The trail out of Kazbegi starts easy, then it doesn't. Loose gravel, a few switchbacks, a dog that adopts you for the first kilometer and then loses interest. By the time the church appears through the mist I've stopped checking how far there is left. That's usually the point where a place starts talking to you.
Gergeti Trinity sits at 2170 meters like it grew there. Fourteenth century, they say. Stone the color of the sky this morning, which is to say no color at all. Mount Kazbek is somewhere behind the cloud, everyone tells me it's there, I choose to believe them. Faith seems like the operative word today, in more ways than one.
The air is thin enough that I notice my own breathing, in and out, visible each time. A monk crosses the courtyard without looking at me. Bells somewhere, or maybe wind through the bell tower, hard to tell at this altitude and this hour. I load a new roll with fingers that don't quite work right in the cold. The camera doesn't complain. It never does.
I sit on a low wall and eat a piece of bread I forgot I had in my pocket. Below, the valley is doing its own quiet performance, threads of smoke from Kazbegi's rooftops, a river somewhere I can hear but not see. Nossa, I think, not really to anyone. Some mornings ask nothing of you except to show up and stay a while. This one qualifies.
