Mountains

A hurried move to cover her bare neck was a gesture that was unexpected. It was an amusing reaction as I was neither looking at her neck; nor was it the case that I could see anything on her from the distance and the height that was I at. I was merely observing her emptying a bag of waste into a slope that eventually merged with the stream far down below. In an environment as pristine as that it seemed a terrible thing to do. But it also raised the question, where could they dispose the waste our modern plastic-filled lives produce and who was I, an occasional visitor in that little Himalayan village, to judge them?

The mountains are a both a calling and a healing in competing measures. Once you heed their calling, and should it resonate well within you, a music then starts that your life never stops dancing to; yet, it is a music that nobody can hear, nor can you explain it to another. Faced with another who can hear the same inaudible music, you just nod in agreement, struggle in vain with words to express what you hear, give up and let your feet and heart tap and beat to the mad melody punctuated by the actual sounds of passing thunder and the chirping of the numerous birds.

Here, old wounds gently open up. If you allow yourself to, you start to feel again in the generosity of an embrace that stretches far beyond what the eye can see or comprehend. Life is ancient here. The trees carry scars far deeper and older than what you or I may hold dear in our short lives. Yet, they stand and they unquestioningly keep giving. You will love, lose, turn old, break a bone, die of some deadly disease, but they are always there. It is the ultimate truth and the eternal return, should you choose to seek that within you.

The healing has no words and it is a futile endeavor to attempt an explanation. How do you describe a moisture-laden mist that slips through your fingers? If you do not resist it, it will seep into every bone and particle within you, rake up both the hurtful and the happy within you. In their shadow, you learn to accept the generosity of the rain that strengthens the roots and also accept its destructiveness that uproots everything in sight. And yet, the mountains they stand, in spite of what happens to them.