It was right there, and it was just like she had remembered. Clearer in the daylight, no murk, no fog, just white in the clear blue. She stood in the snow speechless, dark shadow to her left, the inverted reflection of the great mountain perfectly mirrored in a small lake that lay in front of her. It was tremendous, magnetic to the eyes because nothing around it garnered interest in it’s presence. It was an isolated peak, twenty thousand feet up in the air, like a king sitting on the throne amongst his loyal subjects. Two smaller summits stood on either side of it; a white, pointed crown for the shoulders that lay below, gorgeous. Broad, lush stretch of grass ahead of her, so full of color, like a fresco, it took the eyes away from everything dull. For a moment, she had forgotten to breathe in the winter air. She realized she didn’t need the camera — the image had set in, and like a mental picture, she saved this amazement forever, till the day she would no longer remain.
She had made it, defying age, despite the odds that were stacked against her. A gallant effort made possible by calculated decisions, circumventing the shrewd and the dark constructs passed on to her along the way, she had made it. It was a strange sight to see and feel — the peak of the great mountain — because it felt different as if she had been bereft of the achievement, as if she had seen it all before, so familiar yet so strange. An insatiable hunger to want more from it. A stirring of the mind that she thought she’d experience but one that never came.
She knew she couldn’t hike; there was no time or resources. At a lowly pace, the time was now. The wider feeling of courage was taken over by a strange persuasion.
She turned and made her way into the break of the woods that lay to her east, avoiding the bramble and the big rocks, out of sight of the tourists that had taken the easy route. In the loneliness of the woods, the brown stumps and the dry leaves, sounds of frail twigs crackling, and no path to guide her, she stopped when she could hear no chatter. Kneeling to the ground, she rummaged through the backpack that had been her only faithful companion, one that she had guarded from everything and everyone. A receptacle of importance, four things inside saw the daylight after a prolonged time, each symbolic of the evil, despair, judgment, and isolation of the journey she had endured — the Colt model revolver, a folded piece of paper, a pen, and a jar filled with ashes. She looked for a barren spot to camp her tired body in the cold that she no longer felt. A tall spine of the tree trunk and the loose mud that gave way for the roots — rest, at last.
With the birds trilling above, she unfolded the paper and retrieved words that had set all this in motion, a confluence of the poetic and prose, words that were the motive for all the courage she had gathered to embrace what she would eventually go through. And alongside this mountain, “The Great One”, she read the words in melancholy, tears plummeting to blotch the paper, slowly spreading the ink across. It didn’t matter.
My dear,
“Accept what the future holds, Collect along the way, Valuables, cherishes,
Some that you keep,
Some that you rid.
By choice, by chance, or by misfortune, In this moment of hollowness,
You will feel something,
It is rusty, it is cruel, and it is mysterious.
I hoped the day would never arrive, But with no choice, and no purpose, I have held on too long,
You have held on too long.
And I hope you will find peace with it, Take solace in it, because my love, You will have dug a jewel,
A cloudy treasure amid a storm, Magic in disguise,
For your best chance to find meaning, May have finally arrived.”
Yours,
Grandpa
She crumpled the paper, making no effort to wipe away the tears. She made a small hole in the ground, pushing away the loose mud that uncoupled the roots of the massive trees. She picked up the glass jar and kissed it, little drops of tears cleaning the dirt off the exterior. She buried it in the small pit, along with the note and the revolver. One last look at the ground — her grandfather’s ashes, placed next to the very thing that had taken him away from her.
She struggled to keep the image away — his shriveled, unrecognizable face, the body sat on the rattan chair in the shallow dark, blood gushing down his chest, coloring the wooden floor. It was the day he had decided to leave the world, away from anguish and depravity. On the floor next to him lay shards of glass that broke away from the picture frame they were part of. A picture of a family of four; in the background contoured the very mountain she faced now.
The contents of the backpack were never to see the light again. She blanketed them with the same dirt she had released from the earth. When the dirt piled up, shading the belongings underneath from the vileness of the earth, she stood up and laid her eyes on the mountain again. The mighty and majestic creation of the ground symbolic of strength that will protect everything she held dear. Nothing to distract her eyes, a burdened mind now breathes.
Denali allayed her soul. It was something she had the grit for — breaking free from the grasp of the routine, freeing herself from the wickedness of life. And at the end of the last tear that stained the mud, she turned around and walked away in no direction.
