The story behind the poem came from a conversation with an elderly man who was born in Ootycamund, a hill station in southern India. He was delighted to hear I had been there, and confided several stories to me as if I was a long lost relative.

His father was a Doctor in the British army during the occupation. They used to enjoy the walk through the narrow pass, where there were plum trees, on the way to a well. His father had great respect for the old man who lived up the mountain so he promised his little son they would return the next day.

The boy came to Australia with his mother at the end of the war and was unfortunately sent to a Catholic boarding school where the cruel religion made no sense to him after the spiritual perspectives he had learned from his family's Indian servants where there had been no concept of guilt nor the idea of 'original sin.'

When my family went camping in the mountains in Canada, my father used to tell a story. He said there used to be a town in that area. A man, who had grown up there, came back to visit. He said, ”That mountain, whose shadow is cast over our town, has moved since I was small.” No one believed him. The man left. One day there was an avalanche and the town was buried.