Bringing Progress to Paradise: What I Got from Giving to a Mountain Village in Nepal

What does it mean to bring progressschools, electricity, roads, running waterto paradise? Can our consumer culture and desire to "do good" really be good for a community that has survived contentedly for centuries without us?

In October 2008, climbing expedition leader and attorney, Jeff Rasley, led a trek to a village in a remote valley in the Solu region of Nepal named Basa. His group of three adventurers was only the third group of white people ever seen in this village of subsistence far...