ELECTRIC PLATEAU

The chairlift spat me out onto the summit like a mandarin pit. A dozen skiers stood around in silence, adjusting boots, tightening gloves, stealing the occasional glance at the sky.

And what a ridiculous sky it was.

Not blue. Cyan.

So absurd it looked like someone had cranked the saturation knob until it snapped clean off. Every drift shimmered. Every ridge had a razor's edge.

I lifted my goggles.

Still cyan.

Put them back on.

Still cyan.

I repeated this scientific experiment another two or three times before accepting that either the mountain had become a cartoon or I'd finally reached the altitude where oxygen packs its bags and imagination clocks on.

The cold latched on. It chewed through my gloves and nipped at my cheeks. The snow squeaked beneath my boots with that dry, high-country sound that only exists when winter means business. I pushed off.

My first turn peeled away a ribbon of powder that hung in the air like sifted icing sugar. The next threw glitter into the sunlight.

Before long I was falling gracefully through a world that had forgotten how to be sensible.

A meteorologist could probably explain it. Something about crystal-clear alpine air and light scattering through an atmosphere scrubbed clean by the wind.

Good for them.

From halfway down the mountain, the summit looked like the roof of another planet, with tiny skiers drifting across it like punctuation marks beneath that impossible cyan dome.

Whether it was the goggles, the altitude or a brain briefly liberated from adulthood, I couldn't say.

I only know that for a few glorious minutes the world became brighter than memory, and I had absolutely no desire to correct it.

Check out the close-up

* This painting is still drying and will not ship until August 2026.