High Monastery

On a crag above the pastures stands a walled monastery of limewashed white, its dark shingle domes and open bell tower sharp against the thin high air. A switchback stair is cut into the rock below it, with a rope rail and small rest niches. At the top the gatehouse arch opens into a cloister of whitewashed arcades around a square garden. Walled herb terraces step down the sunny side of the crag in narrow beds. Four bronze bells hang in the tower. Bronze, limewash, shingle. The church beside it is built of wood and painted inside in deep reds and golds, darkened by centuries of candle smoke. In the infirmary wing a long wall is covered floor to ceiling with small plain wooden tablets, closely hung and smoothed by age. Dawn is cold. Mist lies in the valley far below while first light catches the bell tower, and behind it, higher still, the summit stands white.