The Weight of High Air

At a certain altitude, the air thins until it feels like glass. You breathe differently. The lungs expand, searching for something that isn’t there, and the silence begins to press against the eardrums. It is a place where the earth meets the sky without the interference of trees or the clutter of human noise. Here, the horizon is not a line but a promise of emptiness. We spend our lives building walls, filling rooms, and surrounding ourselves with the debris of our own making. We fear the open space because it demands we look at ourselves without the distraction of our possessions. To stand in such a place is to be stripped back to the bone. It is not a lonely feeling, but a quiet one. The kind of quiet that follows a long winter, when the ice finally cracks and the water begins to move again. What remains when the world is taken away?

Shirren Lim has taken this beautiful image titled Under the Open Sky. It captures the exact moment the earth falls away and only the vastness remains. Does the silence of the high mountains speak to you as well?