Now, we are ready to begin. Get yourselves in a comfortable place. Don’t worry about who is sitting next to you. All of you will have your eyes closed. Just be comfortable, and do your best to imagine the things I will describe. Okay, close your eyes, and imagine what you hear…

It’s is a summer afternoon. The air is fresh… the sun warm on your face. You hear the sounds of summer… There is a hint of moisture in the air… Softly on your cheek you feel a change coming in the weather…The space between you… and the distant valley far below is filling with white fluffy clouds…they move up toward you… on rising warm-air currents… building as the moisture gathers together in droplets…expanding…rising

After a long wait, you begin to see dark spots of water on the boulders… in the steeply rising path…then you feel the drops on your hair…looking around there is no distant view, only tiny alpine flowers… on succulent leaves hunkered near the ground… strong little bushes… and wind swept trees…

As the clouds rise past you… the rain begins to pelt your shoulders and thighs as your knees rise with each forward step… You need to find shelter, but there is none…The large rhododendron leaves on the trees collect the pelting rain into rivulets that drain on you…You can only pull up your hood or open an umbrella for protection…

Other sounds are washed out…You notice scents in the air… things you can smell and feel… Water runs quickly downhill in trickles meeting to form bigger streams moving down into crevices falling over huge boulders splashing on flat stony outcrops on its way to the

white-water river a thousand feet below you…

You continue up the path… every bend you come around… reveals a hanging valley and its waterfall…now there is only the lush green plants, you and the rain…

After a long time you come to shelter… the rain continues through the fading afternoon, throughout evening into night… You wake to silence…many bright stars twinkle in the clear crisp late-night summer sky… Another monsoon cycle passes.