The Breath of Stone

The air in the high places tastes of iron and nothingness. It is a sharp, thin cold that settles deep in the lungs, making every inhale feel like swallowing tiny, jagged shards of glass. I remember the sensation of wool scratching against my neck, the damp weight of a heavy coat, and the way the skin on my knuckles cracked from the biting, dry wind. There is a silence up there that has a physical presence; it presses against your eardrums like a thumb, heavy and insistent, demanding that you stop moving and simply exist. It is the feeling of being small, of being a temporary guest in a room built of granite and ice. When the world is stripped of color and warmth, the body retreats into its own core, seeking the flicker of a pulse to prove it is still tethered to the earth. Does the mountain remember the weight of the clouds that rest upon its shoulders, or does it simply wait for the thaw?

Ronnie Glover has captured this stillness in his image titled Clouds Among the Mountain Peaks. The way the mist clings to the ridges reminds me of that same biting, silent cold I once knew. Can you feel the chill rising from the valley floor?