Traversing The Unknown

One day, a man who lived amongst nature, as much as a modern man can live amongst nature, dragged a chair to his north facing window and stared outside in almost …defeated awe, at a particular mountain that was somehow able to scrape the skies:

“I see an air brushed photo-shopped masterpiece, with technicians working right in front of my north facing window. Every detail and contour is meticulously attended to. A chemist, a scientist, lives their life through a microscope, only to see the invisible for the rest of us, I now understand their motivations. This mountain must have a telescope backwards ---into time.”

“But it’s way out there, so incredibly high, untouchable …?” He thought. Why his life had brought him to this view he couldn’t tell you. But through his north facing window it just sits there. It never moves. Never! When it’s not straight up, it slowly rolls upward in perky voluptuous mounds. This mountain reaches over eight thousand feet into the blues, as his ashtray gets filled with a bad habit, as he stares …in awe.

An artist, a poet, an engineer, wants to blast through it, just to see the other side. Why? Its consistent bravado makes people do the most ridiculous things. After seeing the mountain people talk to themselves, almost in tongue, while shaking their heads, “Does any of this make sense? Does this world make any sense?” They ask, with thoughts that eventually travel above and beyond the mountain. Sometimes these thoughts linger for days, and change lives.

But isn’t it obvious? ---it just sits there. Perhaps this one particular mountain answers all of our questions? But the man is crippled by the view, only able to stare at it, and with all his angst he speaks, “Everything is utterly senseless!! This world, this life, it’s ---‘non-sensical’.”

But still the man has thoughts about climbing ---the un-climbable? But he can’t even take a step towards it, “Why would I? Why would anybody? Who cares? But how can it be, how can anything just …be? ---sitting there so contently?”

“This Peavine Mountain is ageless. The winds come by everyday and wisp the wrinkles away. It has no gray. I imagine if I was up there at the summit, I’d hear pages of the past fluttering in the wind, for all eyes brave enough to climb to the summit to read ---the truth.

The story is there. I’m sure of it. But how much more gray will I have digested from this life until I get the courage to climb it? You see, just now, I’ve decided to climb it ---someday! Yes someday!”

But, as of late, the man as kept his blinds shut. They’ve been shut for days. But it builds and builds, and then he can’t help himself. His hand cramps readying to pull the draw string on the blinds open. The blinds seem to talk to him, ‘Just a crack and you’ll be able to reach into the Blues’.

The man sits for seventeen hours staring out his north facing window.

“Now it’s three thirty in the morning. I’m tired. Nonetheless, at first light I’m going to take that first step. Today is the day! I’ve made my decision. I’ve decided on nothing, except to take that step. This will be completely visceral. I’ll let it soak me through. I’ll be soaking wet if I can make it. I won’t record a thing from A to B, except which lingers in my mind. I’ve got all I need; a backpack, water, tuna fish in cans. I just have to remember to bring a can opener. I’ll go north, and north by north west. I’ll make my own path with tremendous audacity. I must tell all that I’m courageous! I’m sure no one has attempted this before. And when I reach the summit, I’ll scream. I’m sure I’ll hear an echo as far away as the Celestial Empire. There’ll be no name to this incredible endeavor, no formats, just me and a mountain. Formats, names, titles, now that would be ridiculous, don’t you agree? They have rules.” He started:

At first the adrenalin made him seek shelter to relieve himself, again and again. He could sense all this violence had brought together all this beauty. And one wrongly placed step, he thought, would be the end of him.

The peak seemed to throw their seeds here and there. Where the cliffs went straight up, completely erect, they left huge boulders. He could still hear the mountain sighing. It was tremendous power finally released. And when he looked down at his feet, little rocks shone. The little rocks were left on the voluptuous symmetrical floating mountains between the erect ones ….

But James Redburn never returned from his hike.

A few days later, after the echoes of wanting to hear another’s tragedy reached thousands; the invisible eddy took the press to the base of the Peavine Mountain. The masses needed a little ‘pick me up’.

A man with a pencil tucked behind his ear started talking. The group gathered around him: “The prolific writer, James Redburn, who was never read, took a hike up the Peavine Mountain Range just last week. A blue so blue, that when at the top the color seems different from one eye to another. He probably raised his hands when he made it to the summit, if he ever did. And from our investigations, we’ve discovered James Redburn slipped and fell repeatedly. The rescuers have now called off their efforts. The snow drifts have covered all that’s happened. Sorry, no more questions. I have other pending investigations, thank you. Our prayer’s go to Mr. James Redburn ---WE CARE!”

The End

Bouquet

The word, “Leave,” staggered him to his knees. Immediately thereafter he bought a plane ticket to the world’s deepest woods to study plant propagation and leaf circumferences, and then, he told himself, “to the world’s next deepest woods.”

For the next fourteen years of his life, millions of leaves passed through his hands, yet one day, while deep in the woods measuring a leaf he heard the words, “Go to the place where you know where all the, ‘No Left turns are at’! Go home, please, there’s love here.”

From words blowing in a strange west wind, and after countless measurements of leaves and grafting of plants, producing all sorts of mysticisms, he hoped that once again he could have the mysticism of love. A smile slowly embraced his face, and he began moving home.

Home was a place where ‘hero’s from novel’s’ held up in little hovels, home for him was where all the people wore bouquets in their hair, home for him was San Francisco, California. He would settle there for the remainder of his days, he was sure now. He didn’t even have to aim his car after he heard those words ---blowing in a strange west wind.

He didn’t press the accelerator. It pulled him ---but only briefly because he blew an engine rod and had to take an alternate route home. But undaunted, he made his way to the nearest Amtrak Station. He would continue with his journey while taking in the sights while sitting in an Amtrak Train.

While on the train it began to rain, which he understood through clever eavesdropping on his traveling companions that it had happened often this year. The conversations on Market and Main streets, and in the food-cart, sounded with a familiar rhyme, “Had been an extremely prosperous and bountiful year, yes?” and or, “this particular rainy season it really (Really) rained a lot,” and he dreamed of wild flowers blooming all around and near his home, and after that last anxious turn he saw that the hills surrounding his home were such a green, a green which he had never seen before, and from that day on he no longer had to concentrate on the exhaling of his breath, it easily released itself.

And when he saw the skyline of San Francisco he was finally able to let his rifle, which had saved him so many times deep in the world’s jungles and world’s woods ---with the safety latch pushed tightly in the no longer needed position. No more was there a need for the man to have his finger constantly on the trigger. He was safe, and finally …He was Home!

The End