Lonely Mountains…

I couldn’t fathom what I was looking at. I was being swallowed by the enormity of it. This age-old giant seemed to watch over the world with a silent majesty, ancient knowledge and history buried in its depth.

Awe and respect flooded through me as I stared up at this colossal sight unfolding before my eyes, climbing into the sky and casting into shadow everything it towered over. It took my breath away.

What I was looking at, in my now painstakingly obvious irrelevant life, was a mountain, not just any mountain, but a glacier, and not just the one, multiples, all their own entity but somehow one, like brothers in arms.

As the car climbed on, up the never ending, twisting mountain road, crisp, white snow piled up either side, it was hard to imagine this experience becoming any more humbling.

The immensity of these old giants looming up to such great heights seemed to pierce into my very soul, filling a hollow, as if was coming home.

I was wrong when I thought I couldn’t feel anymore awestruck.

After the car could take us no further, we then transferred into a cable car, which zipped up smoothly to the peak of the enormous mountain.

On stepping out on the summit my head swam, my breath got caught deep in my chest, my eyes couldn’t take everything in, it was all too much; Overwhelming, breathtaking, overpowering, heartbreaking and irresistible all at once.

Endless white peaks stretched before me, on and on like a never ending white capped sea spreading out before me on all sides, drowning me in its vastness.

Colours seemed to pop brighter, sharper and deeper than they did at sea level. The green of the luscious valley floor glowed like emeralds, the blues from the distant lakes and never ending sky above burned bright like sapphires, the snow was a blinding white, covering everything at higher altitude.

It took what seemed like hours before I could breath again; feeling the cold, fresh clean air fill my lungs was like a wakeup call. I realised that this was real life, I wasn’t dreaming, beauty like this really does exist so close to civilisation.

For the hordes of skiers and snowboarders whizzing down the mountain this was normal, they paid no attention to the beauty of their surroundings, they saw this everyday.

I couldn’t believe that I would ever find something so magnificent, so beautiful as this experience to be normal. It was burnt into brain, living on in my memory like I had left a piece of myself inside its heart.