Destination

Destination

When I see the colour blue I think of my quest. I have to be true to my destiny, I cannot rest until I find it, I must go on, searching, hunting, never tiring until one day  it will be revealed to me and I can relax after these many long years.

I thought I had found it, deep in a temporal created crevasse in the glacier feeding the Bentley Trench in Antarctica, the lowest land surface on the surface of the planet. It was not to be, it was the spring sunlight filtering through the snow deposited over Millenia and converted to ice by the alchemy of time as it snaked its way down the slopes of Mount Vinson.

What about the Tongue of the Ocean, that deep rift in the sea bed close to Andros Island in the Bahamas. The rippling of the currents and the supersaturated water is still creating ooliths ready to form the limestones that will be raised to be the mountains of the future? Not here, another blind alley, the Caribbean sun playing tricks as it rippled down through the waters. 

I asked in neighbouring Yucatan but they didn’t know, it might have been buried in the Chicxulub crater when the asteroid hit but it was so long ago there was no living memory of it. The recent drilling into the buried crater rim didn’t help.

I flew across the great coral reef off Australia’s Eastern shore. This was no barrier to me, I glided down the force lines of Magnetic Island’s field, always seeking the true frequency – just a few more Ångstrom please - but it was not to be, the parrot fish had done their work, the bleaching from the warming seas not helping.

I heard a rumour, so it was to holy Mount Kailash in far Tibet next, three times around, a pilgrimage to purge my soul, after helping to lift the pole carrying the flags, a thousand prayers flapping away in the freezing wind. I knew Kailash was still unclimbed, forbidden.  I sought permission from the Dalai Lama, 

‘Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible’ he said and allowed me to go to the cave, high on the mountain, above the dry Tibetan plain, looking down on Lake Namtso, the highest lake in the world. I struggled up the crags to the cave, I could feel it now, I was getting closer. I rolled over the lip and lay there, gasping in the thin, cold air.

There it was, on a ledge, just a chip, but I knew, it had to be, its radiance undimmed. The intense diagnostic ultramarine blue of Lapis Lazuli. I had found my destination, the true blue. 

My life would never be the same again.

But I shall go down from this airy space, this swift white peace,

this stinging exultation;

And time will close about me, and my soul stir to the rhythm

of the daily round.

Yet, having known, life will not press so close, and always I

shall feel time ravel thin about me;

For once I stood

In the white windy presence of eternity.

from The Most Sacred Mountain Eunice Tietjens