Changping ridge, below the Four Sisters, 2004

I sat on a large flat stone and looked at the peaks of the Four Sisters, trying to understand their characters, like the characters of the four girls who, the legend says, turned into this mountain. The eldest looks older: gentler slopes, a less sharp summit. The youngest is the highest, the steepest and the boldest.

The warm wind blew through me and I noisily sucked oxygen out of the air. For a while my whole existence turned into breathing. In that thin air there was something else besides oxygen: energy. India calls it prana, China qi, Japan ki. I noticed that up here you remember only the people who truly matter to you, and feel an almost physical connection with them. The others seemed erased; I could not even recall their names.