Now, arguably for the first time, Travis has cause to celebrate. This park, the first of nine pilot parks to come, will encompass a vast protected area—123,100 km2 of Qinghai Province’s Sanjiangyuan area. To put that into context, it’s well over half the total area of America’s national parks combined. Sanjiangyuan, or “Source of Three Rivers,” contains the headwaters of the Yellow, Yangtze and Mekong (Lancang) Rivers. Sometimes called Asia’s “water tower,” this critical and largely pristine watershed sends water to a staggering number of people—almost half of the world’s population lives along rivers that begin on the Tibetan Plateau. This is one of the key factors that makes this region such an important—and contentious—political prize, one that will only grow more valuable as dwindling clean water sources support ever more people. The protections here in Sanjiangyuan will deflect threats from mining, poaching, a bottled-water industry with broad ambitions in the Tibetan Plateau, and the hydroelectric dams that have flooded so many of Western China’s river canyons already.

My role in all of this is small but unique. Let’s call it music diplomacy. At home I spearhead an organization called Music For Wild Places. The goal of Music For Wild Places is to untether music from the confines of the concert venue and recording studio and create it in the wilderness, inviting guests and musicians to deepen their appreciation of wild places and conservation in the process. We do multi-day excursions featuring musical performances by world-class artists in magical, wild places.

Here in Qinghai, with Last Descents, we’re taking a weeklong float trip through the new national park. The trip features American and Tibetan musicians joining forces to create collaborative music along the way. I am joined by the American roots music group Front Country, three local Tibetan musicians, videographer Trip Jennings, a dozen Chinese ecotourists and a crew of guides led by Travis Winn. The musicians sit by the riverbanks and perch atop sandstone cliffs, sharing traditional tunes and improvising together. The Americans play banjo, fiddle, guitar, upright bass and accordion. The Tibetans play things we’ve never seen: a stretched snakeskin head with a carved dragon for a neck called the dramyen and something else that looks like a mandolin but isn’t. Their folk songs don’t quite bend to the logic of most popular Western music—they are “crooked” like many American old-time traditionals. It takes some very focused listening, but we start to follow their twists and turns and exotic but familiar modalities. The Tibetans, in turn, love to sing and dance when we play old-time Appalachian tunes and Paul Simon covers.