When I talk of the mountains around Monchique

When I talk about the mountains, I talk about the air, its perfumes, its lightness and I talk of a way of breathing faster than in the valley. I get a feeling of being uplifted as if I float on invisible wide wings. I’m like a bird, no I feel like a bird singing early in the morning, when the fog is lifting and revealing the slopes and the valley. The air is moving upward and the birds start to free the forest, to open the woods, to awaken the flowers and to reach for the sky where they seek their soul in the upper blue. It is the hour that life arises from the valley floor and moves upward to the limitless sky opening the earth to the universe. The singing and the moving unite into a kind of jubilation that conquers the mountains, the meadows, the sheep on the slope and my soul setting free its emotions and feelings. I hear the running of water, the calling of the cuckoo, the falling of a pine apple and the beat of my heart growing into one big bang of new life breaching out of its skin, its shell, its banks.