My first night out 2,000m up the Hajar was in 2004, when I slept under an ancient juniper five hours above Misfah and 11 over Sahtan on the other side.

I was in search of a story for one of my first articles, looking for a happening, a plot, names of places, a personal history, anything at all. We have always yearned for something tangible, even if it meant piling up a cairn at Birkat Sharaf or scratching at the soft earth in Wadi Ala.

But it was only years later that it sunk in. I had groped desperately in the thin mountain air for something concrete, and had missed the point.

And so now, when I discover a patch of flatland in the Jebel Kawr, I see the cracks in the sediment, the white shells smaller than my fingernails, the clumps of burnt grass, the sprinkling of gazelle droppings, the dream of a leopard.

It is the little things that I treasure, and sometimes they are enough.

Pinaki Chakravarty
pinaki@apexstuff.com