A silent’s silence is sought not within, nor is without,
But outwith the minds of men.
A silence sought is a silence chosen,
Received, not in time, but with time received.
Silence, the lack of, begets and bequeaths,
Since noise needs an audience to breathe.
It, like life, is set in motion, steady and certain
As the downward beat of a raptor’s wing.
How, despite chortle and chatter and nervous natter,
May man make sense of the silent sublime?
Come the morn, the sun will rise as it must, as it has,
As Earth plays host to silent forces: Gravity, Light, and Tide.
And in the end all is anechoic. Two sounds only: high and low.
Nerves in sunapsis and blood beating.
And then there is silence.
Sunday, 26 September 2010
Saturday, 8 May 2010
The Great Gunny Bag Descent
Will: I can’t imagine anyone having as much fun as we did today as we sledged 1000m down an Afghan mountain. My friend had mentioned this idea to me four years ago and I’d been looking forward to it ever since. However, we were first invited to an election breakfast by the new ambassador to Afghanistan. We shared a cooked breakfast with diplomats and soldiers as the final results began to come through on a big screen. Cameron won the Witney seat comfortably despite quite a good protest as pranksters (whom Lucy initially thought may have been ex-pupils!) climbed onto the roof of Spelsbury village hall and unfurled a banner saying, “Britons! Know your place. Vote Eton. Vote Conservative.” We lost no time in excusing ourselves and raced to Paghman, a town to the west of Kabul once known for its royal holiday resorts and long known as a Friday picnic spot for Kabulis.
We drove up the valley into the mountains beyond Paghman in two landrovers, negotiating several rivers and an extensive boulder field. There had been heavy rain the night before and the narrow track had collapsed in several places. We decided to the leave the landrovers for fear of the weather and track deteriorating further and blocking our exit. We walked for five hours, following the valley at first, and then zig-zagging up the mountainside. We were loosely following a track that had been laid by Ahmed Shah Massoud to bring munitions and men to bear against the Soviets in the 1980s and were reminded of this when we came across the tail fin of a large rocket half buried in the snow and saw the remains of a truck in the valley below. After two hours we were following the steps that those in front had kicked in the snow. After three hours, the altitude was beginning to tell, as Lucy fumbled with her zip and my head pounded.
The summit announced itself abruptly as the cloud parted just enough to reveal a small cornice 20 metres above us. We kicked our way up to the ridge and found ourselves standing on the summit above cloud for the first time in five hours. The views to the south-west and another peak of 4000m were wild and spectacular. The ridge ran away from us in both directions and the wavy white cornice made a surreal scene, one moment framed against blue sky, the next by dirty white cloud. This was a far more satisfying moment than reaching Annapurna base camp a few weeks ago. We watched as dark storm clouds gathered above another mountain on the horizon and decided to make our way down.
We had brought large rice sacks with us and spent the next hour sledging down giant snow chutes back to the landrovers. We had just completed our first run when there was a large clap of thunder above us and we began to be pelted with hail. I felt the fizz of a momentary electrical charge on my forehead, perhaps static from the rice sack. Seconds later and the skies were set ablaze by lightening. We heard the roar of an avalanche. Somehow, the fact that we were sledging on rice sacks made everything ok and we continued our merry way down the mountain. By the time we had perfected our technique, the snow chute ran out and we clambered over slippery boulders realizing that our bottoms were numb and that were completely soaked through. The clothes that had allowed us to mix undisturbed with diplomats over breakfast now clung to our bodies, sodden and cold and by the time we got into the bath we were shaking!
We drove up the valley into the mountains beyond Paghman in two landrovers, negotiating several rivers and an extensive boulder field. There had been heavy rain the night before and the narrow track had collapsed in several places. We decided to the leave the landrovers for fear of the weather and track deteriorating further and blocking our exit. We walked for five hours, following the valley at first, and then zig-zagging up the mountainside. We were loosely following a track that had been laid by Ahmed Shah Massoud to bring munitions and men to bear against the Soviets in the 1980s and were reminded of this when we came across the tail fin of a large rocket half buried in the snow and saw the remains of a truck in the valley below. After two hours we were following the steps that those in front had kicked in the snow. After three hours, the altitude was beginning to tell, as Lucy fumbled with her zip and my head pounded.
The summit announced itself abruptly as the cloud parted just enough to reveal a small cornice 20 metres above us. We kicked our way up to the ridge and found ourselves standing on the summit above cloud for the first time in five hours. The views to the south-west and another peak of 4000m were wild and spectacular. The ridge ran away from us in both directions and the wavy white cornice made a surreal scene, one moment framed against blue sky, the next by dirty white cloud. This was a far more satisfying moment than reaching Annapurna base camp a few weeks ago. We watched as dark storm clouds gathered above another mountain on the horizon and decided to make our way down.
We had brought large rice sacks with us and spent the next hour sledging down giant snow chutes back to the landrovers. We had just completed our first run when there was a large clap of thunder above us and we began to be pelted with hail. I felt the fizz of a momentary electrical charge on my forehead, perhaps static from the rice sack. Seconds later and the skies were set ablaze by lightening. We heard the roar of an avalanche. Somehow, the fact that we were sledging on rice sacks made everything ok and we continued our merry way down the mountain. By the time we had perfected our technique, the snow chute ran out and we clambered over slippery boulders realizing that our bottoms were numb and that were completely soaked through. The clothes that had allowed us to mix undisturbed with diplomats over breakfast now clung to our bodies, sodden and cold and by the time we got into the bath we were shaking!
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