The Breath of Cold Stone

The air in the high mountains has a specific texture; it feels like thin, dry silk against the back of the throat. I remember the sensation of biting into a piece of ice, the way the cold travels from the tongue to the center of the chest, sharp and sudden. It is a quiet, hollow ache that makes you feel small, as if the mountain is breathing and you are merely a guest in its lungs. There is a scent of granite and ancient, frozen water—a smell that is not really a smell, but a lack of one, a purity that scrubs the senses clean. We carry these high, lonely places in our marrow, a stored chill that surfaces whenever we feel the need to be still. When the world becomes too loud, the body remembers the silence of the peaks, the way the skin tightens against the frost, and the way the heart slows down to match the rhythm of the stone. Does the mountain miss the weight of the snow when the sun finally claims the valley?

Ali Berrada has captured this stillness in his beautiful image titled It’s just Oukaimeden. The way the light rests upon the peaks feels like that first sharp breath of winter air. Can you feel the cold settling into your own bones as you look at it?