From a Poet

September 21st, 2014 Bhimtang 3800m. by Larkya La Pass 5160m. You close the metal door of your stone hut in blank wet darkness; a few hours later you wake in darkness again, but the door opens on a vast expanse of stars and the horned moon descending to the peaks of the mountains.  Space and the all-encompassing universe feel not so far away; the difference is realization.  The weather had calmed, no wind was blowing, and the silence of morning and breakfast began ringing in the dinner hall.  The keeper was there, no worse for the wear, and all were speaking of the fine day with eagerness and angst. We left at dawn, and by the time we reached the moraine of Larkya Glacier, where there rested a beautiful jade-like pool of absolutely still water, the sun was shining brilliantly on the high summits.  The snow that had fallen the night before brought the good fortune this morning of showing us the tracks of a snow leopard which had followed our trail until just after th

September 20th, 2014 Dharamsala 4460m. Clouds and rain; cold and rough all day.  Life is very rudimentary here, the lodgings as well.  The Budi Gadanki, the river that we have followed for a week and a half now, passes us by as a small stream in the far-off expanse, something one would not easily recognize, nor give any importance to, had they not seen it swirling past them in Arughat.  Though we could see it become smaller and more rapid each day, it did not seem that it would actually disappear into the ground, or begin falling from a glacier, apart of the glacier itself even, and of the snow last night--but that's what seems to be the source of all things: there but not there.  It is hard enough to rectify this sentiment throughout the long chain of events we live, and whether it is because of the high opinion of ourselves or the low opinion we have of the things around us, the movement is never really close to what we expect its nature to be.  Now that the river is but a