis fruits and stopping to examine perhaps the strangest Arisaema, a fall flowering and evergreen species known as A. rhizomatum. One of the nearly dozen Illicium species in the province holds starry yellow blossoms over my head in the dark canyon. The trail becomes a tunnel in places, through otherwise impenetrable bamboo thickets. It rains heavily. A Thai group passes us coming down from the summit, its patronly leader singing “We are the champions…”.

Higher still, Gordonia, with its camellia like flower- crinkly white with a boss of gold stamens- plop down unceremoniously onto the wet ground. People of the many ethnic minorities work the forest here, and we make our way through semi-cultivated Hmong cardamon plantations. It is here, after reaching base camp, that the triumph of the day is encountered- Schefflera macrophylla. You must leave behind every previous notion of houseplant Schefflera to imagine this creature. Huge palmate leaves, each leaflet a foot long and all together comprising leaves a meter across, the buds covered with a coppery indumentum! I spend much time in the rain digging through the leaf litter for the precious seeds from a specimen of tree-like proportion.

It becomes quickly apparent starting day three that things were to be steep from here. By steep I mean scrambling up nearly vertical shoots, crossing log lattices erected to traverse sheer cliff sides. The not-so-easily-won elevation translates into a dramatic change in flora as we ascend bands of vegetation increasingly less Vietnamese and more typical of Himalayan ecology- an Asian Rhododendron forest with all the trappings: Camellia, Gaultheria, rhody, Primula, gentians. Clouds race through the gorges below, so quickly that in reaching into the camera bag a panoramic expanse before me turns to a shadow world of dark and white. We turn back at a little over 8000 feet(2500m) in order to return before dark.

Three months have passed. Far removed now, after the long descent, days of cleaning seeds in cold hotel rooms and successful navigation of the import procedures behind me, I sometimes find my mind wandering back to details of my time in Lao Cai province. The skewered sparrow on the grill in the train station, the high cheek bones of colorfully clad women emerging rosy from the fog, Schisandra climbing out of sight into the canopy above me, the stark feeling of ambiguity passing Black Hmong cutting firewood among endangered trees, stopping to clean magnolia seed collected in the rocks along a cold stream. And I wonder what is to become of this place in a swiftly changing world and when I will be back to catch another fleeting glimpse of that evolution. - Josh