Excerpt: Stumbling Down the Seven Valleys

It was a dark and stormy night -- actually it was bright and sunny morning and are stories about to begin.Lets us start in a place that is a bit of a dream - a place where the cold hard world is set aside for the lessons of life to play and play out, unaffected by the imagined laws of man, and relaxed in the laws of god.

AsI tell this story I must confess to being an observer, a reader myself, who is less able and adept at words than needed to tell of the intricacies of what I have seen, the depth of despair and the heights of joy that I should be sharing.

On the crest of a rugged craig, the sort of rocky outcropping where even the nimble sheep & goats avoid, being devoid of both feed or footing, Steve woke.  Woke wondering how he came to be perched safely so high on rock, knowing that somehow he could not have been there long, as he had yet to chill from the cold stone & winds, but having no recollection of how he arrived on the rock peak, nor much but a foggy awareness of his life before.  Somehow Steve knew he was as if an empty vessel and adventures lay ahead.

—

With a rub of his eyes Steve sat up. Puzzlement across his face he pondered his position perched far above the lands where he usually lived -- or perhaps just the lands were he thought he usually would have lived. Many things seem normal, but clouds in the sky the birds high overhead the sound of the wind the smell of a cold brazen alpine air, but the colors yes the colors were the first extraordinary thing he noticed. Vibrant with an electric embodiment beyond the usual pale, the colors seemed larger than life. I rubbed his eyes didn't bring this into correction the way it usually did if he had had a bit too much to drink. Know there was something absolutely extraordinary but the colors, an extraordinary nature that was the first clue to Steve that he had entered a period of his life in a place somewhere else somewhere different and somewhat exceptional.

As usual from awaking, Steve perform the usual self survey -- the stretching, the self inventory of what eight was warm what was called and what just felt normal. Know there is something very extraordinary about this morning he thought. I've awoken without anomalies and the colors are electric and I am in a place where I do not know how I have arrived nor how I have survived. Steve pondered how he had arrived at this point -- he didn't remember anything special actually he didn't remember all that much about before this moment. Not amnesia but more of a fog -- a mental fog or perhaps an understanding that the road already passed in his life was much less important than the next steps he was about to take.

He knew his name and he knew "who" he was, but he had little idea of how we came to be this person in this place at this time. No memory of climbing or being carried to this mountain summit or how he had managed to survive in the bleak cold of these highest alpine reaches. It really was impossible to have climbed so far so high in jeans and issues and not much more than a flannel shirt, nor was it possible to have slept so soundly at temperatures that froze his breath as he exhaled. And never before have I seen every color as if it was shimmering rainbow.

Now standing he could see the valleys below, perhaps seven or eight separate valleys each with a route rising to his summit vantage point. As the pass down were indistinct and looked never traveled. None board the obvious sign of his passage upwards nor did any good sign of recent travel. It was as if he had been carried on the back of some great mountain climbing stag or other great beast, or perhaps had rode on the back of a great bird or dragon.

Stamping his feet and rubbing his hands only reality that Steve was certain of was that he could not for long remain at this cold cold altitude. He would have to take one of the paths to one of the valleys and hope for the best. Perhaps in a lower altitude he wouldn't freeze and the faint curls of smoke in the distance of each of the valleys suggested he might find shelter, sustenance, friendship and adventure.

Which path to take would be a guess, as none showed any sign of recent travel nor whether markings beyond the imprints of traffic from time immemorial. All paths recommend themselves equally and Steve would have to content himself with the randomness of choosing one.

Still rubbing his hands, stamping his feet, and watching his breath freeze in front of his face, Steve realize whatever quirk of fate had brought him here and protected him from the cold had ended with his waking moment. He must move while the clarity of consciousness spurred his actions and not dally until the cloud to his consciousness of the cold took hold.

As with all good adventures his first step was by chance and more of a bit of a stumble, perhaps even a bit of falling downhill, then the romantic idea of us driving setting off for a planned adventure. His hands and feet started him down the first path that came underfoot. Little did he know or suspect the adventures that lie ahead, some that it encouraged him to have set off immediately and others that may have put pause to his movement as he chose the darkness of freezing death over what lay ahead.

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THE FIRST PATH

The dissent with steep precarious, the rocks sharp and unforgiving, and Steve wondered again how he had ever come to be on the mountain summit. When he woke yet been unharmed unmarked, but now he was being bruised cut and think about as the more solid than scrambled downhill. There wasn't much time to wonder in a deeper sense as to lose focus would be dangerous and almost certainly a serious mishap would follow. After several hours the first small plants appeared none large enough to provide handhold or any traction. Nonetheless a welcome sight that there was other life than this bleak world.

Steve wondered if chance at his best gas and put them on a path to safety. It was just as likely that this path longer went through to any place where he might find shelter and sustenance. Had he played a cruel trick on him? He knew he had lost the vantage point of the highest summit in very quickly the visual evidence of the other paths to the valleys that by at the foot of each of those paths disappeared lost behind mountain walls.

Just like our choices in life Steve's choice on path taken somehow seem to you raise even the possibility of the other paths. But that is part of the greater story, a story Steve was to learn much more about as his life unfold.

That he was now walking at first escaped Steve's notice -- the terrain had started to level offering at first purchase to stand and then a walkable path. The path also seem more traveled, gaining the signs of both animal and human traffic.

No thoroughfare the path lacked obvious points of encampment or the spore that lives aside a well-worn well-traveled passageway. But there was signs with certainty that both beast and man had passed this way, the broken twigs and branches of the surrounding low-lying mountain trees, the stuffed surface underfoot and several peculiar markings on the top of stones as if a small fire had once burned there.

"What manner of man and beast has been here, wearing this path and for what purpose?" Steve wondered aloud.

At last there was no one there, not man -- not beast, to hear his question as it was carried away by the ever present wind. It was certain that both man and beast had been here before, but neither often nor presently. Steve was yet alone.

To be alone held no fear for Steve, as a contemplative nature often took him intellectually if not physically I'm less traveled paths. In many ways he learned to enjoy the solitude and the contrast with the joy of nature being no mean substitute for the joy of the company of fellow man. He was quite capable of enjoying watching in wonderment as deer ate their fill unaware that he was observing them as he sat in the woods as a child. Many times he had found himself as a child so deep and reflection that squirrels and birds had come close to see what manner of creature was quietly breathing but sitting so still in their world -- the Woods.

In those childhood moments it enjoyed watching the clouds moved by as they often telegraphed the changes of weather by whether or or not a cloud was high or low dark or light fluffy or thin undulating or regimented. The great birds held special fascination as they seem to defy gravity with the power of their own muscle levitating through the stroke of their wings and the breath of the wind.

Or moments spent gazing deep in a pond watching the trout crayfish and other water creatures live out their lives in an aquatic tranquility that could be observed closely but could not be lived as an air breathing creature.

No being alone was one of the natural states of Steve. I as your narrator would be remiss not to reinforce the humanness fallibility and ordinary mess that surrounded our man Steve, long suits and shortcomings both.

There had been a year is spent studying science, religion, society, nature and a lifetime observing and living that came together. But none of this preparation this past experience helpless or real explanation for where Steve found himself now.

Here he was stumbling and walking down the path chosen all but at random from an impossibly high mountain summit descending into a valley where he hoped to find warm in both a fire at the hearth and a fellowship of other men.

The electric colors, a density and intensity beyond usual experience, remained as his sole indicator that this world he was in at this moment was very extraordinary. He felt himself and he felt the stones and hard rock underfoot, but his eyes saw with the clarity and intensity that was more than natural allotment of man's sight.

Yes this was an extraordinary day for Steve. It was to be the first of many many extraordinary days.