Here, atop a rocky crag, walking stick in hand, I survey the swirling mountains of fog, a vast gray-white panoply of vanishing peaks, blanketed in clouds doomed to dissipate in the returning sun.
But no heat ever comes, leaving me wrapped in my moody solitude, eyeing the outcroppings of ragged stone, reveling at summiting the top of Europe, scaling the sluggish slopes of transcendence.
This is what Nietzsche hailed as self-overcoming, rising to the grand height of perfect power and control: my will alone uber alles. Aswirl, I order the horizon to fulfill my desire, to shift into view all that is missing from my finite vista -- the glory of nature -- only to have it swallowed up instantly in the menacing shadows and mists of immovable stone.