Tag: nature

Mountain Top

I’m climbing this mountain to reach the top. I climb up narrow paths of rocks and dirt. Up and up, one foot after the other. I climb up so I can look down. Look down and scream. Sweating, and tired, I scream at the valley. My echo screams back.


For a lingering moment, my voice ricochets across the landscape. It returns just enough times to remind myself that no one is listening. On top of this mountain, I listen as my words meld into the cutting wind and my sentences dash across pine trees and rivers. I yell to be heard, but the moment doesn’t last. Up here, I am answered by myself. Always by myself.


My voice may turn the heads of those below, but few care about the source or the reason. My voice is a momentary pop in a world of horrible indifference, skidding out on some stranger’s driveway miles away. My energy is spent. I try again, laughing, screaming, and crying. I breathe deep and bay into the world like a lost wolf.


There are only so many times my voice can echo. On hands and knees, I beg the winds that silence me. With strained vocal cords, I shout. To stop means to return to silence. To return to a world that marches to a rhythm of dead voices. On this mountain, for a lingering moment, I am heard. Not by those below, or the birds above, but by myself.


And then I begin my descent.

The Lonely House

It had been years. Hundreds of days collecting like dirt across the tile. No one lived here anymore. Where voices once laughed, mice squeaked, and instead of the sounds of a morning radio, the wind whistled through shattered windows and rotting boards.

Time marched forward, leaving the house to slump on supports that now fed termites. It squatted in creaking stillness while the forest pried its way inside. Squirrels knocked pictures off wardrobes, bats roosted in the attic, and a fox slept beneath a porch that drooped like a fat lip.

While the last memories of movie night and macaroni dinner faded, two weasels screamed their right to own the master bedroom. Below, a black bear snored from the basement and a racoon chased a mouse through the living room. To them, these yellowed walls were no different than a hollowed tree, or a deep cave. The house sheltered them all.

Every year the roof drooped lower. It deepened like the wrinkles of an old hermit frowning at a pack of coyotes that scampered across the yard. No cars interrupted their chorus of howls and yips. The last tires had squealed down the dirt road decades ago.

More years will pass. Deer will strip the of sleeves moss from the old tool shed, and bees will nest in the crook of the gutter. One day the roof will collapse, the walls will tumble, and the final photos will fall from their rusted hooks. On that day, the bear will leave, and the fox will find a new home. They’ve done it before, moving from one shelter to the next. They’d leave the house behind, like the past it kept locked behind its walls. Until then, the house will shelter its inhabitants, holding them until they are ready to leave.