Thoughts about our mountains while sitting on a bristlecone high in the Colorado Rockies.

The drops fell rhythmically, metronomically, glassy orbs of exquisite beauty slipping into an icy abyss. I was transfixed, hypnotized by the simplicity, the sublimity, the entrancing meditation and profound power of it all, knowing these drops began as vapor carried from distant lands, fell as snow, melted, and would follow me and my companions some 1,600 miles to the Bay of Bengal, there to be heated, evaporated, condensed, and fall once more on yet another far away place.

Mount Everest, or Chomolungma? Peak XV was renamed "Everest" in 1856, after it was discovered to be the highest in the world. But, did the renaming not only ignore history, but also leave something behind?

We still haven’t become mature enough to think of ourselves as only a tiny part of a vast and incredible universe. - Rachel Carson It was one of the brightest Milky Ways I’ve ever seen. Together the Team Twende kids and I stood under the watchful gaze of Mawenzi - the serrated satellite of Kilimanjaro […]