Late December 2020 in the northern range of the Swiss Alps.
I crossed the line.
What? Which line?
Did I stop wearing a mask?
Did I stop supporting local populism?
Did I walk the wrong way on a one-way-street?
No.
I stopped seeing winter as cold, naked and heartless. I stopped seeing winter as death to be abhorred.
No leaves? No problem. No sun? No problem. Huge landscape? Big time. Mountains, sky, lake. Along the shoreline in the middle ground and background, the big landscape squeezes three towns into mere nothingness. And, by God, I saw beauty. I had crossed the line.
Settled science? Humans and animals–oxygen in, carbon dioxide out. Plants–carbon dioxide in, oxygen out.
In cold weather those are small clouds coming out of our nose when we breathe.
Does the earth breathe out clouds like we do?
Mountains, creeks and lakes come together with temperatures just above freezing and a light drizzle from cloudy skies…that makes my day.
The play of air, water and earth can be visualized best by observing the visual interplay of low level clouds–they appear and disappear with a rhythm and frequency that reminds me of my own breaths.
On a calm day, the very low clouds come and go as if breaths from a huge giant–the earth itself.
What is fresh air if it is not air that has been filtered by plants …or filtered by earth…or filtered by both.
Think about it the next time you inhale a deep breath of fresh air.
Think about it the next time you exhale a cloud.
Clouds often arise from creek beds like this.
Cloud arising from adjacent forest.
Clouds arising from the earth via forests and creeks have a scaled up size and time span not dissimilar in proportion to small individual human exhales. They appear…
…and they disappear.
For me, the action is at the cloud edges.
Inhale…exhale…repeat…more slowly…more deeply…recharge is real.
