The Breath of High Altitudes

The air at this height has a sharp, metallic edge, like licking a cold iron railing in the dead of winter. It tastes of nothing and everything—a thin, crystalline clarity that stings the back of the throat and forces the lungs to expand until the ribs ache. There is a specific silence here, one that isn’t merely the absence of noise, but a heavy, velvet pressure against the eardrums. When I close my eyes, I can feel the grit of granite dust beneath my fingernails and the way the wind pulls at the loose threads of a wool sweater, seeking to unravel the warmth I’ve brought from the valley below. We spend our lives seeking these places where the atmosphere is too thin to hold our worries, where the body is reminded of its own fragility against the ancient, unmoving stone. Does the mountain remember the weight of the clouds that rest upon its shoulders, or does it simply wait for the sun to burn them away?

Christine Sovig Gilbert has captured this stillness in her image titled Clear Lake. It carries that same biting, high-altitude quiet that settles deep into the bones. Does this view make you feel as small and as steady as I do?