So sometimes you’re in a place and you think sure, it’s pretty–high mountains, snowy peaks, brown and green fields–but it’s mostly an intellectual sort of knowledge, not something your heart really connects to. And you think, that’s okay, not every place can be my place, it’s okay not to fall in love with every single place I go.
And then, after you’ve been out in those mountains a bit–say, four days maybe–on a pleasant hike surrounded by hazy distant peaks and brown fields–you round a bend, and enter a valley, and the light touches it just so, and everything comes into sudden sharp relief–brown alpine fields, brown autumn flowers, white slopes, gray stone–all if it turned, not bright from without, but bright from within, each surface glowing with more of its own color–and your hear breaks open a little at last, and you get it–heart and mind at last agreeing.
And you walk on, wondering at the color of the light–no color you can see or name–wishing you coukld bottle it and its strange stunning clarity and take it home with you.
But you can’t. And then the light shifts, or maybe you leave the valley, and some of the haze returns, sharpness blurred once more. But now you know, now you have your eyes for these particular mountains, and as you walk on, bits of fluffy white autumn seeds drifting down around you, everything is changed.