Off on a Dream and Other Magical Realities by Bruce Taylor

Author:Bruce Taylor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fantasy, science fiction, magical realism, kafka
Publisher: ReAnimus Press

The Trail and Mr. M.

Now Mr. M., a man of perhaps sixty years or so with a backpack filled with all sorts of camping supplies plus food to feed his country for a week (or at least that’s what it seemed to his wife, Emma who begged out on camping this time) was marching up that trail in the Northern Mountains of his beloved state. And these were very great mountains with high cliffs, snow-capped peaks gleaming in the bright morning sun and Mr. M. had parked his car at the trailhead of a trail he had never heard of before and not many knew about—no sir, not many knew about at all.

The name of the trail was Star Point and Mr. M. hoisted on his backpack and began the steep climb up the trail and soon came to a place where the trail leveled off and there, Mr. M. could look out toward that immense and lofty mountain range; below was a blue-green lake, the color caused by play of sunlight with suspended rock ground to dust by glaciers high above. And Mr. M. sat. He sat and a scene unfolded before his eyes, a vision of himself when he was six with his father, climbing up a mountain trail and he and his father stopping; he saying to his father, “Father, how much farther is it?”

And his father smiled a mysterious smile. The lean and slender father with the sparse black hair and knowing eyes, he smiled and said, “Here now, what is this? We’ve only been on the trail for an hour and you are complaining already. Here now. What is this? We’ll be there soon, I promise you.”

“How soon?”

“Very soon.”

And in a few minutes, the trail leveled and then went up to a little rise and suddenly, the immense glacier-clad volcano of Glacier Peak stood before them, lording over sky and land. And Mr. M. could clearly see the vast crevasses where the blue-green ice shone through and he sighed and said, “Oh, wow!”

“See what patience brings, my friend?”

And with those now sixty-year old eyes, he was seeing it as though he was again six, the grandeur, the newness, and he sighed, looked down to a road far below carrying cars to the pass, cars that looked like little insects, yellow, red, blue and tan and he sighed and said to himself, to the wind, to the land, to the beargrass and the paintbrush nodding, nodding in the wind, “Perhaps in life I didn’t say all that I should have said when I should have said them, but thank you, my father, for all the good and thank you for the most important things, including this, that you taught me love of the mountains, for that I am indebted.” And his eyes burned in love and gratitude. And he hoisted the backpack up again and continued on and an hour later, the trail doubled back and went a bit on the other side of the mountain

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