“A Bath of Gold”
“As the afternoon ended, the landscape got bathed in a light of gold more precious than any king’s treasury. The rough ground to his immediate right gleamed like piles of strewn nuggets. The higher hills above this ground resembled bars of gold warped under great heat. A stretch of glacial ice could have been an auric platter capable of carrying a banquet fit for gods. A poet might have imagined one of these gods pouring a valley-sized bucket of golden paint over this entire section of the Himalayas. For every inch of it, every peak, hill, glacier, rock field, and crevice was sparkling, brilliant gold.”