The Lonely Sun

The people looked so tiny, like specks on the road far below--watching sheep wandering along a steep and icy precipice against the towering cliffs. I suppose the fear that brings wonder is like a jolt of life, when the senses work at a fever pitch. Yet the sheep seemed calm and preoccupied by the search for winter food.

The real dangers for me were the black ice strips along the upper trail, where foot steps had pounded the snow into a slippery trap. Warming and freezing conspired in making the snow granular and hard. By this I knew, that the way up and around the rock barriers would be on these cakes of hardened snow. The gritty white surface held, while my steps crunched out noise. Around a rock corner a sheep peered down at me. But the animals presence went unheeded, and I continued up through the rocky outcrops that encircled the woods below.

But I was drawn to something else. Off the main trail, my movements had created a new uncharted one. Sometimes trails are more than permanent lines on maps; they may come and go during the winter season--on freeze ups on the rivers, on the hard packed snow in the woods. Sometimes they may be a soft line of cloud, carrying the curious mind's eye into a sunset sea. So, I remain a searcher of fugitive moments, of conditions hidden in the shadows of the cliffs or made visible in the waning light -- where an inner way has it's own rhythms, connecting to a thousand other faces in nature; from wind and storm to the tidal actions along the bay and beyond.

Yet it was the disk of the sun, floating listlessly in a sea of fog, that mirrored my thoughts, bringing me closer to the edge of silence. That bright burning sun, now reduced to a small circle, sputtered in the swirling mist of a winter's afternoon. And like a weakened moon, it cast only an arctic shadow over the bay below. Yet, somehow, through a hidden gate of cloud, its presence was felt in copper glare upon the tide. My mood swirled and danced like the sun in the cloud, while the gallery of ice and frost and rock remained unmoved by my passing here.