By: Double G
It was a moment of fulfilment. He was now on the hill pulling himself up but his alternating view of the earth below and, with a head jerk up, the spectacle straight in front and beyond, did not work against each other anymore. Both were the same, the senses were undivided. This is my world now, he reflected, and it was the same one he had felt when he had first seen it from a distance in the early morning mist. Even the solitary crow that had circled above it then had not left, but was now perching on a crag, familiar and rooted. To approach something and for it to be the same when one is there is a victory! he celebrated silently.
Its hues had remained, fainter now so close, more chequered with earth and stone but retaining their warmth. At length the prospect was enticing, yearning but aloof . It was a perfection, a hill among hills, without man and with its personal history, a tale of changing lights and seasons, of weathers, of decay and birth, fleeting and eternal, before and after him. It had suddenly spoken to him, a soon to be lover with lips open, a beguiling path he would joyfully run to, and then to reach there and for it still be real but now physical, to touch and be touched, to know it for the first time and to never leave.
He moved upwards to its summit, lengthening his stride, quickening his pace. The surrounding scape was bringing fresher definition, stretching out in scope and detail. Insects crawled and leaped over pools of marshwater, a merry dance for the final resting place on top of his world. A sweat came over him, his head was flushing. His eyes were starting to blur. A sheep appeared and scrambled away as he sped up. All was silent but his own heart pounding. In an overcast sky, the light dimmed as he reached its peak. The rocks were becoming greyer, solitary birdsong fleeted over the valley falling short before him. Now a deathly quiet, just an impression of the damp ground he was making. Here now with a solitary thought – a thinning of his world now conquered, it had spurned him like a lover turning her back afterwards. It had already forgotten and he was an unwanted guest, a visitor that should have left that would not be remembered, and wanting him to forget too.