Relevance

Are monastics and hippies and poets relevant? No, we're deliberately irrelevant. We live with an ingrained irrelevance which is proper to every human being. The marginal person accepts the basic irrelevance of the human condition, an irrelevance which is manifested above all by the fact of death. The marginal person, the monastic, the displaced person, the prisoner, all these people live in the presence of death, which calls into question the meaning of life. They struggle with the fact of death in themselves, trying to seek something deeper than death, because there is something deeper than death, and the office of the monastic or the marginal person, the meditative person, is to go beyond death, even in this life to go beyond the dichotomy of life and death and to be, therefore, a witness to life.

- Thomas Merton, "Clouds and Water"

I've dreamed of this photo for about 15 years. During that time I've stood in this spot gazing to the west at this particular mountain range under a wide variety of light conditions. I've seen these mountains in morning light, sunset silhouette, broad daylight, wrapped in clouds, wreathed in clouds (as you see here) and under a cloudless sky.  

This photo contains the entire range of the Black Mountains in North Carolina. Actually, that is only partially true. What you see here is the highest peaks of the North-Central portion of the range. Mt. Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Rocky Mountains is near the middle of the photo. 

What I love about this photo is that the air was clear, and that clouds were clustered around the range. The shadows cast by those clouds under strong sunshine add to the visual beauty of the lower slopes of The Blacks.  

Hopefully this will not be my last photo of this part of The Black Mountains. I'm looking forward to exploring this viewpoint in the near future.