Standing breathless on the mountaintop, above the trees, weak from the altitude, signing our names in the small canvas-covered book, reading over all the past names and all the exclamation points.
Wind whistling – wind, shhheeeeewwwwww whistling…
Sweat leaving streaks on our dirty cheeks.
We shouted! We were above the world, and had pulled ourselves up there with all our burning shins and ankles in wool and our solid feet now sore. We shouted as we followed the cairns and picked our way through the last few boulders, we shouted and shouted, swore and scanned the sky,
And the deep vast stretch of world around us,
And after awhile we grew quiet. We had wasted our lungs and broken our throats, we had said all we could, and all that was left was silence, silence -
Silence and the wind that picked at our hair.
At some point we all knew it was time to go back down, and we did so in one movement, in one step then another then another, carefully but with joy, joy and the strength of false permanence.
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