Things I’ve Learned While Roaming the Earth

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Here are some more thoughts on life in an excerpt from the manuscript Mountainside.  This excerpt comes at a time when an entire cloud had enveloped the mountainside while we were inside the mountain exploring a steep cave.  We had entered the cave through a series of boulders, and had traveled down a jagged slope, until finally finding an exit on the other side.  Upon seeing it, it was almost as though we had come out to find a completely different world, this one shrouded in mist.   I’ve quoted from parts of this before, if it seems somewhat familiar.  I hope you enjoy:

“Moving slowly, I began a descent, one which grew more difficult with every passing step.  I nearly slipped beyond recovery at times, clinging with all my might to the smooth stone I crawled down.  The floor of the exit was only a few feet below.  I could hear the breeze from beyond and could see thin strips of mist entering and disappearing below.  With one final leap, I left the wall and landed on the dusty floor of the third compartment, scattering the mist that silently flowed with the breeze across the ground.

I marveled as I looked down about my feet, enchanted by the thin dusting of mist that suddenly shot up from the ground into the air from the tromping of my feet. But then, only a second later, the mist once more settled around me — I, now a part of the little-changing world, just another slight impediment to which the fog twisted skillfully by being pushed slowly forward by the breeze until finally coming to rest at a spot it could not navigate, heaping up into a pile by the cave’s far wall behind me, climbing heavenward a few feet in futility and then sinking back down again, swirling in quiet frustration with nowhere left to travel.

I was mesmerized by the sight before me, and also by the sheer stillness of this world.  Outside the cave, but also within, the mist was ever creeping and moving, blanketing the landscape in a mysterious softness, as though the fog possessed an ethereal quality that both pacified the mind and invigorated the imagination.  I now stood staring out into the openness of what was to be our exit.  We had seen the mist earlier, creeping along the valley, mingling with a world yet untouched by man.  Now it had done its work fully, passing through the valley and even to the places beyond, climbing the walls of the mountain ahead of us.  The whole mountain was being consumed by a quiet steady gray.  Soon we would plunge ourselves into the midst of it.

My friend joined me at length, once more the mist erupting in complaint, and then continuing on its course, trapped by the constant breeze that drove it past our feet.  We wandered around the cave awhile and at last came to rest at the back wall where the mist was heaping up and swirling about with nowhere left to travel.  We stooped down and sat with our backs against the wall, watching the silent mist creep slowly up our bodies, crashing weightlessly into our chests and swirling about in complaint.  It was beautiful. There was something perfect here, something indefinable and rare that led our minds to wander about a sphere of dreams larger than those possible in the civilized world.

It reminded me yet again of the untold promise found in the solitude of lonely morning places.  Dreams are larger in places such as these — the things the mind can invent and imagine, of a richer substance and more tangibly real.  Here, in places where mystery and solitude have combined to form landscapes rare and beautiful, the mind is brought to its own inner landscape, a landscape brimming with imaginings more vibrant and alive that those of the average day to day, dreams holding possibilities unseen in the world below.

The aspirations of what we, as men, might accomplish with our lives are often small in the stifled air that comes to rest on the places where man congregates.  With so much to settle for in the world below, hope is often cheap and commonly wasted on simple things.  Grand things seem less attainable, even less desirable.  For while the mist, in places such as these, proclaims that the world is full of mystery and potential, the strangled air of the cities proclaims that nothing beyond the ordinary will ever be accomplished. We believe we are small because we live and move in small places, choking on the stifled air that comes to rest in regions where life is settled for rather than sought.  One thing I can say with confidence: My aspiration to live a life more rare and grand than what is commonly seen always grows after travels such as these.  Why did the Lord make us such a grand creation if not to inspire us to equally grand and heroic things?  We are evidence of His grand and wondrous nature.  As sharers of His image, we should seek the grand as well, not with vain and selfish hearts, but simply to fulfill our shared right as image-bearers of a Grand Creator.

Such were the thoughts that flooded my mind as we stood surrounded by the mighty stone walls of the cave.  We both hovered near the back wall where we had emerged, staring out of what was to be our exit from this cave.  Swiftly we departed in silence and headed on, leaving only a convulsive wisp of mist behind as we dove into gray.”

If you liked this post, you’ll love the rest of Ben’s book Mountainside.


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