These great trees of the mountains, I feel they know me well, as I watch them & listen to their secrets, happy to rest my head beneath their outstretched arms.

Some night sounds outside my window remain strange & mysterious. Perhaps they are the sounds of the trees themselves, stretching their limbs in the dark, shifting a little, flexing their fingers, whispering to one another.

The deodar enjoys the company of its own kind: Where one deodar grows, there will be others. A walk in a deodar forest is awe-inspiring -- surrounded on all sides by these great sentinels of the mountains, you feel as though the trees themselves are on the march.

And when the rains were over and it was October and the birds were in song again, I could lie in the sun on sweet-smelling grass and gaze up through a pattern of oak leaves into a blind-blue heaven. And I would thank my God for leaves and grass and the smell of things, the smell of mint and myrtle and bruised clover, and the touch of things, the touch of grass and air and sky, the touch of the sky's blueness.

It is always the same with mountains. Once you have lived with them for any length of time, you belong to them. There is no escape.