Stone Sentinels

Tre Cime di Lavaredo, in the Dolomites, under fresh snow. The cloud sat down below the summits and stayed there the whole morning, and I stayed with it, cold and unconvinced. Then for perhaps four minutes it lifted, and the three towers stood clear against a sky that had been withholding them since dawn. They stand the way things stand that have been standing a very long time. Without effort, without comment, as though the weather were a passing mood of their own. Four minutes. I have given whole days for less.