Every glance back, every tear dropped, every heartache strengthens me further. i'll be your lighthouse. i'll guide you home when you decide to return.

Sidenote: i want to reassure those who wish to know again that my condition while taking this picture is nowhere near as peaceful as what you see here might suggest. But that is really nothing, compared to hardship endured by those whose pictures i dream of one day producing. As Joe Cornish wrote in Light and the Art of Landscape Photography:

... landscape photography is no faint-hearted undertaking. 'A warrior with his camera' was how his comrades described Frank Hurley... all the photographers described on the following pages have taken countless risks in the pursuit of their images. Crumbling clifftops, surging unpredictble tides, desert heat, mountain cold, physcial isolation and sudden storms are hardships requires courage, if not out-and-out heroism. Then there is the rising before dawn, the forced marches, the long antisocial hours, and not least the 20-30 kilos of equipment that typically has to be carried. A certain amount of self-sacrifice comes with the territory.

20-30 kilos! To think that we had almost died climbing Mt Ophir with 15-20!