शब्द-कोश: पहाड़ों के शब्द

Not quite rain, not quite snow — Kharchod Mu is both at once, the wet in-between weather of a valley that has a name for every kind of sky.

The big snowfall, big blobs falling down. The outgoing-winter snows are heavier with water and harder to clear from roofs and roads — the valley measures its snow in labour as much as in beauty.

And of course there is the windy snow — Latang Mu — when the snow does not fall so much as arrive sideways, carried across the valley by the wind.

When the snowfall is about to stop, Lemzee Mu comes — snow like tiny glitters, shining back with the light. The valley reads it as a closing line: the sky is finishing what it had to say.

In Sissu, snow is not just snow. It is Mu — and depending on how it falls, what it promises, and what it costs to clear, it takes a different name. The valleys around have their own words again; each keeps its own weather in its own language.

When it is small-small snowfalling, like the smallest pearls, it is Nyirtschi Mu. It usually comes with the incoming winter — and it means more Mu is coming. Walking the road the next day and seeing the first tiny flakes, you know not to plan on leaving.