Sep 7: The Li River

The mountains along the Li River today were everything they are touted to be. Mesmerizing, beautiful, unique.

This is what the mountains look like:

--dromedary humps, dolphin fins, rhino horns

--wet sand, plop-drop sand castles

--something out of Dr. Seuss

--morel mushrooms

--Bose Einstein Condensates

--giant ant hills

--stalagmites

--medieval fortress towers

--a boa constrictor eating an elephant

But most of all, they look like Chinese paintings of mountains. Tall, narrow peaks round and smooth covered in feathery foliage with the occasional jagged edge of a cliff.

Which makes sense. There isn't, really, anything to do when confronted with this geology except figure out how to paint it. It is a bygone conclusion that someone would put in the time to develop painting just the way the Chinese did: textured brush strokes to draw the trees, minimal details to echo the simple lines of the mountain, and chiaruscuro shading to show the mist-mellowed horizon.

All day long I had the last line of my bat mitzvah haftorah portion running hrough my head: "The Lord G-d hath spoken, who can but prophecy?" The Li river exists, who can but paint?