10:47 and the gorge is already awake. Horses stand knee-deep in grass that hasn't decided if it's still spring. Nobody told them to move for me, so they don't.
The trail to Gveleti climbs slow, then not slow. Wildflowers press in on both sides, white and small, the kind you'd miss in a rush. I'm not in a rush. The air smells like wet stone and something green I can't name, maybe wild mint, maybe just cold.
You hear the waterfall before you see it. That's the trick these places play. The water is glacial, the kind of cold that makes your ears ring just looking at it, and loud in a way that fills the whole gorge, bounces off rock, swallows conversation. I stop trying to talk to myself about the view. The camera does the talking instead, one frame, then another, the shutter small and quiet against all that noise.
The peaks sit above everything, patient, a little bored with tourists like me. Che meraviglia, I think, and mean it, though there's no one here to say it to. A local boy passes on a horse, doesn't look twice at the waterfall. For him this is Tuesday. For me it's the whole reason I left Milan with one duffel and no return ticket.
I sit on a flat rock near the spray until my jacket goes damp. The cold works its way into my hands. I don't move. Some mornings ask nothing of you except to stay a little longer than planned, and this is one of them.
