Meditations: Catharsis

The soft, windblown soil cannot hold my heavy boots. They scrap it away as I walk forward through the dead shrubs whose long, broad leaves were once soft, but have since withered in the late season drought. Crack. Crack. Crack. Under my soles. The wind blows hard upslope. So hard that I have to spread my legs wide to stay standing. I unstrap my pack and let it thump to the ground. My legs run quickly forward--unbound. Crack. Crack. Crack. I walk farther toward the edge of the my world. As I turn, the crooked trees that make up my oasis cling together to stay grounded in this loose earth, but I am free. I turn away. Crack, crack, crack. I climb onto the rough rocks to gaze out at the vast mountaintops expanding in all directions in front of me. I look to gauge where I began and turn to mark where I’m going. My chest fills with pride. I am here. I did this. 

I stand with all the world expanding before me--a monolith atop this slope. I know I am merely a pebble, but pebbles cannot be so proud, so upright in revery. A column of smoke reaches high in the distance, lighting the dusk on fire. I exist only in this moment. Everything but now falls away like the dust beneath my feet. Behind the thousands of steps I took to get here, the panting and slogging, and the dreams of collapse.