Salvation is a hell of a thing. in The eye of every storm

I trace the map constantly, fingers intuitively following the dashed path through the green, crossing the red contour intervals, oil and skin soaking and discoloring the surface from years of the same song on repeat. Four years ago today I left my blood on Blood Mountain, but I never understood the sacrifice until today. The white blazes were a lighthouse through the storms and the rain through Stover Creek, Cold Spring and Siler Bald where I held my head high and my feet etched their imprint upon the earth. Deep within my backpack, I carried a couple clothes, some food, and the ghosts I couldn’t quite let go. Miles fell, suns set and moons silently shone a light on the irony of a little wanderer in a great forest with a path set in stone.

I was too free to concentrate, too burdened to enlighten. I was too light to blow down the hillside, too heavy to carry myself the whole way.

Through a veil of great surprise, I came upon the firewater’s daughter. The faintest glint of dying sun spread across her hair, and in green grass we sank deeper into the idyllic lies we told each other about who we thought we were going to become and who we thought we were. She was never on my map, just in my hearts’ greedy demands and my unbridled passions’ most sinister plans.

A long and slow fate has brought me here. There are no more maps, and no more adventures, just the mundane of growing into what I never wanted to become. Now the mystery, the great and secret show, has been exposed. I spent so much wasted times memorizing the contour lines of her face. Her peaks were too frozen and her valleys were unwelcoming in the shadow.

I walked out of there and found a road leading out of the jungle. I dropped my burdens, my ghosts, and traded in my adventure for some dollars and a city hiding a promise. At some point I grew older, grew rounder, and wiser about my insanity. I drove the nails into the memories deeply. I pierced her side with bitter diatribes through the years, but eventually I’ve come to learn that there is no shade beneath the shadow of that cross.

It’s likely I was meant to be here all along, in this place. I just took a different road through war and despair, but finally made it after destroying myself and several others along the way. While I regret carving our names into a thousand year old tree, its nice knowing something about that moment in time, those feelings misled but pure, will remain chiseled and etched in time.

If I didn’t take the particular journey I did, we never would’ve liked each other to begin with.

Last updated April 12, 2015