[00:06.67]Driving to a friend’s house on a recent evening,
[00:10.39]I was awe-struck by the sight of the full moon rising just above Manila rooftops,
[00:17.06]huge and swollen, yellow through the dust and smoke of the city.
[00:21.99]I stopped to watch it for a few moments,
[00:24.89]reflecting on what a pity it was that most city dwellers?
[00:29.54]Myself included? Usually miss sights like this
[00:33.06]because we spend most of our lives indoors.
[00:36.96]My friend had also seen it.
[00:39.79]He grew up living in a forest in Europe, and the moon meant a lot to him then.
[00:45.93]It had touched many aspects of his life,
[00:48.76]including those concerning his ordinary daily life.
[00:52.82]For example, when he had to make sure that
[00:55.77]he had his torch with him when he was outside in the evening,
[00:59.17]or when the moon was due to rise late or was at its newest,
[01:03.76]a bright, distant sliver of white like a chink of light below a door in the sky.
[01:09.79]I know the feeling. Last December I took my seven-year-old daughter
[01:14.96]to the mountainous jungle of northern India with some friends.
[01:18.86]We stayed in a forest rest-house with no electricity or running hot water.
[01:24.56]Our group had campfires outside every night,
[01:28.29]and indoors when it was too cold outside.
[01:31.56]The moon grew to its fullest during our trip.
[01:35.06]At Binsar, 7 500 feet up in the Kumaon hills,
[01:40.53]I can remember going out at 10 p.m.
[01:43.29]and seeing the great Manda Devil Mountain like a ghost on the horizon,
[01:48.62]gleaming white in the moonlight and flanked by Trishul,
[01:52.67]the mountain considered holy by Hindus.
[01:55.51]Between me and the high mountains lay three or four valleys.
[02:00.55]Not a light shone in them and not a sound could be heard.
[02:05.14]It was one of the quietest places I have ever known, a bottomless well of silence.
[02:11.77]And above me was the full moon.
[02:14.62]Today our lives are defined by glass, concrete, metal, plastic and fibre-glass.
[02:22.06]We eat and breathe things our bodies were not designed to process.
[02:26.66]We have televisions, Xerox machines, cell phones, pagers, electricity,
[02:32.56]heaters and ovens and air-conditioners, cars, computers and remote controls.
[02:38.26]Struggling through traffic that evening in Manila at the end of a tiring day,
[02:42.96]most of it spent indoors, I thought:
[02:45.91]before long, I would like to live in a small cottage in the Himalayas.
[02:51.16]There I will grow vegetables and read books and walk in the mountains.
[02:56.09]And perhaps write, but not in anger.
[02:59.37]I may grow old there,
[03:01.20]and wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled and measure out my life in coffee spoons.
[03:06.70]But I will be able to walk outside on a cold silent night and touch the moon.
