wafting

pine incence

~mirage

*

Deep-fried apple pie. The lady who made it on a pine wood fire will come looking me. I was hallucinating. Tiny arrows of icicles ricoched off everyone’s parkha and stung my cheeks. Rarefied air crusted the mind at 17000 Himalayan feet. We’d been walking, crunching white snow and ice from 3 am, trudging, dragging sullen weather for 12 dark hours, each breath, bitterly cold, reeking of exhaustion. The last bit of humanness, call it will, yanked us six remaining humans on this expedition to the pass, a narrow ledge where we’d normally thank the mountain gods and splay multicoloured prayer flags on stark white holy expanse and descend victorious. Not today.

We’d reached the wrong pass. Freezing, yelling winds ripped sanity. A sheer murder of a descent with no fathomable path glared back. Not a foothold. No way back. A blinding blizzard. And no rope…