field note
Looking up from under a deodar
Lying back under a deodar near the upper boundary at Chaptari. Five thousand feet up, the light comes through differently — softer, slower, and shifted toward the canopy.
· Sameer Jain · 1 min read
Two days after the daisy meadow photograph. The trees along our upper boundary are a mix of deodar and ban oak — older than the village, and older still than us. We hadn't planned to spend the morning under one of them, but the day was warmer than expected and the basket of saplings was heavier than we remembered.
At five thousand feet the light is different. The sun is higher in the sky, more direct, and the canopy filters it into a slow, even green. The leaves do not move the way they do at the plains. The wind here has a longer way to travel before it reaches the ground.
There is an argument for sitting under the older trees occasionally. They have already lived through everything we are about to.