Mountain

I don’t know how far it was. I only know there were three peaks to climb. I had fewer words but I had more aliveness in my senses. I swear I heard the breeze suggesting and swaying its lovely presence in its territory. I closed my eyes and felt the delicious gust on my sweaty face and hot hair. It has been with me the entire journey of walking and breathing and carrying. There was no beginning, there was no end in the path of assaults and traverses. When I thought I wanted to stop, my body wanted to push further and farther. The pain sustained me well. I felt like Cheryl. I felt her physical struggles and her troubled thoughts. And I felt them slipping away like time gone by.

I have never felt alone in the massive space of quietness and lushness. I listened to its silent guidance from beneath the soil and rocks and amid the moisture hanging in the air and from above the mossy green forest covering the trail. John Muir was right when he said, “We are now in the mountains, and they are in us…” To belong in its unspeakable greatness is a necessity.  The wealth of the wilderness brimmed the way with hope and bliss. I was cleansed. But I knew I was undone.

I walk and breathe and carry.