There are some views that will always take your breath away as long as you’re paying attention. The scene from the air over Colorado is one of these and inspired this freewrite. 

“I love my life,” she thought as the horns of the Rohirrim sounded in her head. She was thousands of feet in the air, the monolithic metal wing of the plane visible out the window to her left. Beyond it she could see ancient grey peaks contoured with white snow and wreathed at their base by a blanket of warm green velvet. They jutted up from the Earth to create shallow basins for dozens of glittering snowmelt lakes. 

She knew that’s what they were, flaring a blinding golden light, like mirrors in the evening sun. She’d visited enough of them to recognize their glassy surfaces even from this height. As she watched, her mouth slightly open in an awestruck ‘O,’ she couldn’t help but think of the beacons of Minas Tirith blazing to life and lighting a path from the people of Gondor to their comrades in Rohan.