Above Sapa, Vietnam

Both of my wife's parents came from small hill-tribe villages nestled in the steep Hoang Lien Son Mountains, which comprise the eastern fringe of the Himalayas near the border with China above Hanoi. The picture here, taken by me in 2009, shows the view from a hike we made to a peak above the town of Sapa. Sapa is only a dozen or so miles from the small villages in the finger valleys below where Uyen’s relatives still farm the terraced rice paddies. My wife, unable to make the hike due to her disability,

remained far below, happily visiting with an old woman selling a kind of fry bread on a street corner. I took this picture to show her what we saw from above. I imagine her there now.

--Mitchell Hegman