In the fall of 1990, Grieve spent three months trekking in the Himalayas.  During the first week, he met a sadhu, who was sunning on the side of the trail and rubbing sandalwood oil into his hair.  A sadhu is a Hindu mendicant holy person who has renounced all earthly attachments with the unswerving objective of connecting to the Divine. Grieve asked him his name, and the sadhu replied, “I am God.” Finding God was one of Grieve’s life goals, so to mark the occasion, he reached down and wrapped a piece of ribbon that had fallen off one of the ponies used to carry cargo and tied it to his walking stick. Over the following months, as Grieve continued to walk from tea stall to tea stall, from temple to temple, and peak to peak, he collected various found materials and tied them to his walking stick. The walking stick is its present truncated size because Grieve had to cut it in half so that it would fit in his backpack on his flight home.