I was coming down the mountain

I was coming down the mountain. Through clouds of fog, through sprawling meadows in the night, around hillsides of clover, through canyons of rock and stone, over gravel and mud, splashing through creeks....water gushing and spraying onto the hood of the truck, light reflecting the droplets cascading off of the paint. The motor hot and purring.

I was coming down the mountain, vapor like phantasms floating, ears of deer perked in mystery, past incarnations of my soul winking from the field, winking from the meadow, brush and weeds laid down beside me, tree trunks pale, illuminated from the headlamps of the truck, spindly sticks drawing out of the forest floor, shiny eyes of critters in the darkness.

I was coming down the mountain, past images of my grandfather hewn into granite, my father beginning to appear in the rock next to him, silent, holy, restful, at peace. The mud moves softly under tire and engine, ravines rise and fall and the truck crawls down, down, down. Comes to rest at the bottom where a cabin sits. I kill the engine, extinguish the headlamps, the stereo dies.

I was coming down the mountain and now I have arrived. I open the door of the truck, the capsule of steel that carried me. The seething void comes rushing in. The inky darkness, blacker than black. My eyes aren't quick to adjust. I feel my way along the soft earth. As my pupils contract and expand the scene develops. 500 trillion fireflies flash like Appalachian paparazzi. Bullfrogs moan my arrival, crickets cree and cicadas sing. The pine showers its branches over me. I can see the cliffs and mountain ranges form a circle around me. A chorus of river waters, swollen from days of rain, sings along in harmony to the critters in the night.

I was coming down the mountain and now I am here. Pulsing fireflies and shattering nothingness. The yawning divide, the terrifying purity of the mountain earth. You can look outside of yourself but all you'll see is yourself reflected back. There's no artifice here, no steel and glass mirror to reflect the you you think you are. This prism screams the truth. This prism shouts reality. Your breath slows and your heart swells. The day dies off, the holy night has fallen.