NEW DELHI, April 16 -- Today I'm on my way home to Cold Mountain.
There, I'll bed down in the creek, just to wash out my ears.
-Han Shan, from Cold Mountain Poems In the mountains, sometimes there's a sudden dampness when my feet stick in mud I didn't know was there. And then a little field of small fronds suddenly comes into view, the fronds sticking their heads up over the wet earth. I know then that a stream is near. Soon enough, I will hear a trickle, the buzz of insects and see a fluttering shimmer of butterflies over the flowing water, especially at noontide.
If there's a descending stream nearby, then I can tell of its imminent arrival by the appearance of a deep, shadowy gully or a gulch. I can tell that there's one just around t...