Photos: Experience Spiti Valley's splendor, in monochrome

Hunting: Rakchham Baspa River

Expectation is a foe

when patience isn’t a friend.

 Only time could bid these clouds 

and beckon this mist 

over the Baspa River 

Into the frame. 

Patience is the spring

in the photographer's trap.

Any hunter would say the same:

One should expect 

only what one is willing to wait for.

-Poem by Melissa Alipalo

Rock Paper Scissors: Chitkul

Once I cut out some magazine copy

that quoted the "O Pioneer!" author, Willa Cather:  

“I like trees because they seem

more resigned to the way they have to live

than other things do."

I pasted the quote on a pencil box, and read it to myself for years.

Just be a Willa tree. Just be a Willa tree.

I lost that pencil box in a sudden move, and I lost my inner Willa tree, too.

Then I found these.

And I thought of my old friend Willa.

If only she had known magnificent rocks like these—rimrock,

she would have thought very differently of trees.

Poem by Melissa Alipalo

Grazing: To Chandratal Lake

“If you can imagine it, 

you can do it,” 

the saying goes. 

So he does what he must do:

He waits.

For the grazing guests to draw nigh. Foreground.

For the mist to lift behind the knoll. Middle ground. 

For the clouds to yield the light. Everything he imagined.

Sometimes the doing is in the waiting, 

because timing is everything.

Poem by Melissa Alipalo

The Middle: To Chandratal lake

The grandeur of beginnings has faded.

The end is not in sight.

The land feels as barren as it looks.

The slope is subtle, but still a slog. 

Will we ever reach the other side?

If we knew what was there, 

Would it quicken our pace or send us back? 

Where is the point of no return?

Just keep one foot in front of the other. 

You’re in the middle lands now. 

You’ll learn to muddle through somehow.

Poem by Melissa Alipalo

Light & Lines: Jispa

Sometimes light unfolds, 

and other times it strikes.

Like lightning, 

a severe and devastating light

can split a thing in two. 

It rakes its jagged saw 

across the thing,

It severs asunder

what was and what is, 

what would have been and what shall be.

Rarely does such a light

ever strike the same thing twice.

Poem by Melissa Alipalo

Rooted: Sangla Valley, Sutlej River

The quietest and surest thing

is the tree planted by the river. 

Nothing bothers it.

It knows its roots. 

They are deep and reliable and resilient.

Not a gust that snaps it, 

not a dearth that parches it, 

not even its own burial under the mountain

could worry such a tree. 

Its roots are its hope and future.

Poem by Melissa Alipalo

The Same Bend: Kaza & Langza

This is that road the Beatles sang of—.

The long and winding one.

The one that leads me to your door

and back and back and back again. 

I’m losing count of the times

we’ve left each other there, 

always at the same bend.

At least we know our reasons

and where to find each other again,

always at the same bend. 

It is the road that never disappears, 

it just goes away and away and away for a while,

always at the same bend in the road.

Poem by Melissa Alipalo