What the Light Leaves

A mountain in shadow becomes a body, and the light, when it comes, comes as one exact patch.

A mountain in full light is a map. In shadow it becomes a body. These are the hours when the ridges go black against the sky and the light, if it comes at all, comes as a single patch: a lit scree slope behind a shadowed ridge, a few blades of grass turned gold on a dark flank, a tear of old snow on a black face.

A peak doubles itself in a tarn and the cloud doubles with it. A path climbs a ridge and walks straight into the cloud. Then the mountains give way to the coast at night, where the surf writes its lines on black sand, and a bird crosses a grey that might be sky or might be water.

I am not photographing the mountain here so much as its weight, and the small, exact places where that weight lets go. What the light leaves behind is what I keep.