Multitude at White Rock — Metal

At sunset in the White Mountains I climbed to a bare dolomite outcropping where one ancient bristlecone stood apart from the rest, twisted and upright against the fading light. Below, hundreds of bristlecones spread across the pale slope in every direction — gnarled, patient, rooted in stone for millennia. The last sun caught the foreground trunk in a warm amber while the sky behind shifted through lavender and rose. It looked like a congregation — one elder at the pulpit of white rock, and a multitude gathered on the hillside to listen. Five thousand years of silence, and still no one has left.