mountains

Traveling through the mountains of Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico, I heard accounts of migrants suffering shortages of food and climate-driven despair that had forced them to move.

It’s a question many are now asking in Las Posas Estates and Camarillo Heights — two affluent communities nestled against the foothills of the Santa Susana mountains and dangerously close to a flammable, brush-dominated ecosystem.

Beneath the watchtower at UNDOF’s Camp Ziouani base, the Israeli fence snakes towards a line of volcanic mountains; a Syrian flag flutters in the trees beyond the post, marking the other side of the separation zone.

On Tuesday night, the Lebanese health ministry said 15 people were killed, including eight women and four children, in an Israeli strike on a house in Joun, in the Chouf mountains near the southern coastal city of Sidon.

During those 24 hours they observe 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets over their silent blue planet, spinning past continents and cycling past seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans.