The Mountain

It’s so beautiful.

It’s so very beautiful, and it will never stop being beautiful. Even afterwards.

I’ve never been able to capture even a fraction of what lays before me right now. My mind never had the capacity for it, and I think that is just as well. This is one of those times that is all about the moment itself and taking it with me would somehow diminish it. I am not worthy to contain all of this glory, and the point is that you’d have to see it to believe it, and there is belief here. There is more than my eyes see. All of this before me holds so much meaning that my emotions are swamping me right now and I do not know what to do.

I cry.

I cry the whole rainbow of my emotions. At first I do so stripe by stripe, but then the colours bleed into one and I am blinded by the intense light that threatens to burn me all up.

I hadn’t intended to, but I stay. For the first time in my life I sit throughout the night and I soak my surroundings up and my surroundings pull on me and take from me and keep taking until I am empty, so empty that I feel this incredible lightness and as I feel like the breeze will take me away from here I understand that this place has given me more than it has taken from me and I am cleansed. I have undertaken a pilgrimage, but only now do I realise that this is what I was doing all along.

I stopped running for the first time since this all began and I chose this place. I chose a destination to run to. I made a change and now I think I am ready. I can at last say goodbye.

The Summer’s night is short and it does not reach full darkness. The scene that shone right through me is veiled in an ethereal blue light and I gaze out upon rich, sleeping shadows. Tonight is a first for me, I sit sentry over the world before me, and as I keep watch, the light begins to brighten and a new day is born. I feel my heart come alive and grow. It keeps growing and growing as the light insinuates itself into the world again and that beautiful panorama is revealed to me one last time.

I cry once more, but this time the tears are gentle and I am smiling as I see the world for what it really is and I see my place in it. 

I feel the rising sun warm me and breath life back into my tired body. It encourages me to rise and to greet the day and this I do. I expect the muscles in my legs to complain and resist me but everything is in accord this day and I see that as fitting. I stand and I look out over the valley and the dark waters of the lake, then I turn ever so slowly in a full circle taking in as much as I can of my surroundings, even though I know it will all be gone again soon enough. I do it anyway, because I can and because it is all about moments like these.

Having been here before I always knew that I would see little of my fellow man, woman or child. There are a few stone structures in the valley itself, but already they have been reclaimed by Mother Nature and it is as though those structures ceased to hold the meaning they once had as soon as their occupants left. A house that is not lived in is merely a stack of stones, timber and tiles. A large cairn that the elements can and will take back down in time, and time is always on Mother Nature’s side. She is patient and she is enduring. She has seen much and I wonder whether she marked the ending of all the millions of species that passed through this way on her watch.

This time is so different from the other times I have visited the mountain, not because I am the only one here on this peak right now. Not because I made an impromptu stop here over night. There was no one on the paths as I made my ascent yesterday, not one soul. On past visits I thought I had seen only a handful of people, but when I come to think of it, I must have encountered a hundred people or more, a few here and there on the trails and others clustered in and around the village itself. All of them long gone now.

As I carefully pick my way down the first mountain paths I understand why I came here why I chose this place. I always came here seeking solitude and this time that is what I found, and yet I was not lonely and I was not alone. In a place like this, the scale and the magnitude of the world might make a person feel incredibly small, but never alone. I am a part of all of this. Always have been and always will be. 

Walking to this high place has brought me comfort in a way I hadn’t known was possible. I clamber down the mountainside and take the paths away from the summit and down into the valley. I take care, but I do not override the spring that is now in my step. There is a joy in my descent and I allow myself to be happy for the first time in an age. Those things that I thought mattered are at last put in perspective. I left my worries on the mountain top and I come down to the valley a different person.

It is around midday when I arrive in the valley, not that time is a consideration for me these days, I took my watch off one night and I never put it back on. Dawn and dusk are markers and the middle of the day, when the sun is in the midst of the sky, allows me to make my sparse and trivial plans with reference to what remaining light I may expect. 

I passed the pub on my way up. I paid it heed as I give due attention to all my surroundings, I have not gotten this far on luck alone. I rode my luck until it ran out some while back and now I’m running on empty. I’ve been running on empty for quite a while now and every day that passes is a bonus of sorts. I am not so deluded as to think that I am here for a reason. All I am is a statistical anomaly. Perhaps that was all we ever were. All of us a hiccup in the universe. An insignificant occurrence that, as time passes, makes no difference and is soon forgotten, and if ten billion people are just so much gas then I don’t count for much of anything, which suits me just fine.

My musings remind me of what does count and I turn to look back up at the towering slab of rock that dominates the skyline. It’s hard to imagine that I was up there just a few hours ago, and if it’s hard to do that then it’s even harder to imagine a world teeming with billions of people, but then, maybe all of that was a dream and I have only now awoken to the reality of this world.

This time, I do not pass the pub, I go in. The door is not locked, but it begrudges my passing and I have to shoulder it open. Places like this are dark and gloomy and usually I would avoid them. There was always an element of darkness and gloom in pubs back in the day, it was what gave them character. The lighting that once transformed the look and feel of such places is long since defunct. With what little light there is I can see the ghosts of candles dotted around. Signs that life went on for some while after The Collapse. I try not to think of the stories that this place holds, not even those happier histories in times when people were care free, but still insisted on filling their lives with needless stress and worry in any case.

Standing stock still I watch and I listen. The noise of the door is sufficient to announce my presence and now it is for me to establish whether I have peaked any curiosity. I await any developments in perfect stillness and silence. It took me a long while to get to this state. I shed much to rid myself of all my inner noise and some of my turmoil. I learned to listen, and as I embarked upon that journey of learning I was shocked at how deaf I had been to the world.

That unwillingness to listen explained much. It told me most of what I needed to know about the human race and how it slept walked to its end. How it used technology to gradually and irrevocably mummify itself. Going against nature again and again and again, burying itself in its own self-interest and narcissism until it was so far removed from everything that was important that the conclusion was logical and a complete and utter certainty.

Moving to the bar I see that there are still bottles of spirits. The occupants of this building didn’t last all that long then, and neither did those in the small village this pub served. I wipe the dust and grime from a glass and I take a good bottle of whisky from the shelf. 

I wait until I am outside again before I pour a generous measure of the golden liquid. I lift the tumbler aloft in a silent toast to the mountain and in that moment I see reflected in the glass the nature and timing of my ending. Time may stand still in that final moment and allow me to see every single detail and afford me complete understanding, but I don’t get to sample the fine single malt in my hand. I don’t even get to hear the out of kilter song of the breaking glass of the falling tumbler lamenting the passing of the last of my kind.