Freedom!

Free was the day he spent hiking alone amongst the hills and the lakes. It made sense. Everything pointed to nature, to an escape. Escape from the office, the manic rushing, the constant last-minute clawing to meet deadlines, the neverending unfinishedness. Escape even from her, from all the loved ones and their well worn places, from their dear, constant, never-ending demands.

It was something indeed to be just himself, just a man alone in the wild world.

That day no peak was insurmountable, nowhere was off-limits, and he turned away from nothing. There was no steep slope he wouldn't top, no gnarled tree he wouldn't climb, no deep waters he wouldn't breach. So he hiked and climbed and swam, hardly tiring of the physical effort. He relished it all, whether it was the thrill of an ascent, or the sting of ice water running over his body, or simply the chilly breeze on his face, the green hills and the grey rocks his wondrous companions all around.

Eventually he settled on a western facing grassy slope, a flattish, priveledged platform around two thirds of the way up one of the so called mountains. The breeze was light and the sunset firey across the rolling panorama of occasionally jagged landscape. Having put up the tent, he got the campfire going. He'd picked dead branches and kindling up along the way, tying them in lace and dangling them across his shoulders like some kind of prehistoric woodsman. Now the smoke of his labours were rising up into the leopard skin sky, their crackling scents spreading over the earth.

As dusk fell he cooked the beans and the corned beef and the instant mash, mixing in the whisky just the way grandad had shown him so many years ago. The smell was awesome and he couldn't help himself, stealing scalding hot mouthfuls from the wooden spoon, thinking of grandad.

“See up there!” he remembered and saw grandad once again grabbing his arm, pointing skywards, ever on his mission to reveal and befriend the stars.

“Do you see it David? The shoulders! The belt!”

To facilitate his education, whenever he visited grandad always brought his plastic circular star viewer and a big mars bar. David clearly recalled him pointing to Orion on the viewer, then picking it out up there in the sky. It was easy enough for young David to make it out, yet no less of a revelation: the first time he had met the broad shouldered warrior king of the stars, with his belt of diamonds and his invincible, immortal, unforgettable name.

“Up there, right now David. There it is! Orion! Can you see his belt? It's wonderful, isn't it? The way it sparkles and glitters. Can you imagine what it must be like up there? Living on Orion's belt.”

“Do people live there?”

“I don't know. Why not?”

“Wow!”

Grandad sighed in his peculiar way, taking a swig from his hip flask, easing the beauty, easing the pain.

David continued crouching by the fire with his wooden spoonfools, relishing the dry bitterness of the wood, the easy thickness and heat of the slop, the whisky setting his mind free. He felt the days exertions relaxing him into a natural state of mellow. He was not tired, but he would be soon enough, and he would sleep well, like a child.

Having taken his full of the hash, he stood, warmed his hands and just hung in silence with the crackle of the fire. He brought the flask from his pocket, the touch of metal reassuringly cool. He took a swig and stared into the heavens, watched the night undress the day. He scanned the horizon's faint line of dark, all that now separated terrestial land from celestial infinity, and he wondered.

Time passed without comment or incident. Soon the sea of stars shone uninhibited. David made it his business to look everywhere, to look at everything. There were no comets, UFOs or anything out of the ordinary, although at one point he percieved a shooting star ripping through the constellations. The almost full moon fascinated: creamy and low hanging, a beacon of faded lines, a crumpled piece of paper brightened above a burning lamp.

He stared up at it all, straight up. He stared at everything.

Putting hands in his pockets, he sighed and just kept staring.

Later, he wiped his brow and lips. He breathed in and out, sighed deeply, and just kept staring.

All the while, his mind expanded. He felt something growing within himself. As it grew more apparant, he began to label this thing his “spirit”. It grew and grew: airy, wide, light, spreading it's net across the universe. He stared at each glittering star in turn. If was as if he was touching them. Speaking to them. With his mind. With his “spirit”.

Suddenly, he had a thought. This was a moment to be preserved, he thought. At least not to be forgotten or wasted like any other moment, a mist blown to hills. It should be caught somehow, like a firefly in a jar. Then when he needed its' light he could open it, watch it fly around in the dark, play with it. Maybe even talk to it.

However, before he could capture this thought, he had another. The stars, they're really real, he thought. Life is real. But just how real?

He pondered this, and eventually came to something. You only had to look at the stars to know, he thought.

“And what is a man, taken alone, compared to that? Me here, myself, alone in the dark. A piece of living universe? A shard of soul matter? A mirror? A window? A door? Or just a man (and what is that?) And what is love? And what love do I know? Have I ever known? Who am I? What am I?”

He asked the questions, aware that he'd never know the answers, aware that they were quite probably unknowable, ineffable. It frightened but also dazzled and warmed him in equal measure. Just to be asking such questions, in perfect seriousness, his “spirit” deep into a reality it seldome ever touched. At least he couldn't recall such a time.

Despite or probably because of this, two resolutions appeared to him like bright eyes in a fog. Not answers exactly at all. Solutions perhaps. Beacons in the dark. Maybe even whispers from God (though he didn't believe in such abstractions).

The words simply appeared.

You are what you are. Whatever will be will be.

That was all. That was freedom: those simple truths. Absolute. Gittering. Forever like the stars.

Taking them both in, fully, together, he felt an immeasurable assuredness. A calm contentment. A delighted happiness.

You are what you are. Whatever will be will be.

The stars themselves knew it. They glittered. They were free.