The Weight of Altitude

At a certain height, the air forgets how to hold warmth. The trees stop their climb, leaving only stone and the memory of ice. It is a thin, brittle world where the lungs must work harder to find what they need. We go to these places to see if we are still capable of silence. Down below, there is noise, the constant friction of living, the clutter of things we think we cannot do without. Up here, the horizon is a hard line that demands nothing. You stand at the edge of a mirror that has never seen a face. It is not lonely, though it might look that way to those who need the comfort of crowds. It is simply indifferent. The water holds the sky because it has nothing else to do. If you stay long enough, the cold begins to feel like a kind of clarity. What remains when the wind finally stops?

Christine Sovig Gilbert has captured this stillness in her image titled Summit Lake. It is a quiet study of what happens when the world thins out. Does the silence reach you as it reached her?