Turquoise-blue glacier-fed lakes high in the mountains. Fir and spruce, stunted and struggling to ensure their presence at a hostile-to-life height. Picas whistling in the underbrush.Wildflowers punctuating the grey, blue and green. Endless solitude, peaceful contemplation. Gray jays jauntily calling. Scree that slips underfoot, scrambling down from the heights.
Mountain peaks in summer still white with snow. Glaciers slowly dripping, melting into the cold blue alpine lakes. Pink and red blooms of fungi blossoming on the melting glaciers under the steady, hot gaze of the sun.
Sudden appearance of storm clouds. Thunder and lightning, and heavy rainfalls. The intrepid mountain climber makes it just by a whisper of a hair back to the shelter of his fragile-looking tent. Winds buffet the tent and howl ceaselessly as the atmosphere becomes completely and compellingly dark with moment. And the rain pummels the tent, but it stands fast.
Looking across the mountain side where the tent is perched toward another nearby peak where the Stein Valley is located, there in the distance, as the rain finally ends, is the sight of a fire being lit by other drenched and hungry alpine campers.
A cheer is raised, from either side of the valley, rising to the slopes above.
c. 2009, J.S. Rosenfeld/R.L. Rosenfeld
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