The urgent first breath of air that pushes me to waking everyday in the city becomes but a quiet transition from sleep to wake in the land. The urge of tasks to-do mutates to the need for aesthetic beauty - seeing the Pedra da Prata wake-up with the first morning light. The sight, despite its apparent permanence, it is an unmovable giant rock, after all, is subject to constant climatic humours.  At times completely invisible, cloaked in clouds or haze, others vibrantly crisp, the sight after a late evening shower. This inner joy upon the first-morning sight is interminable - a source of neverending surprise. 

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The soundful silence did not wait for my coming down from my loft. From the playful yet attention-grabbing incessant thump when their paws hit the wooden floor as they leap make for quite a cacophony by Luna and Petite, the resident strays that make most of my company these days along with the sparrows, orioles that chirp, sing while duelling and swirling in this winter air.  There is a loud cackling and hooting that reminds of Madagascar’s Indri Indri or even the free-roaming howling monkeys of my infancy when visiting the mountain ensconced Tuxtla zoo in Chiapas.  Yet here it is but the sound of chachalacas, non-elegantly flying between trees. The occasional toucan swings by, the massive yellow beaks as the visual tell that calls my attention. The soundscape is completed by the distant mooing from my neighbour’s cows and the occasional neigh from Mirage, one of the two castaway horses that have decided to come here to live in my company for their retirement.

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I come down to make tea which becomes a metaphor for living in Mirantao. The water from the mountain’s spring I heat up. I keep a few stems of lemongrass behind the kitchen that complement the rich fragrant lemons that I pick when in season and honey to complete the drink. This hot concoction is my first flavour of the day, the scent of the mountain, its waters, its prolific soil.

I turn on some music at times, thinking of Fitzcarraldo’s character listening to Chopin in the Amazonian forest. The music slowly trickling from the speakers is like the cup I hold in my hands, a modern accoutrement that yet for some reason still manages to meld with the beauty of the land.

As these thoughts wander, a conundrum interjects one that I have come to understand as caused by pure aesthetic stupor. What to do? Do I attack the list of endless tasks or continue with topophilia induced paralysis? Taking my eyes away from the mountain comes across as almost sacrilegious, as a non carpe diem moment.

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Despite being hugely impractical to keep on looking forever, the mountain demands such devotion. And, so the day starts, in a landscape imposed conundrum that I am much too happy to be engaged in every morning.