Imagine That!

 

Imagine you decide on the spur it's time to 

get away again, break out of routine newly 

established working remotely in isolation 

and you casually consider what you'll need 

for a three-day alpine camping expedition

put everything together snugly in your

backpack including that small stove. water

purifier and the lightweight tent and next 

morning you leave for the three-hour drive. 

This time a different alpine lake in the range

of mountains stretching across the horizon 

where you scramble to the connecting ridge 

and there's the lake, beside it a small alpine 

meadow. You establish camp, view a gloriously 

radiant sunset, hear the whistle of pikas, cool 

night air moving in, as the steady drip of a 

melting glacier spilling into the lake lulls you

to sleep. It's glorious end-of-summer weather

sun and cloud, perfect for forays over to other

peaks where old seracs crumbling on the granite

sit as picturesquely as the ptarmigan shuffling

its way along the rotted snow and ice. That

night there are no stars. You awaken in the 

wee hours to thunder, and count the lapsed

seconds between each, figure it's ten miles

distant, and look across the valley to other

summits where angry dark clouds dangle and

lightning illuminates the sky. Dark grey smoke

rises, and you fall asleep. In the morning a

broad area of smoke rises from a wildfire

below the treeline, and you pack up your gear.

Quite the landscape that is, remote with never

ending summits as far as the eye can see, a

place of granite and alpine vegetation, tiny

flowers in bloom, eagles in flight, a landscape

that many consider desolate beyond a human

scale, and it can be; vast, impenetrable.