There was nothing to be heard but my heartbeat, nothing to be seen but the sun sat atop the peak like the crook of a crosier thrust high in power.
All I could do was follow the sun. The sun was salvation; I could glimpse its shape when the fog fell low over me. First it disappeared, and all light was lost. Then the wind cut a brilliant circle into the sky, a porthole to the empyrean, and when the fog lifted an inch I had to avert my gaze as blistering light screamed through into the world. It scattered through cloud in the air and snow on the ground so that all of space was suddenly blinding.
Still it beckoned me higher as the slope steepened into snow and ice. I was lost in the light, ankle deep, aware of my surroundings only when swift shadows were cast across me. Until I found footprints, ancient hollows that bore me lighter when I trod in them. And I turned from slipping, scarcely holding to the face of the mountain, to treading tall and sure. The path to the sun was open and I followed it with Tremendous Joy.
After aeons, I reached the crest where the mountain broke against the sky and spray and foam settled in my lightburnt eyes. Out of the lee of the hill, the frozen wind flew unhindered and pierced me like light with nothing to stop its going. It stole the heat from my skin but warmed me with pain as often boiling water can’t be discerned from cold.
The sun shone fond on my crown from the zenith. Though I could never reach to touch it, the blaze of ice that engulfed me served as a surrogate for its warmth. It scorched and scoured and cauterised me, changed my organs for fire which burned in plumes from my eyes and mouth like searchlights. Every breath charred my nose and and throat and lava leaked from my eyes like the burns that carry the melt to the lochs now far below.
Eventually my body sank into the cold and eyes adjusted to the brightness so that features breached the blankness. Blue sky stretched above me, and below all creation, and I strung between them like the weight on catgut between fish and fisherman. The rocks piled in cairns to my right gave sign that others had summited and this gave me hope.
Here I could go no higher, and I was faced with a choice between remaining still forever in the abrasive light or descending home to comfort and darkness. Though I chose to fall back to earth by grass and moss and river, the sun and my grace remained forever overhead and never for long will be out of sight. I wait for the day when I step up to the light of the sun and choose not to return.
CONIFER JOHN 