I was in the outdoors somewhere far and secluded, then I found myself suddenly facing a downhill snow mountain slope. I need to stress how secluded and alone that place felt. There wasn’t a single soul in sight. Barren, impotent white expanse of land, possibly never discovered before.
Not a single foot has stepped on this untouched slice of slopey crest. The sky was a shade of blue grey. Without much thought, I started sliding (maybe skiing) downhill, and half way through, I realized that the downhill mountain ended in a flat plateau area with no outlets or connections to anywhere and that the only way out and back to civilization, back to humanity, to people and world would be to go back up from where I had started my descent. Here was pure wilderness albeit lifeless and bitterly solitary.
If left alone I would surely wither and die. Screams and wails would only fall on deaf ears. My body would probably be discovered millenia from now and be subject to zealous anthropological or geneological analysis.
I could feel my heart pounding and I gave a hard swallow. I switched to survival mode. I started climbing back up the very arduous, slippery and steep hill, desperately pulling my body up against its own uncooperative weight. Clinging by my tired arms, pulling and barely moving an inch but not giving up (for lack of a choice). Pulling again, a little bit more now, but almost with futility and impending exhaustion as if swimming against an overwhelming torrent.
Then there you were. Mixed in this whole mess but shifting courses in this story. We were now in a small plane that carried us – lifted us up, rescued me/us, and was was flying us back.
Looking through the plane window at the view below, I see that the plane is flying correctly and re-assuredly uphill over the mountain to take us back to where the world exists.
Then, as if it would have been too easy to end as such, the small plane unexpectedly shifts course and takes a turn back to where we started from. Our hearts sank back in place. Our faces grew cold and silent. That feeling of insecurity, of unsettledness, of vulerability, of being under the mercy of something else, was back to haunt me again.
But then, the plane continues on a course on to the “other side”. An area unknown to us and seemingly yet to be discovered – I tell you something vague like hold on let’s see what’s on the other side – it might be some beautiful mystery.
And then I think in my mind that this must be Austria on the other side of the mountain where we’re headed, with Germany being the side where I originated from – mountains dividing the 2 countries and all… – before the whole mountain debacle.
Soon enough, and sure enough, a town hidden from normal view, shletered by the godly white mountains, reveals itself from a slight distance below, with homes or churches crowned with Domes that thin out in wiggly cone shapes, finally pointing skywards (just like some of the famous churches in Moscow and St petersburg) as if extracted out of a fairy tale, a fantasy, appearing and disappering intermittently between the mist and scattered clouds below..
The feeling of mystery and discovery flirted with our curiosity and warmed our hearts after a trecherous experience.
It is as if, if one could withstand the initial fear and be patient, then some beauty lingering among the depths beyond the gates, the perl hidden in a shell on the ocean floor, will be revealed – though it takes one who truly appreciates beauty while free of the need to be possessive of it, to enjoy it. For it has to remain elusive and it is that elusive quality, that painful torture of wanting something and never having it, but rather wanting it and being able to possess it but deciding to leave it, that is most endearing..