when the fire burns low
They sat there by the fire throughout the evening and well into the night, feeding the flames whenever they had to or whenever they felt like it, making the fire ebb and flow
against the advancing night as their shadows were cast upon the boathouses and the trees, growing and diminishing
with the light that surrounded them both in its abscense and in its presence.
As they became familiar they shared their most secret thoughts and ideas, agreeing upon the truth and the answers and then lying some more and arguing over who
were the meekest and most ascetic amongst them. Of how little they needed to be content with their lot, feeding the fire
a little while longer before the arguments died out together with the flames so that they could finally retreat, each to
their own, where they would hide behind locked doors and fall soundly asleep and stay that way well into the next day
while they packed up and left, going back to their lives in a dreamless slumber, back to their captive existence. To the very lives from which they claimed to escape.
When they left I left as well. Uprooted by the wind like a docile vortex, an effervescent mind that kept going around it
self in ever smaller circles as I retreated back into the mountains where I started drifting around again, reluctantly
going from one location to the next without engaging in any of the work I was supposed to be doing, spending my days sitting on top of my truck instead, on the roof of that little
white unit who had brought me here, mindlessly staring out into the world, ignoring time as it passed by, noticing only how the shadows grew longer until they merged with the gloom of the evening, reminding me in the process that I too were false and shallow, that I was nowhere near finding what I was looking for.
Little by little the retreating shadows would turn to dusk yet I would still sit there, listening to the sound of the forest and
the hills that seemed different now that I took the time to sit down and listen to them again. There were birds here that I could not name, sounds that seemed foreign yet at home in the same time and there
were gentle breezes that would suddenly appear and cool me down for an instance, then disappear again and leave room for the sun to reheat my surroundings, shifting my
attention for a brief moment before placing me back in the present again.
When night fell I would roll out my sleeping bag on the ground, out in the open or underneath the bed of my truck if I needed shelter, to fall asleep and awaken in the same fresh air that had followed me through the day. I slept better up here where there were no walls that fenced
me in and hid the world from me, no shadows that would stalk me during the day or watch me in the night.
Instead I saw cascades of colour, nuances of light hiding in the darkness, coming out into the open like a bleak shroud
turned into a dark embrace that only existed out here, nuances that got away from me if I paid them too much
attention. For a while I avoided going back to town all together and made up excuses, lies that I would tell myself and my
colleagues as to why I wasn’t getting any work done. I lacked equipment I would tell them or I had run out of gear or something had broken down. At first I was vary as to wether they believed me or not, then
I stopped making up excuses all the same and in the end, as my ever shifting attention turned outwards again, I stopped caring what the world thought of me.
With every little distraction removed I knew that I wanted to stay in the mountains, to find refuge in the houses that had been given up as offerings for the forest to reclaim, offering myself as well, as tributary to someone or something that dwelled out there between the trees and the rivers and the hills.
I had been looking for my place in the world, changing direction ever so often and loosing my bearing whenever the demands became to great, all the while life played out
before me without realizing that I was not taking part. Years had flown by like this with every decision left to faith or chance or both if there ever was a difference, eventually ending up as a champion of the useless and a provider of the ephemeral.
Now that I was ready I handed over my pointless task to someone else, to someone who could continue the work somewhere else so that I would`nt have to. I handed over my white unit and my trusty tracker, gave them back to the herd, to someone who would move on with the solemn
convoy like missionaries seeking new land and new congregations where they could spread their gospel to the awkward and the backwards and the few that were still
trapped in the past, unaware of the wonders that yet again were readying to carry them away to the promised lands. In the absence of demands I was free to roam the world with no one hovering above me, no one that would tell me what to think or what to do.
And so I turned my back on them all as they packed up and
left, turned my back on the world that they wanted to create,
taking the helm in opposition to all they stood for, letting
them shake their heads in derision and scorn, no longer feeling any despair in my solitude as I realized that I had
been more alone in their company than I was now.
It made sense to me and I embraced it and held it up like
armour as I headed for the mountains to seek out all the
places I had passed by earlier, finding new ones as I went
along, finding shelter, foraging and gathering fire wood and
preparing to winter in the hills much like I had done the
previous winters.
Alone in a different sense of the word.
