Nature/Inspire/Response
When I Cannot Go to the Mountains
the mountain comes to me
Yes, I have been very lucky, as this has surely happened!
Since I have known this world, mountains have been part of it!
So, naturally, when the prompt to write about mountains was announced, I felt, as if it was for me.
I had grown up in the foothills of the highest mountain in the world, the Himalayas, in Himachal. Surrounded by the Shivalik Hills, which are a part of the outer Himalayan Mountain range. I was born here and also spent a big chunk of my life there. So much so, that my friends call me Paharhan (a woman who comes from the mountains), and Himachali (a person from the state of Himachal in India)!
Migrating to Australia, I was worried about living in a dry and arid land, known as the sunburnt country, full of eucalyptus tree forests, sheep and kangaroo infected farmlands, with a huge dessert in the middle, and all its cities next to the surrounding coast!
Oh, dear! So, where would mountains be? I had been wondering,
“How would I survive without mountains!”
But when I arrived here, the mountains were already there, they had just changed their colour.
