She turns away in search of adventure,
A vanishing dot in my fading eyes;
But through the binoculars I recognise
The deliberation in every gesture;
xxxxBoth palms folded flat against her bowed back:
Conquering weariness with raw desire;
xxxxThe balls of both fists pressed into her hips:
Weighing the cost of climbing higher.
Below the mountain pass she stops and stands
Where two boulders form the mouth of a cave
That closes around her like praying hands,
And at the threshold she turns and waves
xxxxAt what’s only seen on a smartphone screen,
Then passes beyond the reach of my vision;
xxxxFingers loosely enlaced behind her waist:
The contentment of oblivion.
— Pas de Lona, August 2025
• • • • •
In the documentary by the German film-maker, Werner Herzog, Encounters at the End of the World (2007), a scene shows a lone penguin leaving its colony and heading inland, away from the open water and towards a mountain range some 70 kilometres away. Beyond that was 5,000 kilometres of Antarctica and certain death. One of the scientists explained that, even if he caught the penguin and brought it back to the colony, it would immediately head back to the mountains.
At 2,787 metres, the Pas de Lona is the lowest of the passes between the Val d’Hérens, in which we stayed in Switzerland, and the neighbouring Val d’Anniviers, and yet is still more than twice the height of the highest mountain in Britain, Scotland’s Ben Nevis, at 1,345 metres.
A Communist in Hong Kong 