Releasing the Sherpas

The last two sherpas were the strongest, faithful companions, their faces wind-peeled, streaked with soot and glacier-light on the snowfield below the summit where we stopped to rest. The first was my body, snug in its cap of lynx- fur, smelling of yak butter and fine mineral dirt, agile, impetuous, broad-shouldered, alive to the frozen bite of oxygen in the larynx. The second was my intellect, dour and thirsty, furrowing its fox-like brow, my calculating brain searching for some cairn or chasm to explain my decision to send them back without me. Looking down from the next, ax-cleft serac I saw them turn and dwindle and felt unafraid. Blind as a diamond, sun-pure and rarefied, whatever I was then, there was no turning back.