Meditating over mountains is an exercise in peeling off multitudesā¦ meandering around their geometries, mulling over whether to engage with the elements or take shelter from them, you look for those deep life lessons recorded over many a tome of the yore and now chopped up into bite sized, social media portions, but in vainā¦ for you they remain tight lipped and coldā¦ in retaliation then, you lay your own canvas upon the landscape and start to conjureā¦
Forests spawn trepidation, the canopy revelling in its mysteries, choosing to communicate more in sound than sightā¦ gloomy timber and burbling brooksā¦ the avifauna weaves its own little cacophonies strewing seeds and mammals remain reticent, either ruminating or chasing those who doā¦ splashes of colour hither and thither punctuate spring and autumn, while winters prefer eerie silencesā¦
In the meadows, there is unbridled youth, wallowing in a finitely infinite expanse, breathing life into whatever manages to trickle down from the cryosphereā¦ holding their own twixt slowly grinding glaciers and wizened woods, they bask in the sun and brood with the clouds, rollick in the rain and lie patiently with the snowā¦ malleable is what they are, meadowsā¦
Moraines are simply exasperatingā¦ erosion begins here, be it a seemingly immutable boulder or an indefatigable hikerā¦ with every rock and every hop thereās a wearing down, making one long for the snowlineā¦ it trudges for the most part but shoots down some fatal stones from time to time just to keep things interestingā¦ theyāre befuddling, the morainesā¦
Snow demands perseveranceā¦ thereās total chaos beneath its uniform exterior, deception running rife in a world of whiteā¦ undulations defined by density and safe passages across determined by destinyā¦ ātis a landscape where slow, consistent suffering is inevitable, and the sooner one reconciles with the fact, swifter is the escapeā¦
Ridges are anticipationā¦ hours spent ploughing up a hill in anticipation of what lies on the other sideā¦ thereās a sense of excitement and apprehension bundled into a thin strip of land hung high by tectonic sighsā¦ sometimes thereās the promised land and sometimes a cul-de-sac, sometimes thereās more tribulations and sometimes an end to themā¦ sometimes gay, sometimes sombre they lie, the ridgesā¦
On steep slopes, thereās an inquisition of the respiratory system, and a reminder of oneās fallibility in the face of gravityā¦ a weighing of odds, and wondering if bipedality is overratedā¦ they demand only sitzfleisch but in healthy doses, these steep slopes, making one yearn for the downhill which in hindsight is another chore of its ownā¦
At the top, thereās a sense of disappointmentā¦ for one, the end is usually underwhelming when one compares it to the ordeals undertakenā¦ and the journey, filled with joie de vivre, culminates here, for the descent is just going through the motions, exit formalities if one mayā¦
The twilight horizon is deliveranceā¦ the terrain and its travails disappearing into the magic of tangerine skiesā¦ clouds swirling and twirling away into anonymity after having dumped their load upon the wayfarerā¦
Thus go the reflections then, imbued into the mountain when they wouldnāt exude anyā¦
Musing on mountains, hikes across Western Himalaya
