Peaks as barren as plucked pelicans and peacocks,
but as beautiful as the feathers taken from them, were beacons in the night for those in search for a world of dreams in which to create a new reality. From them I heard laughter jiggle and echo, hefty and deep in the stomachs of the only people truly living, it seemed. I was escaping a lonely, wintery existence into a shared haven in the mountains where the only directions that existed were North and outwards.

I sat with the old and no matter how aged I'd become, I was still among the young. I heard their grey and bearded stories that had only ever been touched before by nostalgia and that glowed warm with the same tenderness I felt for my own memories. I felt within me sparks lighting fires and burning with the inner realization that I have my own storms and stories to look forward to, that have yet to surprise me and envelope me and change me. Despite any number of years, I could still spy a child full of awe and newness within the smile-lined eyes of those who had surely and would surely out-live me.
But if I took nothing from their stories, I held within my heart the rawest piece of advice: I allowed the mountains and the wilderness to guide me forward through their ever-wise and correcting cycles and opened my eyes much wider to the grander of the world around me.