Smokey Mountain Breakdown

Sometimes the dark side of the mountain is not what you would expect.

I woke up yesterday to the whiteness. The clouds fall over the mountain and the whiteness is glaring. It is the mist that envelopes us all at times and I hadn’t seen it in quite some time.

There is no visibility and even the twiggy bits of forest that frame my big window to the outside are shrouded. I hear the goats bleating but I can’t see them. Such is the whiteness of the shroud of the mountain.

Yes, this is a shroud. It is sort of like when you were four and buried your face with the snowy white sheet that hung on the clothesline. The light would still come through and your eyes would blink and tear, but you couldn’t see.

You could smell the smell of the sun-drenched linen and hear the voices of your family, but there was something deliciously alone about being wrapped up in that whiteness. And you twirled your dirty little body into that whiteness.

It’s the same stillness as snow. The same quiet. The same sense of soulless aloneness.

I often feel comfort in that sense of aloneness. I revel in it and say to myself, “Yes! I am a rock! I am an island!”

Eat my shorts! Simon and Garfunkel…it can be done!

My brother once said to me, with the insight that only someone who shares your DNA can, “Maybe you need to find yourself a little Kaczynski-cabin in the woods.”

I know in my bones how right he is. And I wander seeking the aloneness. That freedom from other’s pain that overwhelms and becomes my own.

I want to be four again. I want to wrap myself in the aloneness of a white linen sheet and feel at peace in the whiteness.