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Total entries in this category: 51
Published On: Mar 07, 2006 03:02 PM
Total entries in this category: 51
Published On: Mar 07, 2006 03:02 PM
How can I work when the sky is so blue?
I am starting out on a two week working vacation in
western Sichuan, a sparsely populated area that is ethnically and culturally
Tibetan.
I'm out here with a group called "Kham Aid" on a
project to patch walls, add electrical outlets, repair broken windows, and
generally improve the housing for doctors and teachers in a poor and remote
mountain village called Bomei. We have not reached the village yet, it is a
three day drive from the nearest major city, but I am already in love with the
sky.
Out here, at over 14,000 feet, the sky takes on a new dimension. You look into the sky, not at it; the air is so thin you feel as if you can see right through to outer space. And the colors are marvelous, a whole spectrum of blues, starting with a pale turquoise at the horizon (if you can call a mountain range a horizon) passing through the purest clear blue, (which the Tibetans call "heavenly blue") and extending overheard to a deep creamy blue-gray slate.
Staring straight up, with nothing but sky and clouds in your field of view, you feel engulfed by the sky, embraced by the heavens. It's like standing at the edge of the ocean, looking at a rolling universe, with muscular clouds bursting like galaxies.
While my traveling companions take photos of mountains, and stone houses, and yaks, I point my camera upward and shoot sky, sky, sky. I feel like an acid freak, obsessing on the blue, oblivious to everything but the world above my head, which has become the world inside my head, which has become my world.
Out here, at over 14,000 feet, the sky takes on a new dimension. You look into the sky, not at it; the air is so thin you feel as if you can see right through to outer space. And the colors are marvelous, a whole spectrum of blues, starting with a pale turquoise at the horizon (if you can call a mountain range a horizon) passing through the purest clear blue, (which the Tibetans call "heavenly blue") and extending overheard to a deep creamy blue-gray slate.
Staring straight up, with nothing but sky and clouds in your field of view, you feel engulfed by the sky, embraced by the heavens. It's like standing at the edge of the ocean, looking at a rolling universe, with muscular clouds bursting like galaxies.
While my traveling companions take photos of mountains, and stone houses, and yaks, I point my camera upward and shoot sky, sky, sky. I feel like an acid freak, obsessing on the blue, oblivious to everything but the world above my head, which has become the world inside my head, which has become my world.
Posted: Sun - September 28, 2003 at 05:35 AM