#94

I’ve been walking amongst the mountains for quite a while now. Honestly, it’s nice in some ways. It’s more interesting then driving on the roads like others seem to love to do so much. There’s no contesting what I do is different though. More interesting. It’s really nice at times, even though it’s hard, too.

Have you ever been to a mountaintop? It’s amazing. One second you’re just trudging up against a seemingless endless wall of sheet-rock and gravel. Then bam, it slaps you right in the face; the endless sky and horizon stretched out before you. My breath catches every time. At times like that it always seems like the reason why I’m I’m walking the mountain trails is so apparent. It’s like there’s some great understanding between me and my environment that will always be there. Why do I do what I do? For moments of perfect clarity, happiness and understanding just like this one. It just seems so obvious.

I’ve noticed that walking down to greet the valley and to actually slip into that landscape is usually pretty nice, too. There’s always this sense of expectation, at least for me, and hope. No, that doesn’t completely go away, it just kind of gets pushed to the back burner because it takes so long to get down. I might not be climbing everest or even anything almost as big, but mine aren’t small by any means. So it takes a while and it’s easy to forget.

It’s the valleys that are the roughest though. At least the ones around here. The always seem to be clear and clean when starting down into them, but it always seems to be so foggy and so dreary once you actually get to them. Sometimes you can totally lose your way too and completely forget what you’re doing, why you’re doing it and even who you are. You just don’t think you merely keep on moving just because…it’s important for some reason that you do. In some ways it’s a fugue-like state. It’s here where you stop hoping and stop dreaming. Not necessarily because you’ve stopped hoping and dreaming and thinking, but rather because you forget to. Because it’s easier to just move and not think. I really dislike the valleys, to be honest with you. Because every time it seems like you forget something permanently. It’s never anything big but it’s this pervading sense that somehow you lost something, you lost some piece of thought by simply forgetting about it. It’s really frustrating. It also makes you wonder just how much you can forget before you start really losing yourself in there. I’ve done a lot of walking in these valleys, have I already lost myself irrevocably? I wonder sometimes.

Lately I seem to have forgotten a lot of things. To be honest I’m not really sure where I am right now. I could be in a lot of places. I can almost see the sky, but I can’t really see much of anything else. So that would suggest a valley, wouldn’t it? But I don’t remember being down in a valley recently. But then again, I wouldn’t until after the fact, now wouldn’t I? I do remember the view from not that long ago, though. Or was it long ago? I’m really not sure. But I can still remember it; I can still remember the perfection. So where am I?

It feels like I’m about to walk out of the valley back into the clear mountaintops.

Or maybe I’m off. Maybe I’m slipping even deeper down into the one.

Does it even matter?