Closer to the Sky

There are places that seem to belong half to the earth and half to something else. Meteora is one of them. The rock rises without warning, grey and ancient, and at the very top — where you would think nothing could hold — a monastery sits as though it had grown there. You look up and feel small in a way that is not unkind.

I kept thinking how someone, centuries ago, chose to live this close to the sky. To wake each morning above the clouds and the noise of the world below. The wind moves differently here. The silence has weight. You do not so much visit Meteora as you are quietly let in, and then, leaving, you carry some of that stillness down with you.