To The Highlands

Down here I lose perspective.

I've been up the mountain many

times, but down here I forget there

is a mine. I forget why we're all here

in the first place, tucked into the

jungle. I live at the foot of Nemangkawi,

this force of a mountain -the last of the

equatorial glaciers, rich and beautiful,

scattered with peoples lost in time,

and people lost in mines. Often she is

hidden from me by the trees and the

clouds. Still, some clear mornings if I think

to look up while I'm riding down the open road

into town, a blue giant has peaked through the clouds to say hello.

When I go to the higlands, the view, the alititude and

scenery remind me of where I am. Some nights up in Tembagapura

I walk outside to see Grasberg glowing like a city tucked way up in the

mountainside. I remember why we're here.

I wake up in the dark at 4 to take a shuttle up the mountain.

Five of us in a Range Rover make the first trip of the day to

Tembagapura. Two hours of rough and winding roadway;

we sit in silence. One of them is sleeping, and the driver puts

in a cassette from Jayapura.

Days in Tembagapura feel like ten hours of dusk. The sun makes little show of brightening the landscape. Mountain air feels thin but the fog weighs it down and turns everywhere into inescapably small spaces. But this morning as we arrive in Tembagapura, the sun is coming up and it's a clear day. This place where I've stood many times before has suddenly shed its clothes for an hour or two, and everything is new. I can see down into the valleys and the lowlands that stretch south to the coast where the ocean and the sky must meet, now obscured by the low hanging clouds that might be coming this way. I can't stop looking down into the valleys and off into the mountains as far as I can see. Soon it will all be lost in the mist and I don't want to forget where I am.

view from the cablecar at Grasberg mine