It is always a wondrous day when you eat pancakes. Even more so when you thought you finished a small breakfast and unannounced one more plate with some pancakes, thinly sliced fried potatoes and a local apple is brought out.
When the mountains outside your window are suddenly revealed to be dusted with snow from last night’s storm by the lifting mists to be partially covered again and uncovered,
when you keep reaching for your camera for one more picture it is the start of something special.
When you walk to your car and it rains, snows and the sky turns blue all in 3 minutes and your favorite dog in Bhutan is patiently waiting for a final nuzzle, life has much to offer.
When you are taken to a sacred Buddhist site called the Burning Lake and what you find instead is beauty, a rushing river falling headlong in a narrow channel with rocks smoothed down by the ages, peace and solitude,
thousands of tiny memorial tshatses in honor of the dead,
a riot of prayer flags,
the heart opens.
When your rock cairn steadies and remains fast for this moment, presence is felt.
When previously dry stream beds are filled with ice cold waters from last night’s rains and snow, flowing down through hills jumping from rock to rock through ancient mountains and forests and are channeled through a water activated prayer wheel clanging with each revolution reminding us of the purpose of this life to become free, the mind is cleared.
When snows in the higher hills on the roads, rocks, hills and trees glisten , I remember the joy and beauty snow in nature brings me.
When I manage to hit a tree trunk with a snowball twice, I am 10 years old again.
When we stop to eat outside atop a ridge and the sun shines, the food itself is imbued with a richness and exquisite taste anew.
And when Tsering and Dandy share our food with some local kids watching us, compassion completes a wondrous day.
Alan Lessik 