Mountain

Articles

Mountain

By Brian Michael Barbeito
Oct. 31, 2006

Now he was eighty, but still spry, and had lived on the mountain for a decade. He had worked during the war selling stationary, and raised a family with seven children. His first wife had died in a car accident, and he had remarried, but was no longer with the woman, as she had died also. It was a bit of a miracle that he was doing so well, and able to live on the mountain, in the cabin, year around. He had overcome many problems. For years he suffered from depression, alcoholism, and asthma too. Still, he fought through it, and was, at heart, a true survivor. It had been difficult those first few years at the mountain. He had to worry about food and cooking, and water and fire. The cabin was originally built as a hunting outpost, had not been used as such for years when he was able to purchase it for himself at a good price. Even though it was inexpensive by worldly standards, it was most of the life savings that he’d had left at the time. There were a hundred wrinkles to work out, and it was lonelier than he’d thought it’d be, those first two years, but he persevered. Nowadays, things were so peaceful, that they were approaching spiritual. In his life, he’d not given much thought to religion, but these days he had time to think plenty about such things. He didn’t know what the truth was about the source of this life, and didn’t know what might happen, if anything, after he had died. On the mountain, in the winter months, there were often storms. Snow would pile up to the windows, and sometimes, during a really bad one, cover the windows. He took all the measures that were responsible in such cases, but there wasn’t much he could do but sit and watch really, and wait it all out. At nighttime, when the wind screamed, and the snow seemed to fall in all directions at once, he sat in his chair and watched. The world out there, happening on the mountain, was so immense and powerful, that he was in some psychological or spiritual way thrown back to himself. Because of the grandness of events, these were hours wherein he was humbled. It was more than the humility he felt while walking trails in spring, or on seeing a doe, or even while fishing the freshwater rivers in the area. At those times, he had thought about life, and felt the sun on his face. In these hours, the sun was a far away idea, and all he could see out the window was snow thrashing about in the wind, and dark. But after the initial fear, and trying to busy himself with small chores, there was nothing he could do but watch. He felt a strange acceptance creep into his heart. He felt the world of the mountain and the world inside himself to be an abyss of darkness, but deep, deep down in this darkness, as the mountain became full of snow, he felt innocence and quiet awe. He had feelings like this as a child, but they’d turned into vague memories. Now he felt this way again, as the dark grew, and the snow piled up outside, and the wind yelled, and the storm tried to cover his entire world, these feelings grew. He was in his long underwear, and moved to lie down on his bed. When there, he stared up at the ceiling. He didn’t understand how, but he knew that something profound was happening to him. He wasn’t sure if he was crying, or laughing, or singing on the inside, but these things all seemed to him to be happening at once. His body felt secondary, but still there. He began to feel like spirit and body at once. At the other side of the room a fire was crackling. All traces of fear left him, and he became married to existence, truly a part of the room, the storm, the windows, the wind outside, the ground on the floor, and the ground of the earth, and the entire earth itself, all its cities, and people, and part of all lakes, rivers, other mountains, streams, bridges, and everything. He was all of it, and it was he.

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Email Brian Michael Barbeito: Brian1750@Hotmail.com

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