It is the sound of distant falling water that leads me down this new path. Past bamboo groves and tree ferns. Past a gnarled oak with deeply twisted scars. Past towering canopies that thin to reveal a dusk sky.

And it is the sight of cascading glacial water that keeps me here; rooted to the spot, yet feeling like I’m floating far above. Teetering on the edge of chasm. The dark, dense forests close in around us, the stream and I. Its waters gush, gurgle and fall, gentle and persistent. The trees sway, rustling their leaves, small and big. A few birds with red feathers whistle, flittering between the distant rocks. Prayer flags flap to the whims of a breeze, on a rusting bridge. There is silence around, but a storm within. A storm that’s grasped me since summer last.
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But here, in this quiet solitude, the chaos wanes. And I let it. Gratefully, wilfully, I let it. I let the river take me along its ancient rhythms and paths it knows so well. I wonder at the obliviousness with which the water seems to flow. I think of how the rock is hard, water is soft, and yet it is the water that carves through it all. Is it not true, then, that softness, gentleness, kindness, is stronger and more resilient in a world of hard? I imagine the source of this small stream; drops trickle and flow through soil, ground and moss, become streams, then falls, and then merge into the Teesta river miles below. I marvel at the simplicity, the certainty, the wisdom of the ways of the land to thrive with abandon. 
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The sun is now almost set. The stream gleams white through the dark. I make a photograph before it’s too late. Soon, it is only the water’s song. It echoes across the valley. I wait a few more moments, steeling myself to leave. Then, I do. Back up the gorge, past the sacred groves, the ferns and that twisted old oak. Back to storms I yearn to revoke.
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Hee-Gyathang, Dzongu | December 2021