tromping the hills around Muktinath

Can't seem to shake this fatigue. Don’t know if it’s altitude or what. Can't go more than twenty paces wihout heart racing and out of breath.

Sitting on a flat rock overlooking the ravine. Just out of sight are the white walls of Muktinath. Water running, wind humming, crickets buzzing, earth pulsing, silence. Green and rust gorse on the side of ravine, sandy and golden grass. Motionless puffy clouds covering grey mountain peaks. Beyond that, larger snowcapped mountains rising to sharp pyramids.

The other night--dreamed I flew--not in the halting, crashing way I usually fly in dreams, but soaring, leaping off mountains and coasting over valleys. When I was small I had a recurring dream. A valley nested in mountains, and a clear lake. Coming home to it, walking. Muktinath is not that place—it doesn’t really look the same—but I have a quick throb of recognition, when I see the shining lake below—the vastness.

One nun gives me the creeps. She’s very old and just stares at me like a furious deathshead. She walks into my room looks at all my things, and then said something that could have been, “get out,” or “fuck you.” She has very white hair and never smiles.

Evening:

Walked all around the rocky hills to the south. Forgot myself in a way I can't when I'm inside the walls—even when I'm alone in a gompa. Wandered further and further away, unwilling to lose sight of Muktinath for some reason, but drawn to the next hill over and then the next, losing the path, going where the paths stopped. Then I felt at peace, and excited, and I played in the stone gardens, building and adding to the cairns others had built.

If I could bring two people here: Beatrix Potter and Andy Goldsworthy. Potter would love the thousand varieties of lichen. She would sketch the brilliant orange spores and pale green and yellow for hours, maybe sneaking a few into Peter Rabbit illustrations. Goldsworthy would make something beautiful—certainly one of his great stone eggs, the stone here is perfect—all different sizes and shapes, some grey and some orange. There are other possibilities too—bright yellow grasses like knives, tiny red and purple flowers, running streams of water everywhere, and morning light slicing the mountains like wet chrome.

Circling around the hills, struck by the beauty of the walled city in a way I couldn’t be when I first entered, fatigued and weighted. From every angle, different view. From one side the rolling, rocky hills. From another, snow caps and a great wall of mountains that look done in watercolors. The red specks could be nuns or Hindu women in saris, the faintly jangling donkeys could be carrying sacks of flour or lentils. I love the city best from outside. I love these white walls when they snake a twisted oval on my retina three hills over, not when they enclose me.

Nepali starting to come more easily, although the nuns seem to be conspiring not to use any of the 20 “essential” verbs from my phrasebook.