Just one more mile and he would be there. The path had taken him two days to traverse, the mountain was wickedly steep and hard going, yet the real journey had began in the mists of a past he could no longer clearly recall. Images of times forgotten would some times come to mind but the harder he tried to resuscitate these memories the more they escaped his grasp.
His head ached from the endless decades of conversation, but soon that to, like his trek, would come to an end, soon the conversation would be over once and for all. The man, wrapped in what had once been modest clothes but now were mere tattered remnants, breathed deep the thin crisp mountain air. As he inhaled the air seemed to whip the back of his dry throat making its way down into his tired lungs. The weathered man paused a moment along his way, resting his hands on his knees, he knew that to rest meant to think and once again quickly took to his road albeit to late.
He was back and already whispering in his ear. The man knew the voice all to well and that the whisperings would soon become louder. Over the last thirty seven years he had become accustomed to the voice he constantly carried within him, although as the years had worn on it messages had seemed to become some what more desperate and none the less easier to understand. More recently the lines between himself and the voice had become more and more blurred. It was getting harder to distinguish where one ended and the other began.
Since the man had started his ascent of the snowy mountain passes the voices ramblings had become only notes of quiet encouragement. He felt he was now walking the foot steps of another man from another age. Of coarse he had a choice in the matter, he could turn around and descend from those lofty heights, make for home and try to rebuild what was left of his shattered life. But he knew the voice would return more desperate then ever. We are almost there now, keep going, soon you will understand, soon it will be over.
A loose rock under foot caused the man to stumble dislodging for a moment the messenger in his mind. Suddenly the mountainous landscape was silent, peaceful. For the first time the beauty of his surroundings began to seep in. There was some thing to be feared in such silence for a modern man. The world had become a busy place, silence had long since become a rare commodity. The surrounding snow cap peaks held the low sun light, but the golden rays were not enough to dispel the shadowy feeling that these peaks held long forgotten secrets. Unknowing was the root of all mans fears. Knowledge sets one free.
His vocal companion had once again found his voice and began spurring him on once more. His body ached with weariness, yet there was another form of fatigue that plagued him. Some where behind his eyes there was a tiredness of his soul he often could not explain. At times the man would walk with tears in his eyes not knowing the cause of his sorrows or if his weeping was in fact sorrow filled at all. All he did know was that his mere, uneventful, thirty seven years could not account for the exhaustion he felt within.
Suddenly each step the man took felt laden with the weight of all that had come before it. The path ahead climbed up over a small lip to the top of the mountain. Minutes now lay between himself and the place to which his persistent passenger had been driving him his whole life. The sun was moments from setting and the man felt every second of the time that followed, for he knew he would not survive another night in these high places. Darkness fell upon him as he climbed the lip and stepped into the small hollow bowl atop the peak. The cold snapped shut about him as he staggered forward to rest on the rock within the bowls centre.
The stone was as freezing as the thin Himalayan night air. This was it he could do no more, he could not go back nor could he go any further, yet he feared it was not over, that he would not be allowed to yet rest. It's coming. The voice he had followed for so long had lead him to his death and nearly driven him mad in the process. He folded his legs beneath him and sat facing the patch of sky that had swallowed the sun. The clouds on the horizon appeared heavy with new snow. The man could have screamed and had it not been for the creeping feeling of recognition slowly working its way across his mind he most assuredly would have . It's is here at last.
All at once the mists that had held back his past from him and the clouds that had taken the sun early that evening parted. Both light and remembering shone upon the mans battered face, returning to him all his years, all he had ever lived and known and lighting the beautiful heights he had, once long ago, called home. He embraced the voice and welcomed it as one welcomes a long departed friend. The cycle was broken, it was over. Rest and knowing had been awarded.
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