February 19, 2008, Moonlight over the CD, CO

Day 37
2-19-07
Moonlight over the Continental Divide, Colorado


9:15 PM, Tuesday

Am I going crazy?

Clicking into the skis in the empty parking lot I felt a strange sense of isolation.  This was wrong, wrong, wrong!  I take off my dark headlamp and put it in my jacket pocket.  No use for it now.

Look up at the bright moon and back at the shadows cast across the white snow - No! This was right, right, right!  (Then where are all the people?)

       Don't ask the question
       You won't like the answer
       Get up off your chair
       There's nothing for you here

What the hell was I doing here?  Was I really so strange?  Where was everybody?  There was not a cloud in the sky and little wind - winter was waning and a moonlight ski was finally possible.  No snowstorm to hide the light, no 80 mph wind to whip the ground.  No excuses.  So where the hell was everybody?  A city of a million souls down below me and I'm the only one who wonders what the white above their heads would be like, outside, tonight? 

Perhaps a new Dance War was on television.  Ha! 

Onward I climb, never stopping.  I've erred (not the first time) and this time it may cost me.  A polypro t-shirt and a jacket out on a February evening at 11,000 feet?  What was I thinking.  I wasn't thinking...   

Terrible thoughts.  Dark thoughts.  Darkness all around.  I wonder about the (hopefully) sleeping and sheltered beasts that roam the hills around me.  I wonder why I'm alone.  Isn't this what you wanted? 

       Count yourself lucky
       that you don't write the software 
       Where the guests like souvenirs
       They play with you 'til you're all worn out
       Back where the guests like photographs
       They hope you had a good night

That's it.  They hope indeed, and have no wish to know what I am feeling.  Why?  Was life that shallow, so small, so undiscoverable?  Were we all doomed to repetition, running the same grooves of those before us, never questioning the course we were on.  Or was it me who had lost the track?  After all, I was only skiing, there were better things to do with my time. Right? Right?

I climb and climb and climb.  Alone in my head.  Sometimes not such a fun place.  But mine, all mine.

I'm sweating now, and the t-shirt is soaked.  The wind begins to blow as I reach tree line and I am at once frozen.  This makes me ski faster uphill.  Perhaps at the ridge the winds will die.  (oh yeah, that's a good one)  Or perhaps I will.

       Conscience plays upon me now
       Safe until my luck runs out
       Coo coo calls, pendulum swings
       Thought you knew everything
       Lift my hands and make the cross

       Sinner...

Alone.  In the dark.  High on a mountain top with no light but the stars and the moon.  Isn't this dangerous?  You bet your sweet jesus it is.

The snow crunched and squeaked like only windboard or Styrofoam can, and I chugged out from the forest and enter the upper bowl.  The soft new snow of last week was a dream, the East side conditions returning, as always.

Why was it always that I feel the outsider, unlike everyone else.  Especially here.  No, perhaps because of here.  I feel an outsider when I'm there, because of here.  Here, I feel alive.  Don't they feel it too?  Vicariously living through my photographs, is that really all it's about?  A cursory smile, there is no need to bring it up again.  It makes them uncomfortable to feign interest and denigrates my own passions. 

Or does it?   

       These things I should keep to myself
       But I feel somehow strangely compelled
       Under moonlight I stood wild and naked
       I felt no shame
       just my spirit awakened

       sinner
       I have never learned
       beginner, I cannot return
       Forever I must walk this earth
       like some forgotten soldier


I...then...turn...around....

And far, far, far, far below, through the dark and white speckled hills,
twinkling in the waves of light and heat, the city.  The plains.  There they all are, warm and oblivious.  YES!  There they all are, and I am HERE.

I feel completely isolated from the mayhem of the karmic circles rubbing against each other down there.  Here I am safe.  Only from myself do I fear.  Which is not exactly escape.

I pull the skins from my skis, too cold to drink or eat.  I fasten my helmet on and step into my bindings.

And SMILE VERY BROADLY.

This is why I am here.

***

My dark car awaits me, patiently.  Alone in the parking lot of course, it seems to welcome my presence.  How can an object feel so comforting, so alive?  (Because that's the closest thing to comfort you can get)

That's alright. 

Perhaps ignorance truly is bliss.  But knowledge brings us closer to enlightenment.  I yearn to touch the light everyday.