Night in the Mountains

Night in the mountains is unlike night anywhere else.  Walking on a dusty path surrounded by dark pines swaying and rustling softly in a cool, gentle breeze, you come to a clearing.  There's a wide, clear lake, smooth as glass, reflecting the not-so-distant horizon, dominated by mighty peaks with chilly white caps soaring up to meet the deep blue sky.

Looking up, you see a clear window, framed by rough mountain summits.  The dark green and brown forest curtains are drawn back, revealing an endless expanse of darkest blue, strewn with innumerable tiny points of light.  The moon is near the edge of the ancient frame, serenely floating gracefully toward the center of the window, a bright, perfectly round white coin graying with age but somehow more beautiful still for it.

You turn your attention back to Earth, sighting a rock near the edge of the lake.  It is an ancient gray root of the mountains, a luminous gray in the moonlight under the black and green lichen that cover most of its surface.  Its flat top provides an ideal place for sitting, so you sit down on it carefully, making sure to set down on a patch of lichen-less gray.  Once you're situated, you look out at the lake.

Its perfect mirror surface once again shows the indomitable heights of the mountains, but your new perspective offers more of the sky, including Old Man Moon, showing the same view whether you look up or down.  You close your eyes, then, and listen... a gust of wind rustles through the toughened pines of the rough land, coming closer, then washing over you, a wave of sound.  Taking a deep breath, the thin air tastes a little sweeter than the dense, heavy air of home.  As you breathe in, you also catch a little of the pine scent of the forest.  The next breath you take is deeper, trying harder to catch another fleeting moment of the pleasantly intoxicating smells of this place.

When it wears off and goes away, you let out one last deep sigh of regret, having hoped, though you knew it wouldn't, that it could have lasted a little longer.  But there were places to go, people who were waiting, and you couldn't stay any longer.  You knew, though, that you wouldn't forget this place, not as long as you lived.

Perhaps even longer.