A Sky Without a Lid

I took this photo one morning while I was in Pokhara, and the thing that hit me the most was that while this was just an ordinary morning for everyone else, this looked incredibly special to me. Machapuchare jutted up clearly out of the sky, snow covered with light that looked so pristine and cold.

In the background, the whole Annapurna range, peak to peak to peak of snow, with nothing in between.

No smoggy haze.

No grey, smudgy coating to dull the sharp, steep edges.

Only mountains, just as they are supposed to look. Having just come up from Kathmandu where the hills disappear behind a brown-grey lid halfway through the morning, it felt utterly unbelievable.

This is not because the mountains themselves are in any way more remarkable; they are not.

The Himalayas simply don’t move.

The only difference between here and there is the quality of the air in between them and us. It’s a silent meditation on the fact that clear skies are not an imagination; they are not only something found on postcards.

They are here, in this country, in this very moment.

The question we are left with is why some places get to wake up like this every day, and other places can barely even remember how this looks. Mountains are always there. We just need to be able to see them again.