Above Xinaliq

Xinaliq sits above two thousand meters and has been sitting there, speaking its own language, for longer than most countries have existed in any form. I climbed the rocks above the village in the morning, one boot up on the outcrop like a person in an advertisement for lungs, and let the valley explain itself: stone houses shingled into the slope, the serpentine road that brought the truck up, snow ridges running the horizon like a signature.

The air at that height has edit privileges. It cuts adjectives first. What remains is nouns: stone, smoke, sheep bells, distance. I sat up there for an hour and produced four lines of notes, all of which survived the descent, which is a personal record.

A boy with a herd found me on the way down and practiced his Russian; I practiced my three words of the village language and was laughed at with great warmth. Fair trade at altitude. Everything up here is.