Happy New Year 2009!

We welcomed in the new year on Witches' Hill (local name: Pari Tibba) most likely named because of the inordinate number of lightning strikes here (the mountain is full of phosphate.) I sit writing to you in a burned out area -- the rest is covered with a type of dried flowering grass. I have a 180-degree view of the Himalayans ranges before me. Even in the morning haze, I can see five consecutive ranges. I hear dogs barking and a cow lowing from a farmhouse on the next mountain. A swallow is swirling overhead. I see smoke rising from a terraced village behind the next ridge. It is serenely beautiful.
Only the charred remains give testimony to the five-foot high pile of dried grass that Cole and his friend Dan ignited at midnight. The bonfire burned ferociously and quickly - a fitting ritual in this primordial area of the Himalayan foothills we call home.