Prologue: The Last Tree on Earth There is a tree—if you can still call it that—growing out of a wind-blasted ridge in western Ladakh. It is neither tall nor noble. It doesn’t rise toward the sky like some symbol of endurance. Instead, it hunches low against the cold. Its bark is bleached, its leaves few. A thorn, maybe. A remnant. A survivor of something vast and unseen. I stood before it, not long ago, on a morning when the air was brittle enough to break. The mountains crouched like sleeping animals. No birds. No sound. Nothing but that tree and the wind that threatened to tear it free. And I […]
