hi folks ~ sorry to dig up an old thread, but i wanted to share an excerpt from a novel which i just started reading... i thought it was so beautiful that perhaps you guys might enjoy it:

(describing the mountains in a fictional part of south america:)

For the first seven thousand feet it is the Garden of Eden, a luxuriance of orchids, hummingbirds, and tiny streams of delicious water that run by miracle alongside every path. Above this height for three or four thousand feet is a world of rock and water draped like hanging gardens with alien lunar plants in shades of brown and red and yellow with a habit so curious and enchanted as to be found in books of legend and romance. Above this is the Venusian world of ice, of sudden reckless mists of palpable water, of lichen and trickling springs of fragmenting shale and glistening white peaks, where human realities become remote and ridiculous, where the sky is actually below you and inside you, where breathing is an accomplishment in itself, and where condors, inconceivably ponderous and gigantic, wheel on the upcurrents like lords of a different and fantastic universe.

from _The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts_, by Louis de Bernieres ©1990 Vintage Int'l ISBN 0-375-70013-7

T~ arrrgggghhhh my first post in MONTHS and i managed to get caught online.... sorry honey my timing bites.