Visiting the Greater Caucasus Mountains -- where Nature bats last

Visiting the Greater Caucasus Mountains -- where Nature bats last   

    I am currently staying in Stepantsminda, a small tourist town located in the state of Georgia, a former member of the Soviet Union.  Stepantsminda is 8,000 feet above sea level.  Picture me here, just living the life -- happily sipping hot chocolate and staring out at a gigantic mountain clearly as large as the Matterhorn.  Even in the middle of July, Mt. Kazbegi is still covered with snow -- and another mountain just below it is crowned by a monastery that has existed there since the eleventh century.  

     I totally adore the Caucasus.  The views here are breathtaking.  It's going to be really hard to leave this place and trudge back down to civilization -- but I've got no choice.  My bus leaves in fifteen minutes.  

      And I'm also totally dreading the wearisome descent back down through a hundred miles of switchbacks and hair-pin turns, only to end up in the usual sad tired real world of war porn, endless genocide and graphic newscasts of things blowing up in Ukra$ne, Lebanon, Gaza, Kuwait, Yemen, Latin America, Russia, the Black Sea and/or the Strait of Hormus.  And there is no end in sight to this craziness either.

     However.

    Here on this strange and beautiful mountain, I've managed to get a glimpse of some especially deep and ultimate truths -- have seen the handwriting on the wall, er, the mountain.  And this truth is very simple.  War may be the ultimate consumer in the temporal world down at sea level but always and forever, both up here and down there, Nature bats last.  

     Long after the human race has consumed itself in blind, useless and bloody conflict spurred on by lust, greed and a bottomless desire to accumulate even more shiny things, my beautiful Mt. Kazbegi will still be here, safe and untouched. 

PS:  I'm staying in an old hotel that was built during Soviet Union times, for the purpose of giving workers on vacation a free place to stay.  And it turns out that my hotel is also located just a few miles from the Russian border!  Who can resist?  Certainly not me! 

     Of course I immediately went over there.  Took photos.  Posted them on social media.  Does this mean that I am consorting with the enemy?  Or just trying to be diplomatic -- a skill that today's poor sorry world leaders obviously lack.

     But just so you know, I didn't get arrested -- on either side of the border.  That's one small step toward world peace, right?

Resources:

Something like 15% of the world's shipping is now under fire.  Sucks eggs to be a mariner these days.  Sucks eggs to be a consumer too.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSdwyBmgYRY

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