Bridging the Chasm
He thinks that the forest looks too tame when it's blanketed with snow. Shifting his pack on his shoulder, he vaguely notes that it's much too light for even just one night in the woods. No matter. He's a seasoned mountaineer. He blinks and notices the tiny snowflakes that have dusted his eyelashes. One must have a mind of winter. Where had he heard that before? It had been like a whip-crack that tore through his body and rifted the brain and the heart. Movement without intention. Emotion without potential. When had this happened? When had it happened? It had not been some sleek, black creature, all limbs and machine, and trailing behind until the kill. Nor had it been a bold, vigilant burn out. Not quite a bang or a whimper. The town was expecting him sometime soon, certainly; his weekly drive to civilization consisted of a pick-up truck and various meat from his hunting in the forest. He finds his guilt floating about somewhere in the miasma between the Universe and God--incomprehensible and too intangible to feel within his body. Night will fall soon. He knows this not because of his watch or the waning daylight or the shadows that reach towards his cottage behind him. It's an old feeling that he knows in his bones. It's not something he has to quantify, though he can if he must--the hooting of the owls, the coldness that settles like a comforter around him, the setting sun in front of him. These are not signs, however, that God exists. You can believe and believe until one day you don't because the pines don't stand like they used to and the floorboards of your house feel funny beneath your feet. That's what God is. Every night he lay in his bed and dreamt, and when he woke up, he was a lie. Though when he spoke with the townspeople, they were kind and grateful towards the person who was actually an alphabet soup of a "thank you" and a smile and an emotion. What he had really thought at the time was that he could still feel the snowflakes melt on his palms which were calloused from time and work. It had made him happy to know that his body remembered how to be happy too. Feeling as though the sun had made a mistake in letting itself slip below the horizon, his hands adjust his too-light sack of gear. His hesitation, however, is ingrained in the body that knows how to survive with such light gear but would rather just stay by the fireside. His mind knows what to do. He trudges off into the darkening woods towards the spot where the sun was swallowed up by a sea of earth. What happens next is a communion of the mind and body. One of them saves the other.
