Icy Mountain Quotes

Life is capricious; one moment you're high on a mountain peak with flag in hand, the next you're clinging to an icy ledge by your fingertips.

A man called Ali is in need of money and asks his boss to help him. His Boss sets him a challenge: if he can spend all night at the top of a mountain, he will receive a great reward; if he fails, he will have to work for free. When he left the shop, Ali noticed that an icy wind was blowing. He felt afraid and decided to ask his best friend, Aydi, if he thought he was mad to accept the wager. After considering the matter for a moment Aydi answered, " Don't worry, I'll help you. Tomorrow night, when you're sitting on top of the mountain, look straight ahead. I'll be on top of the mountain opposite, where I'll keep a fire burning all night for you. Look at the fire and think of our friendship, and that will keep you warm. You'll make it through the night, and afterward, I'll ask you for something in return. Ali won the wager, got the money, and went to his friend's house. "you said you wanted some sort of payment in return." Aydi said, "Yes, but it isn't money. Promise that if ever a cold wind blows through my life, you will light the fire of friendship for me

To keep Velaris safe, to keep Mor and Amren and Cassian and Azriel and… Rhys safe. I said to Lucien, low and quiet and as vicious as the talons that formed at the tips of my fingers, as vicious as the wondrous weight between my shoulder blades, “When you spend so long trapped in darkness, Lucien, you find that the darkness begins to stare back.” A pulse of surprise, of wicked delight against my mental shields, at the dark, membranous wings I knew were now poking over my shoulders. Every icy kiss of rain sent jolts of cold through me. Sensitive—so sensitive, these Illryian wings. Lucien backed up a step. “What did you do to yourself?” I gave him a little smile. “The human girl you knew died Under the Mountain. I have no interest in spending immortality as a High Lord’s pet.” Lucien started shaking his head. “Feyre—” “Tell Tamlin,” I said, choking on his name, on the thought of what he’d done to Rhys, to his family, “if he sends anyone else into these lands, I will hunt each and every one of you down. And I will demonstrate exactly what the darkness taught me.” There was something like genuine pain on his face. I didn’t care. I just watched him, unyielding and cold and dark. The creature I might one day have become if I had stayed at the Spring Court, if I had remained broken for decades, centuries… until I learned to quietly direct those shards of pain outward, learned to savor the pain of others.

want you out of Velaris,” Feyre breathed, her voice shaking. Nesta tried—tried and failed—not to feel the blow, the sting of the words. Though she didn’t know why she was surprised by it. There were no paintings of her in this house, they did not invite her to parties or dinners anymore, they certainly didn’t visit— “And where,” Nesta asked, her voice mercifully icy, “am I supposed to go?” Feyre only looked to Cassian. And for once, the Illyrian warrior wasn’t grinning as he said, “You’re coming with me to the Illyrian Mountains.

Idris had been green and gold and russet in the autumn, when Clary had first been there. It had a stark grandeur in the winter: the mountains rose in the distance, capped white with snow, and the trees along the side of the road that led back to Alicante from the lake were stripped bare, their leafless branches making lace-like patterns against the bright sky. Sometimes Jace would slow the horse to point out the manor houses of the richer Shadowhunter families, hidden from the road when the trees were full but revealed now. She felt his shoulders tense as they passed one that nearly melded with the forest around it: it had clearly been burned and rebuilt. Some of the stones still bore the black marks of smoke and fire. “The Blackthorn manor,” he said. “Which means that around this bend in the road is …” He paused as Wayfarer summited a small hill, and reined him in so they could look down to where the road split in two. One direction led back toward Alicante — Clary could see the demon towers in the distance — while the other curled down toward a large building of mellow golden stone, surrounded by a low wall. “ … the Herondale manor,” Jace finished. The wind picked up; icy, it ruffled Jace’s hair. Clary had her hood up, but he was bare-headed and bare-handed, having said he hated wearing gloves when horseback riding. He liked to feel the reins in his hands. “Did you want to go and look at it?” she asked. His breath came out in a white cloud. “I’m not sure.

A pulse of surprise, of wicked delight against my mental shields, at the dark, membranous wings I knew were now poking over my shoulders. Every icy kiss of rain sent jolts of cold through me. Sensitive-so sensitive, these Illyrian wings. Lucien backed up at step. "What did you do to yourself?" I gave him a little smile. "The human girl you knew died Under the Mountain. I have no interest in spending immortality as a High Lord's pet

Many people find it hard to understand what it is about a mountain that draws men and women to risk their lives on her freezing, icy faces - all for a chance at that single, solitary moment on the top. It can be hard to explain. But I also relate to the quote that says, Iif you have to ask, you will never understand.

My prototype of a woman was the type who would appear in hallucinations at the last moments of your freezing to death at the top of an icy mountain, a mythical beauty who blurred the line between dreams and reality. For four years, that’s what I believed. And I wasted all of my university days–during which I had the most courage and honesty I would ever have towards life–because of it.

The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit's one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself like a once-blind man unbound. The gaps are the clefts in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; they are fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fiords splitting the cliffs of mystery. Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock—more than a maple—universe.

...when the words pour out of you just right, you understand that these sentences are all part of a river flowing out of your own distant, hidden ranges, and all words become the dissolving snow that feeds your mountain streams forever. The language locks itself in the icy slopes of our own high passes, and it is up to us, the writers, to melt the glaciers within us. When these glaciers break off, we get to call them novels, the changelings of our burning spirits, our life's work.

THERE ARE…ENEMIES, said Death, as Binky galloped through icy mountains. “They’re all dead—” OTHER ENEMIES. YOU MAY AS WELL KNOW THIS. DOWN IN THE DEEPEST KINGDOMS OF THE SEA, WHERE THERE IS NO LIGHT, THERE LIVES A TYPE OF CREATURE WITH NO BRAIN AND NO EYES AND NO MOUTH. IT DOES NOTHING BUT LIVE AND PUT FORTH PETALS OF PERFECT CRIMSON WHERE NONE ARE THERE TO SEE. IT IS NOTHING EXCEPT A TINY YES IN THE NIGHT. AND YET…AND YET…IT HAS ENEMIES THAT BEAR ON IT A VICIOUS, UNBENDING MALICE, WHO WISH NOT ONLY FOR ITS TINY LIFE TO BE OVER BUT ALSO THAT IT HAD NEVER EXISTED. ARE YOU WITH ME SO FAR? “Well, yes, but—” GOOD. NOW, IMAGINE WHAT THEY THINK OF HUMANITY.

I run to the high mountains I pour my heart out to the skies I sing of the summer song While the sky above dance in the yellow light. The cool breeze fools the sun above Takes a run, wins the mighty fight. Your light then comes to me with warmth, A view my heart wants. Love to me is the song you write. The tricks you play with the endless sky And with the icy wind you find a disguise. You burn me like sun that burns up In the blue abyss. With the ink of my emotions You write a song of Fire and Ice.

Shine on me, sunshine Rain on me, rain Fall softly, dewdrops And cool my brow again. Storm, blow me from here With your fiercest wind Let me float across the sky ’Til I can rest again. Fall gently, snowflakes Cover me with white Cold icy kisses and Let me rest tonight. Sun, rain, curving sky Mountain, oceans, leaf and stone Star shine, moon glow You’re all that I can call my own.

I would believe again if I could. In goodness. In magnificence. In simple benevolence. Yet even in these far and icy valleys, mankind is no different, just more poorly armed. Strip away psychrometer and sextant, carbines and glass plates, skin shifts and quills and painted faces, and we are the same. Quivering maws. Gluttonous. Covetous. Fearful. We say we worship. A word. A man-god. A fiery mountain. But we worship only ourselves. And we are jealous gods.

Came the visions of icy beauty, from the land of death where they dwell. Pursuing their prize and grisly duty, came the thieves of the charm and spell. The bells chimed thrice, and death came a-calling. Alluring of shape though seldom seen, they traveled the breeze on a spark. some fed twigs to their newborn queen, while others invaded the dark. the bells chimed thrice, and death came a-calling. some they called and others they kissed as they traveled on river and wave. with resolve they came and did insist: every one touched to a grave. the bells chimed thrice, and death came a-calling. roving to hunt and gathering to dance, they practiced their dark desires by casting a hex and a beautiful trance, before feeding the queen's new fires. the bells chimed thrice, and death came a-calling. till he parted the falls and the bells chimed thrice, till he issued the calls and demanded the price. the bells chimed thrice and death met the mountain. they charmed and embraced and they tried to extoll but he bade them in grace and demanded a soul. the bells fell silent and the mountain slew them all. and the mountain entombed them all.

What sadist had invented the concept of skiing? Kira wondered. Who was the first person to decide it would be fun to rocket shakily down an icy mountain on two pieces of metal with wind attacking your face and snow spraying into your eyes and people whipping all around, waving spiky poles like gladiators closing in for a kill? She was shocked lawyers hadn't shut down the sport yet; the potential for catastrophe was rampant.

Yet even so, Jon Snow was not sorry he had come. There were wonders here as well. He had seen sunlight flashing on icy thin waterfalls as they plunged over the lips of sheer stone cliffs, and a mountain meadow full of autumn wildflowers, blue coldsnaps and bright scarlet frostfires and stands of piper's grass in russet and gold. He had peered down ravines so deep and black they seemed certain to end in some hell, and he had ridden his garron over a wind-eaten bridge of natural stone with nothing but sky to either side. Eagles nested in the heights and came down to hunt the valleys, circling effortlessly on great blue-grey wings that seemed almost part of the sky.

For there was nothing here, no angels, no harps, no gates, no fires singeing the sins back into the sinner, no hungry spirits wandering the land and standing in the cold outside the firelight of the living. There was only wind drawing itself endlessly over the dark crowns of the pines, over the face of the water, over the mountains' icy peaks, over the great wide golden stretches of the teeming land. The wind passed, even as it is passing now, over all the people who find themselves so dulled by the concerns of their own bodies and their own hungers that they cannot stop for a moment to feel its goodness as it brushes against them. And feel it now, so soft, so eternal, this wind against your good and living skin.

mountains. They stand at every view, like a mother offering a blanket in which to wrap everyday life and shelter it from useless. dreads. In june they are walls of white rhodendron blossom. In autumn the forests set themselves afflame with color. Even winter has its icy charms.

The mountain panorama was the backdrop to every photo taken here, the backdrop to everything. At first Ursula had thought it beautiful, now she was beginning to find its magnificence oppressive. The great icy crags and the rushing waterfalls, the endless pine trees--nature and myth fused to form the Germanic sublimated soul. German Romanticism, it seemed to Ursula, was write large and mystical, the English Lakes seemed tame by comparison. And the English soul, if it resided anywhere, was surely in some unheroic back garden--a patch of lawn, a bed of roses, a row of runner beans.

What was that sound? That rustling noise? It could be heard in the icy North, where there was not one leaf left upon one tree, it could be heard in the South, where the crinoline skirts lay deep in the mothballs, as still and quiet as wool. It could be heard from sea to shining sea, o'er purple mountains' majesty and upon the fruited plain. What was it? Why, it was the rustle of thousands of bags of potato chips being pulled from supermarket racks; it was the rustle of plastic bags being filled with beer and soda pop and quarts of hard liquor; it was the rustle of newspaper pages fanning as readers turned eagerly to the sports section; it was the rustle of currency changing hands as tickets were scalped for forty times their face value and two hundred and seventy million dollars were waged upon one or the other of two professional football teams. It was the rustle of Super Bowl week...

Memory is igneous more than ingenious, igneous, and like granite, intrusive, heaved up within oneself, the whole range of one's life, mountains' forbidding height looming over the plains where one lives, mountains formed by the life already lived, but toward which one is always walking, one's own past ahead of him, seeking the improbable path already forged, this path back through oneself, this path we call the present tense, which becomes the continental divide when the tense shifts and the path is lost, path from which the walker emerges only to turn around and see the peaks pulled up by his feet, and the snowy pass, and alpine heights, where those stranded must sometime feed on themselves to survive, where sometimes, through the icy crust, the crocus blooms.

You are funny like a kid and awesome like a princess Unseen like an angel, like the morning sunshine… Kindness like a river and highness like a mountain, In the middle of the Rheine, the cute face and sweet lips … (La la la la, La la , mmmm , mm …) Keep the lovely smile, in your juicy icy eyes Open the heaven for my eyes, forever angel voice Never angry never harsh, never mad never marsh Dear or darling, either diamond or dime, Overall the dream of the world

The world seemed spellbound in icy purity, its earthly blemishes veiled; it lay fixed in a deathlike, enchanted trance.

To the north of them the great continental glacier had dipped southward, as though straining to encompass the beautiful icy mountains within its overwhelming frozen embrace. They were in the most frigid land on earth, between the glistening mountain tors and the immense northern ice, and it was the depths of winter. The air itself was sucked dry by the moisture-stealing glaciers greedily usurping every drop to increase their bloated, bedrock-crushing mass, building up reserves to withstand the onslaught of summer heat. The battle between glacial cold and melting warmth for control of the Great Mother Earth was almost at a standstill, but the tide was turning; the glacier was gaining. It would make one more advance, and reach its farthest southward point, before it was beaten back to polar lands. But even there, it would only bide its time.

By such subtle signs, like an orchestra tuning up, the daily event that is central to life on the Coromandel Coast announces itself: the evening breeze. The Madras evening breeze has a body to it, its atomic constituents knitted together to create a thing of substance that strokes and cools the skin in the manner of a long, icy drink or a plunge into a mountain spring. It pushes through on a broad front, up and down the coast; unhurried, reliable, with no slack until after midnight, by which time it will have lulled them into beautiful sleep. It doesn’t know caste or privilege as it soothes the expatriates in their pocket mansions, the shirtless clerk sitting with his wife on the rooftop of his one-room house, and the pavement dwellers in their roadside squats. Digby has seen the cheery Muthu become distracted, his conversation clipped and morose, as he waits for the relief that comes from the direction of Sumatra and Malaya, gathering itself over the Bay of Bengal, carrying scents of orchids and salt, an airborne opiate that unclenches, unknots, and finally lets one forget the brutal heat of the day. “Yes, yes, you are having your Taj Mahal, your Golden Temple, your Eiffel Tower,” an educated Madrasi will say, “but can anything match our Madras evening breeze?

The Madras evening breeze has a body to it, its atomic constituents knitted together to create a thing of substance that strokes and cools the skin in the manner of a long, icy drink or a plunge into a mountain spring.

The weeks up there were almost the most beautiful in my life. I breathed the pure, clear air, drank the icy water from streams and watched the herds of goats grazing on the steep slopes, guarded by dark-haired, musing goatherds. At times I heard storms resound through the valley and saw mists and clouds at unusually close quarters. In the clefts of rocks I observed the small, delicate, bright coloured flowers and the many wonderful mosses, and on clear days I used to like to walk uphill for an hour until I could see the clearly outlined distant peaks of high mountains, their blue silhouettes, and white, sparkling snow fields across the other side of the hill.

O wind, songs have ye in her name? Plucked her did ye from midnight blasted millyard winds and made her renown ring in stone and brick and ice? Hard implacable bridges of iron cross her milk of brows? God bent from his steel arc welded her a hammer of honey and of balm? The rutted mud of hardrock Time . . . was it wetted, springified, greened, blossomied for me to grow in nameless bloodied lutey naming of her? Wood on cold trees would her coffin bare? Keys of stone rippled by icy streaks would ope my needy warm interiors and make her eat the soft sin of me? No iron bend or melt to make my rocky travail ease--I was all alone, my fate was banged behind an iron door, I'd come like butter looking for Hot Metals to love, I'd raise my feeble orgone bones and let them be rove and split the half and goop the big sad eyes to see it and say nothing. The laurel wreath is made of iron, and thorns of nails; acid spit, impossible mountains, and incomprehensible satires of blank humanity--congeal, cark, sink and seal my blood--

The Congregating of Stars They often meet in mountain lakes, No matter how remote, no matter how deep Down and far they must stream to arrive, Navigating between the steep, vertical piles Of broken limestone and chert, through shattered Trees and dry bushes bent low by winter, Across ravines cut by roaring avalanches Of boulders and ripping ice. Silently, the stars have assembled On the surface of this lost lake tonight, Arranged themselves to match the patterns They maintain in the highest spheres Of the surrounding sky. And they continue on, passing through The smooth, black countenance of the lake, Through that mirror of themselves, down through The icy waters to touch the perfect bottom Stillness of the invisible life and death existing In the nether of those depths. Sky-bound- yet touching every needle In the torn and sturdy forest, every stone, Sharp, cracked along the ragged shore- the stars Appear the same as in ancient human ages On the currents of the old seas and the darkened Trails of desert dunes, Orion’s belt the same As it shone in Galileo’s eyes, Polaris certain above The sails of every mariner’s voyage. An echoing Light from the Magi’s star, that beacon, might even Be shining on this lake tonight, unrecognized. The stars are congregating, perhaps in celebration, passing through their own names and legends, through fogs, airs, and thunders, the vapors of winter frost and summer pollens. They are ancestors of transfiguration, intimate with all the eyes of the night. What can they know?

As they entered November, the weather turned very cold. The mountains around the school became icy gray and the lake like chilled steel. Every morning the ground was covered in frost. Hagrid could be seen from the upstairs windows defrosting broomsticks on the Quidditch field, bundled up in a long moleskin overcoat, rabbit fur gloves, and enormous beaverskin boots. The Quidditch season had begun. On Saturday, Harry would be playing in his first match after weeks of training: Gryffindor versus Slytherin. If Gryffindor won, they would move up into second place in the House Championship. Hardly anyone had seen Harry play because Wood had decided that, as their secret weapon, Harry should be kept, well, secret. But the news that he was playing Seeker had leaked out somehow, and Harry didn’t know which was worse — people telling him he’d be brilliant or people telling him they’d be running around underneath him holding a mattress. It was really lucky that Harry now had Hermione as a friend. He didn’t know how he’d have gotten through all his homework without her, what with all the last-minute Quidditch practice Wood was making them do. She had also lent him Quidditch Through the Ages, which turned out to be a very interesting read.

Oui, lorsqu'on surveille le temps, il passe très lentement. J'aime beaucoup la température, quatre fois par jour, parce que, à ce moment, on se rend vraiment compte de ce que c'est en réalité qu'une minute ou même sept minutes, alors que des sept jours d'une semaine, on ne fait ici aucun cas, ce qui est affreux.

She also said that Esmenda Jenkins Dube would have wanted a northern life, as far north as north can be, limits of north where it was so cold nothing there understood hellfire, and the mountains were white, like full-hipped women sleeping undisturbed, women of the cold clouds breathing out more cold clouds that departed their mouths when they whispered heaven in their northern dreams.

Mon Dieu, dit-il, ils sont libres... Je veux dire, ce sont des jeunes gens, et le temps pour eux n'a pas d'importance. Pourquoi donc feraient-ils triste figure ? Je me dis quelquefois : être malade et mourir, ce n'est pas sérieux en somme, c'est plutôt une sorte de laisser-aller ; du sérieux, on n'en rencontre à tout prendre que dans la vie de la plaine. Je crois que tu comprendras cela, lorsque tu auras séjourné plus longtemps ici.

Sometimes strength is grasping on to a jagged trail on the steep side of the mountain, with icy rain on your shoulders and wind on your back. Sometimes strength is continuing to push upward against the incline in pursuit of the highest peak. It’s continuing the climb against heavy winds, as all of the traveled miles are wearing at your knees. Sometimes strength is waking up and choosing to breathe another day. Sometimes strength is getting out of bed.

[...] car les pensionnaires qui étaient ici depuis de longs mois ou depuis plusieurs années avaient depuis longtemps appris à détruire le temps même sans distractions ni occupations intellectuelles, et à le faire s'écouler grâce à une virtuosité intérieure ; ils déclaraient même que c'était une maladresse de novices que de se cramponner dans ce but à un livre. Tout au plus devrait-on en poser un sur ses genoux ou sur le guéridon, cela suffisait parfaitement pour que l'on se sentît pourvu du nécessaire.

that the moon was bright, tiny and icy-looking; and that around me for many miles there was nothing but snow and rocks. I had a talk with the St. Bernard, who was making his nightly rounds; he agreed that the night was too quiet and empty, and that solitude, despite its numerous benefits, was really a lousy thing. Still, he refused outright to break the valley’s silence and join me in a howl, or even just a good bark. In response to my request he just shook his head, walked away with a dissatisfied look and lay down by the porch.

Miss Lucinda Throckmorton-Jones, former paid companion to several of the ton’s most successful debutantes of prior seasons, came to Havenhurst to fill the position of Elizabeth’s duenna. A woman of fifty with wiry gray hair she scraped back into a bun and the posture of a ramrod, she had a permanently pinched face, as if she smelled something disagreeable but was too well-bred to remark upon it. In addition to the duenna’s daunting physical appearance, Elizabeth observed shortly after their first meeting that Miss Throckmorton-Jones possessed an astonishing ability to sit serenely for hours without twitching so much as a finger. Elizabeth refused to be put off by her stony demeanor and set about finding a way to thaw her. Teasingly, she called her “Lucy,” and when the casually affectionate nickname won a thunderous frown from the lady, Elizabeth tried to find a different means. She discovered it very soon: A few days after Lucinda came to live at Havenhurst the duenna discovered her curled up in a chair in Havenhurt’s huge library, engrossed in a book. “You enjoy reading?” Lucinda had said gruffly-and with surprise-as she noted the gold embossed title on the volume. “Yes,” Elizabeth had assured her, smiling. “Do you?” “Have you read Christopher Marlowe?” “Yes, but I prefer Shakespeare.” Thereafter it became their policy each night after supper to debate the merits of the individual books they’d read. Before long Elizabeth realized that she’d won the duenna’s reluctant respect. It was impossible to be certain she’d won Lucinda’s affection, for the only emotion the lady ever displayed was anger, and that only once, at a miscreant tradesman in the village. Even so, it was a display Elizabeth never forgot. Wielding her ever-present umbrella, Lucinda had advanced on the hapless man, backing him clear around his own shop, while from her lips in a icy voice poured the most amazing torrent of eloquent, biting fury Elizabeth had ever heard. “My temper,” Lucinda had primly informed her-by way of apology, Elizabeth supposed-“is my only shortcoming.” Privately, Elizabeth thought Lucy must bottle up all her emotions inside herself as she sat perfectly still on sofas and chairs, for years at a time, until it finally exploded like one of those mountains she’d read about that poured forth molten rock when the pressure finally reached a peak.

Ce galvaudage, cette prodigalité généreuse dans l'emploi du temps est de style asiatique, et sans doute est-ce la raison pour laquelle les enfants de l'Orient se plaisent ici. N'avez-vous jamais remarqué que lorsqu'un Russe dit "quatre heures", ce n'est pas plus que lorsque quelqu'un de nous dit "une heure" ? Il tombe sous le sens que la nonchalance de ces gens à l'égard du temps est en rapport avec la sauvage immensité de leur pays. Où il y a beaucoup d'espace, il y a beaucoup de temps [...]. [...] Dans la mesure où le terrain monte en prix, où le gaspillage de l'espace y devient une impossibilité, le temps - remarquez-le ! - y devient également de plus en plus précieux. Carpe diem ! C'est un citadin qui a chanté ainsi.

More extraordinary than all this to David, however, was the fact that these people regarded HIM, not themselves, as being strange. As if it were not the most natural thing in the world to live with one's father in one's home on the mountain-top, and spend one's days trailing through the forest paths, or lying with a book beside some babbling little stream! As if it were not equally natural to take one's violin with one at times, and learn to catch upon the quivering strings the whisper of the winds through the trees! Even in winter, when the clouds themselves came down from the sky and covered the earth with their soft whiteness,—even then the forest was beautiful; and the song of the brook under its icy coat carried a charm and mystery that were quite wanting in the chattering freedom of summer. Surely there was nothing strange in all this, and yet these people seemed to think there was!

She nearly slipped on an icy rock, but he caught her, his shoepacks sure on the frozen ground. He led her up a shaded path to a limestone wall, where they squeezed through an opening like a loophole. On the other side, the earth fell away, and it seemed they stepped into open sky. She gave a little gasp, not of fear, but of awe. He turned to take her in, pressing his back against the cold cliff and drawing her in front of him. She looked down and found the toes of her boots in midair with only her heels on the ledge. But he had one hard arm around her, grounding her. His breath was warm against her cold cheek. “I wanted to show you Cherokee territory, not just tell you about it.” She followed the sweep of his arm south, his finger pointing to distant snow-dusted mountains and a wide opal river. Small puffs of smoke revealed few campfires or cabins. The land lay before them like a disheveled white coverlet, uninhabited and without end, broken by more mountains and wending waterways. The unspoiled beauty of it took her breath. For a moment he relaxed his hold on her. With a cry, she reached for him again, fearing she might fall into nothingness. “Careful,” he murmured, steadying her. “Trust me.” She shut her eyes tight as his arms settled around her, anchoring her to the side of the cliff. Frightened as she was, she felt a tingling from her bare head to her feet. ’Twas altogether bewildering and frightening . . . yet pleasing. Gingerly, as if doing a slow dance, he led her off the ledge onto safe ground, where he released her and turned toward the stallion grazing on a tuft of grass. His smile was tight. “We should return—soon, before your father thinks I took you captive.” Reluctantly she walked behind him, framing every part of him in her mind in those few, unguarded moments before he mounted.

This will not be a normal winter. The winter will begin, and it will continue, winter following winter. There will be no spring, no warmth. People will be hungry and they will be cold and they will be angry. Great battles will take place, all across the world. Brothers will fight brothers, fathers will kill sons. Mothers and daughters will be set against each other. Sisters will fall in battle with sisters, and will watch their children murder each other in their turn. This will be the age of cruel winds, the age of people who become as wolves, who prey upon each other, who are no better than wild beasts. Twilight will come to the world, and the places where the humans live will fall into ruins, flaming briefly, then crashing down and crumbling into ash and devastation. Then, when the few remaining people are living like animals, the sun in the sky will vanish, as if eaten by a wolf, and the moon will be taken from us too, and no one will be able to see the stars any longer. Darkness will fill the air, like ashes, like mist. This will be the time of the terrible winter that will not end, the Fimbulwinter. There will be snow driving in from all directions, fierce winds, and cold colder than you have ever imagined cold could be, an icy cold so cold your lungs will ache when you breathe, so cold that the tears in your eyes will freeze. There will be no spring to relieve it, no summer, no autumn. Only winter, followed by winter, followed by winter. After that there will come the time of the great earthquakes. The mountains will shake and crumble. Trees will fall, and any remaining places where people live will be destroyed. The earthquakes will be so great that all bonds and shackles and fetters will be destroyed. All of them. Fenrir, the great wolf, will free himself from his shackles. His mouth will gape: his upper jaw will reach the heavens, the lower jaw will touch the earth. There is nothing he cannot eat, nothing he will not destroy. Flames come from his eyes and his nostrils. Where Fenris Wolf walks, flaming destruction follows. There will be flooding too, as the seas rise and surge onto the land. Jormungundr, the Midgard serpent, huge and dangerous, will writhe in its fury, closer and closer to the land. The venom from its fangs will spill into the water, poisoning all the sea life. It will spatter its black poison into the air in a fine spray, killing all the seabirds that breathe it. There will be no more life in the oceans, where the Midgard serpent writhes. The rotted corpses of fish and of whales, of seals and sea monsters, will wash in the waves. All who see the brothers Fenrir the wolf and the Midgard serpent, the children of Loki, will know death. That is the beginning of the end.

Hand in hand, my love, come away with me into the blackness— by the trunk of an old strong oak: I long to hold you all through the night and, knowing not of dawn, to not talk once— a pair of hands nightswept-earth…. Dawning starlight above splinters the sky to nerves— now's time for leaving: poised on the verge of shorelines burgeoning everything inside is raw and tingling…. Over the mountain in utter aloneness winds are blowing in a cold void…. Just a few promises I’d packed when I made my way east like a cloud torn from moorings always there've been those of us who sought their origins on the road — under an empty moon— and the origins of origins…. In electrical well-spring vision nuzzled in the bosom of hills on the roaming magnetic earth— far away though they are the cloud-river of stars configures over and over these visions of you…. Shaking off its dust— that glittering icy swirl abides…. On the roaming magnetic earth lying flat, my eyes shocked awake by the electric liquid light: chilling winds do not chill me I know no harm can hold me even a killing wound will only seep me back into the stars... be seeping out from me: in the float of her womb and cradled from the cold— that cradle-of-stars hanging the milky way…. Over the bay just-beginning—a cusp and crescent sliver—by the constellations paling fading…. Transient as I am from before and into after— like blue vapor, breath travels in a light from long ago… here though I knew she'd be to be here with her in scorn of all happenstance is more than a choice: a joy that's almost loss— lightning and paralysis…. The blue fire of delight flickers through sockets of her skull— so all the world knows not or pretends not to know: a person takes a lifetime to get to know but the thrill of remembrance when our eyes met was just one instant: it happens all the time….

Hand in hand, my love, come away with me into the blackness— by the trunk of an old strong oak: I long to hold you all through the night and, knowing not of dawn, to not talk once— a pair of hands nightswept-earth…. Dawning starlight above splinters the sky to nerves— now's time for leaving: poised on the verge of shorelines burgeoning everything inside is raw and tingling…. Over the mountain in utter aloneness winds are blowing in a cold void…. Just a few promises I’d packed when I made my way east like a cloud torn from moorings always there've been those of us who sought their origins on the road — under an empty moon— and the origins of origins…. In electrical well-spring vision nuzzled in the bosom of hills on the roaming magnetic earth— far away though they are the cloud-river of stars configures over and over these visions of you…. Shaking off its dust— that glittering icy swirl abides…. On the roaming magnetic earth lying flat, my eyes shocked awake by the electric liquid light: chilling winds do not chill me I know no harm can hold me even a killing wound will only seep me back into the stars... be seeping out from me: in the float of her womb and cradled from the cold— that cradle-of-stars hanging the milky way…. Over the bay just-beginning—a cusp and crescent sliver—by the constellations paling fading…. Transient as I am from before and into after— like blue vapor, breath travels in a light from long ago… here though I knew she'd be to be here with her in scorn of all happenstance is more than a choice: a joy that's almost loss— lightning and paralysis…. The blue fire of delight flickers through sockets of her skull— so all the world knows not or pretends not to know: a person takes a lifetime to get to know but the thrill of remembrance when our eyes met was just one instant: it happens all the time….

There is little honour to be won by a numerous army over a few scattered bands, by men clad in mail over half-armed husbandmen and shepherds—of such conquest small were the glory. But if, as all Christian men believe, and as it is the constant trust of my countrymen, from memory of the times of our fathers,—if the Lord of Hosts should cast the balance in behalf of the fewer numbers and worse-armed party, I leave it with your Highness to judge what would, in that event, be the diminution of worship and fame. Is it extent of vassalage and dominion your Highness desires, by warring with your mountain neighbours? Know 187that you may, if it be God's will, gain our barren and rugged mountains; but, like our ancestors of old, we will seek refuge in wilder and more distant solitudes, and, when we have resisted to the last, we will starve in the icy wastes of the glaciers. Ay, men, women, and children, we will be frozen into annihilation together, ere one free Switzer will acknowledge a foreign master.

Darkness: I had a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars Did wander darkling in the eternal space, Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air; Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day, And men forgot their passions in the dread Of this their desolation; and all hearts Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light: And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones, The palaces of crowned kings—the huts, The habitations of all things which dwell, Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum'd, And men were gather'd round their blazing homes To look once more into each other's face; Happy were those who dwelt within the eye Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch: A fearful hope was all the world contain'd; Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks Extinguish'd with a crash—and all was black. The brows of men by the despairing light Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits The flashes fell upon them; some lay down And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil'd; And others hurried to and fro, and fed Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up With mad disquietude on the dull sky, The pall of a past world; and then again With curses cast them down upon the dust, And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd And, terrified, did flutter on the ground, And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd And twin'd themselves among the multitude, Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food. And War, which for a moment was no more, Did glut himself again: a meal was bought With blood, and each sate sullenly apart Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left; All earth was but one thought—and that was death Immediate and inglorious; and the pang Of famine fed upon all entrails—men Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh; The meagre by the meagre were devour'd, Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one, And he was faithful to a corse, and kept The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay, Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead Lur'd their lank jaws; himself sought out no food, But with a piteous and perpetual moan, And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand Which answer'd not with a caress—he died. The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two Of an enormous city did survive, And they were enemies: they met beside The dying embers of an altar-place Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things For an unholy usage; they rak'd up, And shivering scrap'd with their cold skeleton hands The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath Blew for a little life, and made a flame Which was a mockery; then they lifted up Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld Each other's aspects—saw, and shriek'd, and died— Even of their mutual hideousness they died, Unknowing who he was upon whose brow Famine had written Fiend. The world was void, The populous and the powerful was a lump, Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless— A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay. The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still, And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths; Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea, And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd They slept on the abyss without a surge— The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave, The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before; The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air, And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need Of aid from them—She was the Universe.

Ah, New England. An amalgam of picket fences and crumbling bricks; Ivy League schools and dropped Rs; social tolerance and the Salem witch trials, Henry David Thoreau and Stephen King, P-town rainbows and mill-town rust; Norman Rockwell and Aerosmith; lobster and Moxie; plus the simmering aromas of a million melting pot cuisines originally brought here by immigrants from everywhere else searching for new ways to live. It’s a place where rapidly-growing progressive cities full of the ‘wicked smaaht’ coexist alongside blight-inflicted Industrial Revolution landscapes full of the ‘wicked poor’. A place of forested mountains, roaring rivers, crystalline lakes, urban sprawl, and a trillion dollar stores. A place of seasonal tourism beach towns where the wild, rank scent of squishy seaweed casts its cryptic spell along the vast and spindrift-misted seacoast, while the polished yachts of the elite glisten like rare jewels on the horizon, just out of reach. Where there are fiery autumn hues and leaves that need raking. Powder snow ski slopes and icy windshields that need scraping. Crisp daffodil mornings and mud season. Beach cottage bliss and endless miles of soul-sucking summer traffic . Perceived together, the dissonant nuances of New England stir the imagination in compelling and chromatic whorls.

She goes to the window, curious to look out, and her senses awaken. It was only a moment ago (for sleep knows no time) that the flat horizon was a loamy gray swell merging into the fog behind the icy glass. But now rocky, powerful mountains are massing out of the ground (where have they come from?), a vast, strange overwhelming sight. This is her first glimpse of the unimaginable majesty of the Alps, and she sways with surprise. Just now a first ray of sun through the pass to the east is shattering into a million reflections on the ice field covering the highest peak. The white purity of this unfiltered light is so dazzling and sharp that she has to close her eyes for a moment, but now she's wide awake. One push and the window bangs down, to bring this marvel closer, and fresh air - ice-cold, glass-sharp, and with a bracing dash of snow - streams through her lips, parted in astonishment, and into her lungs, the deepest, purest breath of her life. She spreads her arms to take in this first reckless gulp, and immediately, her chest expanding, feels a luxurious warmth rise through her veins - marvelous, marvelous. Inflamed with cold, she takes in the scene to the left and the right; her eyes (thawed out now) follow each of the granite slops up to the icy epaulet at the top, discovering, with growing excitement, new magnificence everywhere - here a white waterfall tumbling headlong into a valley, there neat little stone houses tucked into crevices like birds' nests, farther off an eagle circling proudly over the very highest heights, and above it all a wonderfully pure, sumptuous blue whose lush, exhilarating power she would never have thought possible. Again and again she returns to these Alps sprung overnight from her sleep, an incredible sight to someone leaving her narrow world for the first time. These immense granite mountains must have been here for thousands of years; they'll probably still be here millions and millions of years from now, every one of them immovably where it's always been, and if not for the accident of this journey, she herself would have died, rotted away, and turned to dust with no inkling of their glory, She's been living as though all this didn't exist, never saw it, hardly cared to; like a fool she dozed off in this tiny room, hardly longer than her arm, hardly wide enough for her feet, just a night away, a day away from this infinitude, these manifold immensities! Indifferent and without desires before, now she's beginning to realize what she's been missing. This contact with the overpowering is her first encounter with travel's disconcerting ability to strip the hard shell of habit from the heart, leaving only the bare, fertile kernel.

Many people find it hard to understand what it is about a mountain that draws men and women to risk their lives on her freezing, icy faces--all for a chance at that single, solitary moment on the top. It can be hard to explain. But I also relate to the quote that says: “If you have to ask, you will never understand.” I just felt that maybe this was it: my first real, and possibly only, chance to follow that dream of one day standing on the summit of Mount Everest. Deep down, I knew that I should take it. Neil agreed to my joining his Everest team on the basis of how I’d perform on an expedition that October to the Himalayas. As I got off the phone from speaking to Neil, I had a sinking feeling that I had just made a commitment that was going to change my life forever--either for the better or for the worse. But I had wanted a fresh start--this was it, and I felt alive. A few days later I announced the news to my family. My parents--and especially my sister, Lara--called me selfish, unkind, and then stupid. Their eventual acceptance of the idea came with the condition that if I died then my mother would divorce my father, as he had been the man who had planted the “stupid idea” in my head in the first place, all those years earlier. Dad just smiled. Time eventually won through, even with my sister, and all their initial resistance then turned into a determination to help me--predominantly motivated by the goal of trying to keep me alive. As for me, all I had to ensure was that I kept my promise to be okay. As it happened, four people tragically died on Everest while we were there: four talented, strong climbers. It wasn’t within my capability to make these promises to my family. My father knew that.

We are not your enemies, Feyre,' Lucien pleaded. 'Things got bad, Ianthe got out of hand, but it doesn't mean you give up-' 'You gave up,' I breathed. I felt even Rhys go still. 'You gave up on me,' I said a bit more loudly. 'You were my friend. And you picked him- picked obeying him, even when you saw what his orders and his rules did to me. Even when you saw me wasting away day by day.' 'You have no idea how volatile those first few months were,' Lucien snapped. 'We needed to present a unified, obedient front, and I was supposed to be the example to which all others in our court were held.' 'You saw what was happening to me. But you were too afraid of him to truly do anything about it.' It was fear. Lucien had pushed Tamlin, but to a point. He'd always yielded at the end. 'I begged you,' I said, the words sharp and breathless. 'I begged you so many times to help me, to get me out of the house, even for an hour. And you left me alone, or shoved me into a room with Ianthe, or told me to stick it out.' Lucien said too quietly, 'And I suppose the Night Court is so much better?' I remembered- remembered what I was supposed to know, to have experienced. What Lucien and the others could never know, not even if it meant forfeiting my own life. And I would. To keep Velaris safe, to keep Mor and Amren and Cassian and Azriel and... Rhys safe. I said to Lucien, low and quiet and as vicious as the talons that formed at the tips of my fingers, as vicious as the wondrous weight between my shoulder blades, 'When you spend so long trapped in darkness, Lucien, you find that the darkness begins to stare back.' A pulse of surprise, of wicked delight against my mental shields, at the dark membranous wings I knew were now poking over my shoulders. Every icy kiss of rain sent jolt of cold through me. Sensitive- so sensitive, those Illyrian wings. Lucien backed up a step. 'What did you do to yourself?' I gave him a little smile. 'The human girl you knew died Under the Mountain. I have no interest in spending immortality as a High Lord's pet.' Lucien started shaking his head. 'Feyre-' 'Tell Tamlin,' I said, choking on his name, on the thought of what he'd done to Rhys, to his family, 'if he sends anyone else into these lands, I will hunt each and every one of you down. And I will demonstrate exactly what the darkness taught me. There was something like genuine pain on his face. I didn't care. I just watched him, unyielding and cold and dark. The creature I might one day have become if I had stayed at the Spring Court, if I had remained broken for decades, for centuries... until I learned to quietly direct those shards of pain outward, learned to savour the pain of others. Lucien nodded to his sentinels. Bron and Hart, wide-eyed and shaking, vanished with the other two. Lucien lingered for a moment, nothing but air and rain between us. He said softly to Rhysand, 'You're dead. You, and your entire cursed court.' Then he was gone.

I was standing lost, sunk, my hands in my pockets, gazing toward Tinker Mountain and feeling the earth reel down. All at once, I saw what looked like a Martian spaceship whirling towards me in the air. It flashed borrowed light like a propeller. Its forward motion greatly outran its fall. As I watched, transfixed, it rose, just before it would have touched a thistle, and hovered pirouetting in one spot, then twirled on and finally came to rest. I found it in the grass; it was a maple key…Hullo. I threw it into the wind and it flew off again, bristling with animate purpose, not like a thing dropped or windblown, pushed by the witless winds of convection currents hauling round the world’s rondure where they must, but like a creature muscled and vigorous, or a creature spread thin to that other wind, the wind of the spirit that bloweth where it listeth, lighting, and raising up, and easing down. O maple key, I thought, I must confess I thought, o welcome, cheers. And the bell under my ribs rang a true note, a flourish of blended horns, clarion, sweet, and making a long dim sense I will try at length to explain. Flung is too harsh a word for the rush of the world. Blown is more like it, but blown by a generous, unending breath. That breath never ceases to kindle, exuberant, abandoned; frayed splinters spatter in every direction and burgeon into flame. And now when I sway to a fitful wind, alone and listing, I will think, maple key. When I see a photograph of earth from outer space, the planet so startlingly painterly and hung, I will think, maple key. When I shake your hand or meet your eyes, I will think two maple keys. If I am maple key falling, at least I can twirl. Thomas Merton wrote, “There is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.” There is always an enormous temptation in all of life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end. It’s no self-conscious, so apparently moral, simple to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage. I won’t have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus. Ezekiel excoriates false prophets who have “not gone up into the gaps.” The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit’s one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself for the first time like a once blind man unbound. The gaps are the cliffs in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; they are the fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fjords splitting the cliffs of mystery. Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock- more than a maple- a universe. This is how you spend the afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.

Thence a charming, wavering course is pursued still northward through the grandest scenery to Tahkou, Juneau, Chilcat, Glacier Bay, and Sitka, affording fine glimpses of the innumerable evergreen islands, the icy mountain-ranges of the coast, the forests, glaciers, etc. The round trip of two thousand miles is made in about twelve days, and costs about a hundred dollars:

Cooper, a host of works by American nature writers, and I’ve never in reading a single one of those pages felt one tenth of the emotion that fills me before these shores. And yet I’ll keep on reading, and writing. Two or three times an hour, a sharp crack breaks up my thoughts. The lake is shattering along a fault line. Like surf, birdsong, or the roar of waterfalls, the crumpling of an ice mass won’t keep us awake. A motor running, or someone snoring, or water dripping off a roof, on the other hand, is unbearable. I can’t help thinking of the dead. The thousands of Russians swallowed up by the lake.5 Do the souls of the drowned struggle to the surface? Can they get past the ice? Do they find the hole that opens up to the sky? Now there’s a touchy subject to raise with Christian fundamentalists. It took me five hours to reach Elohin. Volodya welcomed me with a hug and a “Hello, neighbor.” Now there are seven or eight of us around the wooden table dunking cookies in our tea: some fishermen passing through, myself, and our hosts. We talk about our lives and I’m exhausted already. Intoxicated by the potluck company, the fishermen argue, constantly correcting one another with grand gestures of disgust and jumping down one another’s throats. Cabins are prisons. Friendship doesn’t survive anything, not even togetherness. Outside the window, the wind keeps up its nonsense. Clouds of snow rush by with the regularity of phantom trains. I think about the titmouse. I miss it already. It’s crazy how quickly one becomes attached to creatures. I’m seized with pity for these struggling things. The titmice stay in the forest in the icy cold; they’re not snobs like swallows, which spend the winter in Egypt. After twenty minutes, we fall silent, and Volodya looks outside. He spends hours sitting in front of the window pane, his face half in shadow, half bathed in the light off the lake. The light gives him the craggy features of some heroic foot soldier. Time wields over skin the power water has over the earth. It digs deep as it passes. Evening, supper. A heated conversation with one of the fishermen, in which I learn that Jews run the world (but in France it’s the Arabs); Stalin, now there was a real leader; the Russians are invincible (that pipsqueak Hitler bit off more than he could chew); communism is a top-notch system; the Haitian earthquake was triggered by the shockwave from an American bomb; September 11 was a Yankee plot; gulag historians are unpatriotic; and the French are homosexuals. I think I’m going to space out my visits. FEBRUARY 26 Volodya and Irina live like tightrope walkers. They have no contact with the inhabitants on the other side of Baikal. No one crosses the lake. The opposite shore is another world, the one where the sun rises. Fishermen and inspectors living north or south of this station sometimes visit my hosts, who rarely venture into the mountains of their

By late January 2014, Tesla had completed the construction of a cross-country Supercharger corridor that would allow Model S drivers to get from Los Angeles to New York without having to spend a penny on energy. The electric highway took a northern route through Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Illinois, before approaching New York from Delaware. The path it cut was similar to a trip taken by Musk and his brother, Kimbal, in a beat-up 1970s BMW 320i in 1994. Within days of the route’s completion, Tesla staged a cross-country rally to show that the Model S could easily handle long-distance driving, even in the dead of winter. Two hot-pepper-red Model S’s, driven by members of the Supercharging team, left Tesla’s Los Angeles–based design studio just after midnight on Thursday, January 30. Tesla planned to finish the trip at New York’s City Hall on the night of February 1, the day before Super Bowl XLVIII, which would take place at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, just across the state line. Along the way, the cars would drive through some of the snowiest and most frigid places in the country, in one of the coldest weeks of the year. The trip took a little longer than expected. The rally encountered a wild snowstorm in the Rocky Mountains that temporarily closed the road over Vail Pass and then provided an icy entrance to Wyoming. Somewhere in South Dakota, one of the rally’s diesel support vans broke down, forcing its occupants to catch a flight from Sioux Falls to rejoin the rest of the crew in Chicago. And in Ohio, the cars powered through torrential rains as the fatigued crew pressed on for the final stretch. It was 7:30 A.M. on Sunday, February 2, when the Teslas rolled up to New York’s City Hall on a bright, mild morning. The 3,427-mile journey had taken 76 hours and 5 minutes—just over three days. The cars had spent a total of 15 hours and 57 seconds charging along the way,

The Bodhisattva rests in glacial air, under a dust of snow, leaves fallen into one arm. This fairyland Buddha sits in an exquisite etched chair, a powdery image of beauty. Winter brings blinding thoughts of flaky falling dreams, slushy icy hard footprints, with crunchy mantras of wind. Forever surrounded by obscuring of days, whiteout of the mundane, penetrating freeze, and blizzard of emptiness. Crystalline diamond Vajra surrounded by endings. Slow drifting meditations that meander to the ground. White snow like bones, cold as death, frozen in compassion. Drifting to enlightenment with vows to return until all are in blessed fields. Icy mantra Om Mani Padme Hum to mountain emptiness, echoing forever in alpine Buddhafields. Not this, nor that— but always something else. These days, we mostly see blessed falling flakes of snow.

Every icy kiss of rain sent jolts of cold through me. Sensitive—so sensitive, these Illryian wings. Lucien backed up a step. “What did you do to yourself?” I gave him a little smile. “The human girl you knew died Under the Mountain. I have no interest in spending immortality as a High Lord’s pet.

It reminded me I could go anywhere when I got older, explore bottomless blue-green oceans, climb icy snow-capped mountains, drink tea with monks.

of the tiny aircraft and helped the third passenger aboard, his girlfriend Sandra, 30. The plane taxied and sped down the runway. As it rose into the blue California sun, Norman felt a surge of excitement. But as they banked east over Venice Beach, it was clear there was a storm ahead. In front of them a thick blanket of grey cloud was smothering the San Bernardino Mountains. Only the very tips of their 3,000 m (10,000 ft) peaks showed above the gloom. Norman Senior asked the pilot if it was okay to fly in that weather. The pilot reassured them: it was just a thirty-minute hop. They’d stay low and pop through the mountains to Big Bear before they knew it. Norman wondered if he’d be able to see the slope he’d won the championship on when they wheeled round Mount Baldy. His dad nodded and sat back to read the paper and whistle a Willie Nelson tune. Up front, Norman was savouring every moment. He stretched up to see over the plane’s dashboard and listened to the air traffic chatter on his headphones. As the foothills rose below them, he heard Burbank control pass their plane on to Pomona Control. The pilot told Pomona he wanted to stay below 2,300 m (7,500 ft) because of low freezing levels. Then a private plane radioed a warning against flying into the Big Bear area without decent instruments. Suddenly, the sun went out. The greyness was all around them, as thick as soup. They had pierced the storm. The plane shook and lurched. A tree seemed to flit by in the mist, its spiky fingers lunging at the window. But that couldn’t be, not up here. Then there really was a branch outside and with a sickening yawn, time slowed down and the horror unfurled. Norman instinctively curled into a ball. A wing clipped into a tree, tumbling the plane round, up, down, over and round. The spinning only stopped when they slammed into the rugged north face of Ontario Peak. The plane was instantly smashed into debris and the passengers hurled across an icy gully. And there they lay, sprawled amid the wreckage, 75 m (250 ft) from the top of the 2,650 m (8,693 ft) high mountain and perched on a 45-degree ice slope in the heartless storm.

he heard a voice saying ‘GO’. He crawled to a tree and snapped off a couple of limbs to make improvised ice axes and led Sandra out from under the wing. They stepped and slid down the icy slope an inch at a time. Norman kicked holes with the toes of his trainers and dug the stick in as best he could. Sandra followed behind, her feet half on the snow, half on Norman’s shoulders, her arm still hanging uselessly. The slope slanted across as well as down, drawing them towards an even steeper and icier funnel section of the gulley. Norman tried to keep away from this lethal chute. He looked back up the mountain. They had only gone 9 m (30 ft). They would never make it at this pace. ‘We need to go faster.’ And he turned round to encourage Sandra, only to see her slipping into the insane drop of the funnel. Her hand, her arm, her hip and then her whole body were gone. Norman pushed himself in after her. Momentum took them right across the funnel and Norman caught her as they clattered into jagged rocks on the far side. Bone smashed onto stone as they scrabbled furiously with sticks, fingers, feet – anything to get a grip. Bouncing like a pinball between the boulders they finally came to a stop. Norman’s knuckles were shredded to the bone. But he was too cold to feel any pain. Sandra moaned and started talking about God. There was nothing to do but inch on down the endless chute.

Norman slid down a 30 cm (12 inches) wide bench of snow beside the creek on his hip until he reached a rock bowl. At the far side, the stream emptied over an icy waterfall on to sharp rocks 15 m (50 ft) below. Somehow he used cracks to worm his way down from rocky crease to icy blister. The slope wasn’t steep here, but Norman had to traverse giant shale boulders. His stomach was chewing itself and exhaustion tore at him like an animal. He staggered woozily on until looked up and saw the meadow of snow 180 m (600 ft) down slope. But the mountain still wasn’t done with him. Now the enemy was a snarling mass of buckthorn, which lurked below a thin layer of snow. He dropped into it and stuck deep in the well formed by the jagged branches, unable to climb out. A plane passed high above. He yelled and waved. It circled. It had seen him. No. It sailed over the massive ridgeline. ‘I never gave up. My dad taught me to never give up.’ From Crazy for the Storm by Norman Ollestad. With the last ounces of his strength, Norman scrabbled and slithered out of the nest of buckthorn. With a flush of euphoria he found he had made it to the oasis of the snow meadow. It was tempting to sit down and celebrate, but he knew he might never get up again. He had to push on. But how would he get out? The vines wove a dense forest on the other side of the meadow. Then, he found some footprints. They were fresh. Norman followed them. After a few minutes, he realized the boot tracks made a circle. Was he delirious? Panic flooded his system. Then: ‘Hello! Anybody there?’ Norman screamed his lungs out. A teenage boy and his dog appeared out of the thickening gloom. ‘You from the crash?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Anyone else?

How does one enter Iliseeum if they cannot do so by land or sea?” Jasper didn’t answer for a long moment. “You know, you would’ve learned about it when you took the throne.” His gaze touched mine for a brief moment, and I knew what he meant. That Casteel would’ve learned when I took the Crown. “You don’t travel over or through the Mountains of Nyktos. You travel under them.” An icy wave of surprise scuttled through Casteel. “The tunnel system?” Jasper nodded. “The one from Evaemon leads into Iliseeum if—and that’s a big if—you know how to navigate it.” “Damn,” Kieran muttered, scrubbing a hand over his head. “All those years messing around in those tunnels and we could’ve ended up in the damn Lands of the Gods.

Surface Perhaps I overfetishize surfaces, but how can one not obsess over the tactile grasp of a child’s hand in your own, or not become infatuated with a woman's sensuous lips or the silkiness of her thighs? We are dominated by the austere sublimity of icy mountain peaks and cascading water. We are haunted by beaming moonlight and the night sky; girdled by a welcome summer's breeze on a parched day. Who has not been possessed by the sweep of music? Even if there's nothing greater obscured or buried within, the surface has soul enough for me to see God.

The book was in the form of a long letter from The Creator of the Universe to the experimental creature. The Creator congratulated the creature and apologized for all the discomfort he had endured. The Creator invited him to a banquet in his honor in the Empire Room of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City, where a black robot named Sammy Davis, Jr., would sing and dance. And the experimental creature wasn't killed after the banquet. He was transferred to a virgin planet instead. Living cells were sliced from the palms of his hands, while he was unconscious. The operation didn’t hurt at all. And then the cells were stirred into a soupy sea on the virgin planet. They would evolve into ever more complicated life forms as the eons went by. Whatever shapes they assumed, they would have free will. Trout didn't give the experimental creature a proper name. He simply called him The Man. On the virgin planet, The Man was Adam and the sea was Eve. The Man often sauntered by the sea. Sometimes he waded in his Eve. Sometimes he swam in her, but she was too soupy for an invigorating swim. She made her Adam feel sleepy and sticky afterwards, so he would dive into an icy stream that had just jumped off a mountain. He screamed when he dived into the icy water, screamed again when he came up for air. He bloodied his shins and laughed about it when he scrambled up rocks to get out of the water. He panted and laughed some more, and he thought of something amazing to yell. The Creator never knew what he was going to yell, since The Creator had no control over him. The Man himself got to decide what he was going to do next—and why. After a dip one day, for instance, The Man yelled this: “Cheese!” Another time he yelled, “Wouldn't you really rather drive a Buick?

I stood on the old ferry dock and watched the icy sludge slide by. Patches of white ice slipped through, but mostly it was grey slush, sluggish and heavy looking. The air was sharp and clear, one of the few benefits of the evacuation and reducing temperature, the centuries-old odour of industry and modern life frozen and discarded, leaving a crispness previously only found among the peaks of mountain ranges. On the far bank stood the ruins of Birkenhead, where the riots had been particularly bad and the fires that followed were allowed to rage out of control. It had taken weeks for the conflagration to finally die, leaving behind soot-blackened husks of buildings, grotesque sculptures of melted glass and metal and more dead than anyone ever cared to count.

I pictured love as a big hairy giant with a dead fish in his mouth. Grizzly bear claws and his heart half out of his chest cause it’s too big and the lungs have to fit. He never stops walking. Over mountains. Through the desert. On top of icy lakes. Past huge cities. And he hunts and kills for you and always comes back with plenty to eat.

That first winter in the north had been hell and the weight of snow had been relentless and suffocating. But when the warm, bright days emerged from the frozen darkness, his spirits had lifted and he saw his new home with fresh eyes. And he now had a second winter behind him. Although he still found the isolation of the winter darkness oppressive, he was getting used to it, even enjoying the sight of a fresh fall of snow on the colourful buildings that hugged the coast, and the icy grandeur of the mountains that enveloped the village.

for a moment I was caught in the past, tasting the icy cold snow on my lips and feeling the frigid air of that mountain cave blowing against my cheek. I’d been alone with no one to defend me, but I would not abandon Luca as I’d been abandoned back then.

She didn’t worry about bears or mountain lions, but a tourist who didn’t know how to navigate icy roads? Now that was a deadly predator.

Winfred Deben’s eyes yawed from the fire and gave Petey an icy glare so cold the lad pulled his cloak even tighter around his body and shivered a little. The old commander had a way of making grown men uncomfortable with just his eyes. They use to joke that Commander Deben could turn a river into a glacier just by looking at it. He was a stern man and he was not known to make jokes or take them well either.

prostrate to the father guru. I, the yogi Milarepa, From within the abiding nature will sing you a song. I’ll do a dance in the space free of true existence. Listen, assembly of mamos and dakinis. This reliance on confidence in cause and effect Is faith with which ordinary ones’ cannot compare. Staying alone in solitary places Is samadhi with which ordinary ones’ cannot compare. This resting evenly, free of perceiver and perceived, Is view with which ordinary ones’ cannot compare. This postmeditation that’s free of forgetting Is meditation with which ordinary ones’ cannot compare. This mindfulness without perceiver or perceived*3 Is conduct with which ordinary ones’ cannot compare. This union of compassion and emptiness Is fruition with which ordinary ones’ cannot compare. This clothing that’s free of any feeling of cold*4 Has softness and excellence with which ordinary ones’ cannot compare. This samadhi that’s without any hunger Is meat and beer with which ordinary ones’ cannot compare. This drinking from the river of enlightenment Is drinking with which ordinary ones’ cannot compare. Giving rise to contentment from within Is food and wealth with which ordinary ones’ cannot compare. Marpa Lotsawa, the translator, Is a siddha with whom ordinary ones cannot compare. The view of one’s mind as the face of the deity Is the yidam with which ordinary ones cannot compare. I, the yogi Milarepa, Am a meditator with which ordinary ones cannot compare. This body that’s without any sickness Is a doctor with which ordinary ones cannot compare. Now listen once more, assembly of dakinis: Where nothing is clear, it is clear for me.57 This very luminosity is clear. Where there is no heat, I feel warm. This very single cloth is warm. When there’s nothing comfortable, I feel good, This very illusory body feels good. Where there is no joy, I feel quite joyful, This very dream is so joyful. This yogi here feels better and better. Is Drakya Vajra high, or not? If Drakya Vajra isn’t high, Then how could vultures soar below? If the icy new year’s wind isn’t great, Then how could water in the mountain and valley freeze? If the garment of chandali isn’t warm, How could I feel warm with a single cotton cloth? If I don’t eat samadhi for my food, How could I survive being hungry with an empty belly? If the river of enlightenment isn’t drunk, Then how could I survive being thirsty without water? If the guru’s instructions are not profound, Then how is it obstructions and maras don’t come? If this yogi does not have realization, How could I wander in mountain retreats with no people? This is all due to the kindness of the wise guru. Put efforts in practicing just like this.

I am on top of the highest mountain. The icy ground is shaking, an earthquake, the world beneath me opening up with fire, steel arms ready to pull me down. I have to move. I can't stay here anymore. I throw myself down the mountain and open my mouth.

The risk inherent in climbing such mountains carries its own reward, deep and abiding, because it provides as profound a sense of self-knowledge as anything else on earth. A mountain is perilous, true; but it is also redemptive. Maybe I had dimly understood this when, as a rootless boy, with no earthly place to call my own, I deliberately chose the iconoclast's rocky path of mountain climbing. But in this moment of pure clarity I realized that ascending Everest had been, for me, both a personal declaration of liberty and a defiant act of escape. Now, suddenly, I felt an inexpressible serenity, a full-blooded reaffirmation of life, on Everest's icy ridges. At last, I was ready to descend the mountain and go home.

No one loved him. His head burnt up lies and licentiousness in twilit rooms. The blue rustling of a woman's dress turned him into a pillar of stone and in the doorway stood the night-dark figure of his mother. Over his head reared the shadow of Evil. O, you nights and stars. At evening he walked by the mountain with the cripple; upon the icy summit lay the roseate gleam of sunset and his heart rang quietly in the twilight. The stormy pines sank heavily over them and the red huntsman stepped out of the forest. When night fell, his heart broke like crystal and darkness beat his brow. Beneath bare oak trees with icy hands he strangled a wild cat. At the right hand appeared the white form of an angel lamenting, and in the darkness the cripple's shadow grew. But he took up a stone and threw it at the man that he fled howling, and sighing the gentle countenance of the angel vanished in the shadow of the tree. Long he lay on the stony field and gazed astonished at the golden canopy of the stars. Pursued by bats he plunged into darkness. Breathless he stepped into the derelict house. In the courtyard he, a wild animal, drank from the blue waters of the well till he felt the chill. Feverish he sat on the icy steps, raging against God that he was dying. O, the grey countenance of terror, as he raised his round eyes over the slit throat of a dove. Hastening over strange stairways he encountered a Jewish girl and clutched at her black hair and he took her mouth. A hostile force followed him through gloomy streets and an iron clash rent his ear. By autumnal walls he, now an altar boy, quietly followed the silent priest; under arid trees in ecstasy he breathed the scarlet of that venerated garment. O, the derelict disc of the sun. Sweet torments consumed his flesh. In a deserted half-way house a bleeding figure appeared to him rigid with refuse. He loved the sublime works of stone more deeply; the tower which assails the starry blue firmament with fiendish grimace; the cool grave in which Man's fiery heart is preserved. Woe to the unspeakable guilt which declares all this. But since he walked down along the autumn river pondering glowing things beneath bare trees, a flaming demon in a mantle of hair appeared to him, his sister. On awakening, the stars about their heads went out.

The tarn was surrounded by tough alpine grasses and thorn bushes with berries of candy pink and cough-drop red. At that camp the party’s fire looked choked and small. And when the moon came out its light shone on and through the blue ice cliffs fastened to the black rock faces of surrounding mountains. The night breeze came as an icy downdraught carrying a scent of hostile nothingness, as if it blew all the way from the stars.

If those same scientists analyzed babies who are born with congenital heart disorders- who have to undergo open-heart surgery the moment they are born, whose tiny chests are opened and doused with icy water to paralyze their metabolisms, who are kept alive by machines and must have a series of surgeries as they grow-they might conclude those children would have worse outlooks than healthy children. Personally, I believe their lives are neither better nor worse, only different. We, on the mountain, and these children with their surgeries are sort of "abnormal," a kind of "mutant," because we both challenged our destiny and wrote a new ending. It's why I identify with them. When I'm with them, my life has meaning, and my heart grows. They are messengers of life, these children with voices made hoarse by the intubation that will often affect their vocal cords. In their raspy voices, they whisper to me that I was right to continue trudging over that mountain...

That's why he delays several seconds, during which time the silence of the mountain recovers its protagonism. If the thunderous hum of hundreds of turbines from the underworld blowing icy air between the peaks of the Himalayas can be considered silence.

If I were truly a direwolf, I would understand the song, he thought wistfully. In his wolf dreams, he could race up the sides of mountains, jagged icy mountains taller than any tower, and stand at the summit beneath the full moon with all the world

Mystical Sled Ride Knik to Willow, the race is on, across the Tundra, miles from home, Girl in Red flies through the snow, shimmering dreams of ice-rainbows. Sinuous bodies seem to fly like a wolf-pack going by! How they thunder as they run steaming fur, in icy sun. Knik to Willow, the race is on, across the Tundra, miles from home, Girl in Red, how swift she speeds, climbing mountains for the lead! Snowy lakes, and frozen streams, over land of Inuit dreams, slippery trails on icy ground, pelting paws thunder their sound! Knik to Willow, the race is on, across the Tundra, miles from home, sunburst, golden, brief respite in winter woods, as day meets night. Hear the music floating by, Girl in Red soars to the sky! Bodies, legs and lightest paws, across the line to great applause! Knik to Willow, now darkness falls, see the mushers fight for all! Persistence, courage, strength and care, mushers see it through, and dare! Running fast, but running late, the world it watches, still awake. The brightest lantern is their guide, stars gaze down – no longer hide. Knik to Willow, the race was on, and now the sled dogs all are home; meat is plenty for them all, winners, losers, victors all. When Northern Lights dance in the snow, Girl in Red, just hear them go! Howls pierce the air, like darts - so fast they run, their beating hearts.

The mountains around the school became icy gray and the lake like chilled steel.

I remember the first time I ever thought about my wife. I was seven years old, my parents were still alive and loved each other, and it was Christmas. We lived in a brick home in the foothills of the snowcapped mountains of Calgary, Alberta. Though the fogged sun had already set, my parents hadn’t turned on the end table lamps in our living room. The walls glowed from the twilight outside, and on our tree hung Christmas lights of green, crimson, and icy blue. Mom was lying in Dad’s arms in the silence, as he ran his fingers through her hair. I remember watching them and wondering where my wife was.

I am the Planet eremite, the giant repulsor of the light That falls like icy rain at night, from frigid stars and moons a-cold. Ye hath not seen a world like this - the blank and oceanless abyss, The nameless pit and precipice, the mountain very bleak and old. Yet ah - my silence murmureth! Oh, Inner Orbs, ye have not heard That stillness where there is no death, because no life hath ever stirred! 'But here God's very name is dead!' wept Heaven's mighty Myriarch. Then trembling turned away and fled, for Some- thing gibbered in the dark!

When you drink water, the clouds, rivers, ocean, wells and icy mountains should come in your mind. But human ego makes you think that water was created in a factory. Let go of ego and be one with the universe. Ego uses you, the universe nourishes you.

Big man, big man, coming in here. Didn’t know Alice was here, didja? Didja? God you weigh a ton. A ton. What have you been eating? The natives?” a cackle of icy laughter. “That’d be sumthin. The natives. Dead eat dog eat dead!” another eruption of frightening mirth. Gus retreated into the depths of his skull, drawing back from his off-line senses, away from the rant, and hiding in the comforting dark. He drifted, unborn, in a cold place where he could not see, unaware of pretty much everything, except that it was cool and without a sun. His consciousness floated close to waking, close enough that pain flashed through his night like an angry thunderbolts. His eyelids flickered and he moaned. Another cut of agony and his eyes opened. Ceiling. Dark, with stains upon it. He tried

A Piece of Heaven Just For You by Maisie Aletha Smikle Just for you I will climb To the mountain peak Just for you I will dive in the ocean deep For you My love The valley is never too wide I will tread plateaus and plains And ride camels on their reins Just for you My beloved Just for you I will swim and thread rivers and seas Paddle through the frosty snow and icy breeze Just for you My darling I will do triathlons around the circumference of the globe Trek rocky grounds And slippery slopes Just for you My darling I will zipline from the north pole to the south pole I will swing from the treetops And parachute from the backdrop Just for you My darling Just for you I will sing And cook a pot of stew Just for you my love I will climb the stairs of heaven To reach the clouds And bring back a piece of heaven Just for you my beloved

Sometimes, still, I think of grief that way—as a vast, icy mountain, seemingly impossible to survive, so frigid the cold permeates your very bones, the depths of your soul. Each step takes a monumental effort, making any real headway seem insurmountable. And yet, if you raise your eyes to the horizon, looking with your heart as well as your eyes, you can see a tiny wisp of smoke rising from a cozy cabin where you will finally, finally find warmth. Hope. And if you have another who will take your hand, drag you when necessary, and travel through that unforgiving landscape, you will emerge through the trees, changed, yes, but together. Stronger. And when you turn your head and look back at the stark, sweeping vista from which you somehow emerged, you will know, deep down to the very core of yourself, that nothing, nothing is impossible when love is greater, more vast, more solid and immovable than the mountain itself.

He stands alone in a wasteland of black sand, a realm of charcoal graveyards.  The black mountain stands in the distance, impossibly tall, a rip in the sky.  The forest lies at its feet, subjugated by the peak’s brutal size.  The stink of crumbled empires and the breath of ghosts drift on the ice wind breeze. There is nothing beyond the glade and the mountain.  They are adrift, an island in a sea of nothing.  Black sands run to infinity.  He feels the icy cold of the open desert, and he gazes up to a bloody red sky filled with swirling steel clouds.  Dead air whips along the ground, and it draws sand up into a black storm that takes to the sky like a predatory flock.

Our connection is undeniable,” I said, thinking back through everything that had happened these past few days. “You’ve saved my life. Twice. Then, in the mountains, you were going to leave Blake to die. But you didn’t. You risked everything and saved him. You showed that your heart isn’t as icy as you pretend. And in that moment, as I watched you heal him… that was when I realized I love you.

I said to Lucien, low and quiet and as vicious as the talons that formed at the tips of my fingers, as vicious as the wondrous weight between my shoulder blades, “When you spend so long trapped in darkness, Lucien, you find that the darkness begins to stare back.” A pulse of surprise, of wicked delight against my mental shields, at the dark, membranous wings I knew were now poking over my shoulders. Every icy kiss of rain sent jolts of cold through me. Sensitive—so sensitive, these Illyrian wings. Lucien backed up a step. “What did you do to yourself?” I gave him a little smile. “The human girl you knew died Under the Mountain. I have no interest in spending immortality as a High Lord’s pet.

And I think, my beloved Mata Hari, that that was your mistake. After years on the icy mountain, you ended up totally disbelieving in love and decided to turn it into your servant. Love does not obey anyone and will betray those who try to decipher its mystery.