The Way to the Sun

Here, on the edge of a swamp, the first hint of a visual pathway lay across the open area in front. I stopped and stood awhile, wondered how it could be, through all this blankness of grasses and black spruce, that another adventure waited. The earth was half sunk in the muck, but my eyes did not stop to complain. A long row of Cottonwood , strung in colored rows, walled in the land around. And in-between the tree tops and the milky sky, the white painted hills were mostly hidden, and floated calmly on a cushion of air. They seemed lost in soft repose, as though to keep me from wandering there.

Yet, the slow climb to the sky had started. Inside the confusion of the rust red field, through the tall tan grasses, I struggled to find a route. My eyes moved up a bend of a graceful stalk, and danced along its curving top. This lead to a tangled thread of jungle beyond; inside of which, the broken branches and dead tops slowed the movement down. But a climb up through the limbs revealed a window of space. Here, the scene opened up to the hills beyond. I was airborne at last, to breach the wall that had held me fast. The earth bound part of me was left behind.

The sky was bright, and the world was as wide as the imagination could find. The center of interest had changed; this little piece of earth, where the journey had started, was just one of many places to see. For once one way was known, the search for new lines was sure to follow, leading on to altered sights, fresh with mystery. And within the mind, a new beginning had dawned with a question: how far could the mind travel and still return? And where did me and the world begin and end? The ridge was a bridge that angled up and stopped above the valley. From here a opening lead through a pass, before dropping down into the borderlands beyond--my mind had traveled many miles from where the journey had begun, and I had reached a condition of reverie, as though warmed in the heat of a summer sun.