CHELE LA PASS | The wind, the prayer, the moon
We were late, because we keep stopping; there’s clearly a lot to look at; surely much of it I’d known about — but seeing it, it’s wonder making — driving up into the interminable mountains, things getting darker. And darker. Forest looming black. And I was chilled from the climb to the nunnery, perched high in the mistbound cliffs.
Now, wind ripping in the forests — and the typical roadside workers — who come and disappear like ghosts, evanesce (you can be driving out in the middle of nowhere, the winding two-laned asphalt runnels, and there they are — just there, appearing…Then they’re gone.)
But there at the pass, bitter cold and wind roaring, something wholly mystical — even terrifyingly so — appeared.
A great rippling, howling and wildly flapping field of prayer flags, strung and flung in a complex choreography over the pass — and now, at night, long fallen to solitude — the light, the partial moon shone; herself, looking down, at all the prayer full wonderment of what’s to be seen.
All the wonderment of what is to be seen, here.
All the wonderment, bewildering, as it flows long into the making of experience.
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Chele La Pass | Bhutan
Night has fallen. Void appears, the forest is gone and the top of the pass reveals quickly moving mists and darkening skies.
There are literally hundreds of prayer flag poles, with long standing flags running up and down the columns — moon glowers.
Not only are they up and down, but as well, elliptically stretched in great curves over the mountain spans — transected by a primitive two lane road.
The spiked flagfields are reaching upwards to the void.
Who’s there? No one.
No one…
More promises, next.
Found and newly discovered, what dreams, ghosts and visions are made of.