Bereft of all signs of visible life, yet pregnant with a presence, a place for penance or rather an adventure of consciousness it seemed. At the last curl of the broken raw road, on the other side of the great mountain, the lake appeared, sitting quietly, completely innocent of its spectacular beauty. As I prepared to camp by its side, I could sense the moon preparing to emerge from its hide from the other side. When it finally slid from beneath the clouds, it was midnight. It gleamed teasingly, fully aware as to how long it had made me wait. Sliding in and out of the clouds, hiding and revealing it self... we had nightlong conversations.
As I rose from my camp in the morning light, the beauty sprinkled around me brought tears to my eye. I saw blue larks glide about freely in the sky, cranes and ducks frolic in the lake, and the waters clearly revealing the stones lounging underneath. The return journey started sooner than I thought, as temperatures dipped more than expected. The river never stops flowing, and the mountain never moved and the sunlight continued to make patterns on anything it fell upon, nothing changed. Yet the landscape, the leaves and the hills looked different on return journey. They looked satiated, content and rinsed, as though they had received the same nourishment I had received.