Breath of the Plateau

This is the story behind the yak bone necklace, which began with a walk beneath the open highland sky.

It starts in the Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in China, on the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. The air is thin but full, carrying the faint drift of chanting, the slow shapes of yaks, and the steady calm of the highlands. I stayed in a wooden cabin set against an open stretch of land, dry grass running out toward the distant mountains. The place was quiet, and the quiet held its own kind of truth.

In town, most people are Tibetan Buddhists. Monks in red robes walk along the streets. Many carry prayer beads in their hands or around their necks, repeating mantras as they walk and work. Prayer just runs through the day.

There was a small local workshop where I first held the yak bone beads. They came from malas that had broken over the years. Time and touch had smoothed them. A muted sheen had worked its way onto the surface, and small marks of oxidation clung to the openings, holding a trace of all the chanting they had traveled through.

People here live simply, shaped by belief and by the land itself. They use what the earth gives—wool to weave, milk to drink, bone for prayer—and in the end they return everything back to the soil. Each evening they gather by the fire, singing in low voices under the wide, cold stars.

I brought a few beads back with me to carry their story forward. This necklace is made from those reclaimed beads. It holds a bit of that place and its rhythm—the walk, the prayers, the fire at night, and the steady breath beneath it all.

In the highlands, even the silence feels alive.