Highlands

Ever been outside with your eyes open, but in a place so dark it was like they were closed? Felt I aged 10 years in a single weekend, walking toward my fears. Seemed I aged a lifetime in a year. I went to the mountains for a few days, Highlands North Carolina, when my brother got married. He had taken a vacation with Michele there, and they agreed to return for the occasion with vows. I walked to the top of one mountain which featured a popular trail near my hotel in the small town. I came to the clearing where the path ended. I was high up like a cloud looking out over a horizon that reached forever and it seemed impossible that I couldn’t see the ocean. I felt I was seeing the whole earth. Most of the family came for the wedding. People I hadn’t seen in years but I climbed the mountain alone. My divorced parents shared poses in photographs for one last time.

On the night before going home, it was a full moon, and I knew that the view from that spot would be incredible. I left my room and took off up the path alone without a flashlight. It was dark but I knew the moon would rise soon, a day or two after true full, an hour or two of no moon darkness. The sky was rich with stars and the humidity was none. I saw a sky I may never see again. No human light pollution, just me the path, the stars, and a destination - my plan. I made my way up the winding side and gravel yanking hard in my head on the rope that should deliver the needed memory to find my way. The trees made a shroud as I came to the thick part in silence. There was only my breathing, steps, heartbeat, and the distant unidentified sounds of sylvan movements that pulsed through me and telling me to freeze, and to keep going, simultaneously.

In the thick of trees that blocked the sky I became disoriented. I had gone off the path and didn’t know how. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. I stood motionless listening. It was as if my heart had moved into my skull as I could hear it thumping loudly. With the distant noises I imagined becoming a food chain beacon for a larger creature. I saw a documentary about Akira Kurosawa on PBS years ago, or maybe it was Bravo. After the bomb, his big brother led him through the blackened earth at dawn and told him to look. “Don’t turn your head away Akira.” Nature vs. Human Nature – different only in our minds, the purest conscious dilemma.

I crouched and listened for a few endless minutes thinking of ancient times, of ancient men, and how they shared fights and flights with animals on the same level till then finally a beam of moon light creeked the wooded cracks and led me to an eastern ledge. The giant ball lifted and lit the night throwing long arms into white shapes in the black forest and my black sky sister became crystal blue. I stood there watching with my eye whites glowing and thinking how it could be 1776, 1492, 2000 B.C., or even some time after my death. I beat the old beast for a moment, and breathed the old breath for a spell. I passed through, but I will come down.

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