“For all of us, mountains turn into images after a short time and the images turn true. Gold-tossed waves change into the purple backs of monsters, and so forth. Always something out of the moving deep, and nearly always oceanic. Never a lake, never the sky. But no matter what images I began with, when I watched long enough the mountains turned into dreams, and still do, and it works the other way around—often, waking from dreams, I know I have been in the mountains, and I know they have been moving—sometimes advancing threateningly, sometimes creeping hesitantly, sometimes receding endlessly. Both mountains and dreams…”—“USFS 1919: The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the Sky,” Norman Maclean
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They sat together, near in place but with distance of greater space than table and span between. Before her on the table rested pint of poured draught. Taste and experience known, and while nice, it was not enough to stir sensing that live in discovery of a new.
She took another drink absorbing its nature, its coldness of pour from tap, balanced hop taste and soft after-sweetness left to linger on tongue for time between draws and tasting.
The sky was black and beneath shone street a corridor of limited vision: store signs of restaurants and other bars that burned with harsh light, calling for the eye by force rather than with subtlety and softness, a simple openness to being noticed; and there was a difference—like the gaudiness of modern art and the naturalness in classics, the details you find discerning something new in what you believed already seen, a beauty in the subtle, what finds and strikes in you more so than you ever find in seeking.
She looked to the wall, jerseys and pictures of sports and teams for which she cared little; accents of intentional brightness detracting from banality of beige.
As she drank in silence, eyes wandering across the room and to the limits of outside view, he sensed indifference.
“You seem restless,” he spoke.
His words broke her from her searching, action of the eyes that made little impression on the mind, and to his words, she returned, gazing with greater intent on he who called for her attention.
“I was just thinking,” she answered; words, eyes, and posture speaking little more.
“About?” he questioned.
“I don’t know…” and it was the truth. How often does the mind work, stirring in sensing and contemplation never attaining formative shape; an energy unresolved beckoning musings further on?
She took another drink sensing smooth of glass to lips, the cold and taste of drink over palate, its fall in swallow, then cold that settled after near to heart.
He was right. She was restless. In the black and artificial of the night, she dreamed of mountains she’d never seen, of blue sky and clouds that moved fast and shaped and formed in living moment, whirling around centered energy in sky, unseen, but which all revolved around.
She dreamed dark loden shadows of pines and firs and gold of aspens turning and valley floor of frost-paled grasses. She dreamed a wilderness and vast and limitless skies and spread: an immensity veiled behind protecting eyes that saw only harsh lights, false colors, and wall beneath blackness through window to beyond.
The beer was nice, but she wanted more for an experience. Her life was good, but she wanted more for an experience. She loved all she had, but she wanted more: to live, discern, find revealed and known—if only for a moment. The taste of draught was not enough, but the taste of more, maybe it would be.
But didn’t that drive all restless in the end, if one never settles and is happy with a good; desiring and forever chasing the elation and transcendence of new horizons and experience?
She didn’t know. Did anyone? You either keep chasing, embracing highs and skies as they appear, or resign one’s self to never knowing, giving up, and settling on a fixed-place scene.
She stared on the street wall, red bricks, grey mortar, harsh-light signs and blackness without stars.
It was not enough.
She drank again, and the last of her beer was gone.
It was not enough. She ordered another drink, stronger this time: mixed drink with sweetness to mask bitterness of vodka; ordered in hope to feel and wake a warmth within, and kill away the settling coldness near to, heart.
Maybe it would be enough. Maybe she’d need more, or different. They were not the same.
Vodka took effect, and the warmth began. The room was not so bad; colors on walls less gaudy; beige beneath less bland. There remained no stars through window to beyond, but the street signs of the corridor, weren’t they too a nice light?
The feeling lied for a night, and she held to its warmth and false high; but in the morning, she woke again to dream of mountains and sky, a restlessness to seek and find and—for a moment—live as her own.
She rose and began her morning, drinking coffee as daylight shone clear and true through open window face. In the light of the sun and warmth of drink, straight—without hiding sweetness—she dreamed the mountains still.
She would find them.
There are some forever beckoned to new horizons, and it is only amongst such skies they feel at home; wanderers in world seeking home and transcendent high through travel and ever-changing place.
She would find them, making home and peace amongst sun and stars and endless skies: nature of spirit that spoke and cried and screamed within when life and soul settled—stilled; when restlessness returned, and Infinite called for her again.
In golden light of sun, she dreamed the mountains’ dawn.
The coffee warmed her. She listened to spirit in her stillness: the call, song-cry of waiting sky and scene.
She smiled in light and the dream, spirit warming further.
Infinite beckoned.
She would find it.
Decided and resolved, she lit as sky and dream.