I scramble and climb, there are no trees, there are no longer any bushes, all that remains is the stones, the scree, grey, tetchy, they slip away under your feet and you slide down with them, and the roar is deafening, but now I emerge at the top, at the top of a sleep slope and… there’s nowhere further to climb, I stop dead in my tracks, looking down.
“Jesus,” I whisper. “Get a load of that…”
Like a gigantic excavation, a valley lies before me in the shadow of the surrounding mountains. White snowcaps sparkle dazzling and frosty bright in the sun, reflected in a round, perfectly smooth Lake as still as a mirror. Dwarf pines line its shores. To my right a foaming river roars as it bursts out of the forest and seems, like me, to have come running to this place, scrambling and struggling at great length before leaping out and hurtling down with a thunderous roar of exultation.
“I’ve found it,” I whisper. “I’ve found it.” I take a deep breath of air as pure and icy as the waters of the Lake and yell at the top of my voice, “Hey, everyone! I’ve found it!!!”
The roar of the river becomes deafening.
Chachkan
That evening, when it became clear they were going to leave in the morning, we gathered up the food and shared it out fairly, given that they were going back down to the world while we would be staying here. Their share was a little barley and maize grain. Carefree and happy, they poured it all together into a tin and all evening Sasha walked around playing it like the maracas.
It hurt me to see their unrestrained delight at the prospect of getting away from this place. It was as if they had already left and forgotten all about us who were staying. As prickly and cantankerous as an old hedgehog, I disappeared into the tent without saying goodbye to them. In the morning half asleep I heard them talking to each other, packing their belongings, but even then I didn’t emerge. It was plain that from now on we were following different paths: they, Sasha and Nastya, would go down, while I would stay here alone with Grand, strange, inexplicable, scary Grand crashing through the bushes in search of invisible spirits.
If you have ever in the mountains parted with a friend whom you once loved, you will understand how I felt. If nothing of that kind has yet befallen you, may God grant it never does.
They packed up and left and we stayed behind. Waiting until their voices had faded, I came out of the tent. Grand was sitting by the fire, leaning over a pot, grimacing as he tried the contents, blowing on the spoon. Nastya and Sasha had been cooking porridge from some of the grain we gave them yesterday. They hadn’t finished the job and left with no breakfast, evidently in a hurry. Now Grand was fiddling about over what they had left behind. I went down to the water’s edge, to a place we already, after just these few days, took for granted. Our tent was pitched ten short steps from the water but I took them slowly, looking all around as if for the first time at this paradise which for once was bathed in sunshine.
The water in the lake is limpid and azure. At dawn it is so calm it reflects the sky, the mountains, and the cold, majestic glaciers. The opposite shore is pure scree with never a tree or a bush, as if someone has dumped the stones there. Our shore is forested, with cedars growing all the way down to the water. If we sit very still in the grass, chipmunks making clicking sounds come down from the branches and start inspecting our campsite.
There is stillness all around and stillness within. No thoughts. They seem to have been overwhelmed, forced out by this air, this tranquillity, this silence of the mountains.
Those mountains know more than we can imagine. They know more than we can take in.
Human beings are fluid and inconstant. They are like water with their thoughts, emotions, sensations. You blink and all that is no more and the flow rushes purposefully on inside you. But these mountains, these rocks, the bed of this chill, crystal Lake… Down in the valley eras and empires come and go, but they remain, unshakeable, calm, eternal. What can a person think as they look at them? Nothing. You can only sit and contemplate and dissolve in the timelessness.
The morning turns out surprisingly warm. All the days we have been here, in the vicinity of the glaciers, with the untiring voice of the river plunging as a waterfall down the precipice and into the Lake, the weather has been the same. The sky has cleared only occasionally and more often we have had rain or hail or snow, or some other form of precipitation for which we didn’t know the name. We would have left sooner if I hadn’t found my right ankle swollen and turning blue.
It happened the evening we reached the Lake, coming down from the ridge and setting up camp. I discovered it only by chance because my foot hadn’t hurt at all during the day. “It’s sprained,” Sasha said, tut-tutting. “Bruised,” speculated Grand. Nastya said nothing, just pulled a wry face. They examined my foot in the firelight, their faces anxious. I looked up at them and felt guilty.
“The road is saying you should stop here for a while,” Grand said. “For some reason that is something you need right now.” He was joking but the others looked grave. An oppressive feeling, as if we were doomed, descended on us. How could I know why this had happened to me, friend? Who can?
I suddenly started, staring into the forest. “There’s someone there.” They all turned. On the hillside behind the tent Grand and I shared, we saw the silhouette of a short woman. She didn’t move. “Hey!” Sasha called. Still the woman did not move or answer. “Hiya!” he called again, with the same lack of result. Grand jumped up and in two great bounds was beside her. “It’s a rock!” he shouted back, and we joined him.
There really was a stone pillar standing in the bushes which looked like a rather stocky girl of fifteen or so. Through the tracery of lines, cracks and chips you could make out her facial features, hair and clothing. It was spooky standing next to her in the growing darkness. She just looked too human.
“It’s a local shrine,” Sasha said in a low voice. “She looks like a shaman,” Nastya said. “This is a good omen,” Grand announced. “This is an interesting place. There may be many spirits. A good place to hunt them,” he added with a grin, pleased. I winced with pain. “Help me get down,” I said, and leaned on Sasha’s arm. From a thundercloud invisible in the darkness, cold, white grain started pelting down on us. Such was the welcome we received from our longed-for Lake.
But now they had packed their things and left. Travelling light, in the sunshine, down they gaily tripped. In just a couple of hours they would be past the Lake and come upon a well trodden path. They would follow it along the river which plunged downwards and soon spot a couple of tents some way off the track but they would see nobody around. They would stop, take off their rucksacks and rest, but no one would appear and they would hike on.
From the first people they met Sasha would scrounge a cigarette. He would stand, his eyes half-closed with pleasure, exhaling smoke through his ginger bristles while Nastya asked the way. She wouldn’t really need to because it would be obvious and straightforward. A little further on they would come to a backwater with a campsite which had a bathhouse and even a shop selling tinned food, beer, cigarettes and bread. There they would buy some tinned stew. They would talk the bathhouse attendants into letting them both in for the price of one, and be treated to free beer by the people camping next to them that night.
In the morning they would go on. The people they had attached themselves to last night would give them sugar and tea, and before they left give them pasta which they would eat with the meat they had bought the day before. They would again be travelling light in the sunshine, and the lower they went the higher their spirits would be. At noon they would have trouble getting across a river, rest on their rucksacks, then stray from the path but soon after meet rafters who would give them directions and also biscuits and a tin of condensed milk. Very pleased with themselves, they would continue on their way.