The Wanderer

The stars glittered above my head like shattered glass sprinkled over the heavens, providing the only light my soul could bear for miles and miles. I had strayed far away from camp, unable to take in the lively music and dancing fire, the smiling faces of comrades and kin. The lonely night made a much more understanding companion.

I let the wind whip at my bare shoulders and neck, content to shiver in its embrace. The grass tickled at my feet, the occasional rock burying its head into my soles, the dirt caking itself onto my skin. I sighed, happy to know I could still feel, and that I made some sort of impact on the world.

There was no moon to cast so many shadows; instead the world was one giant shadow, and I was in its depths, skulking. A hoot owl made known its presence off in the branches to my right. I silently nodded to it, like an affirmation that I was not in charge of this nighttime domain. I was merely a guest in his kingdom, a traveler passing by to nowhere in particular. To my left a snake slithered hurriedly through the tall grass, he traveling just as I. In my mind I pictured a toe sack hitched over his shoulder, bunched up in a wad, as he marched low to the ground, a hobo with no place to go, and I allowed a faint smile to ghost its way across my lips.

The night air smelled of moss and dirt, and of nature, untouched by civilization. Cicadas roared their symphony, their timbre changing slightly as the owl surely picked down performers one by one.

And I walked, my feet carrying me where I pleased, down the hill, through the briars, up the rocks and boulders, through the stream which bogged me down to my knees. For the first time, I was not running from anything, nor toward anything. I walked to walk, alone to be alone, pensive, melancholy, severe, wandering, but not lost.

A sigh found its way from my lungs and rode the cool midnight air in a cloud of fog, drifting over the tops of the trees and losing itself among the stars. It was here that I became one with his majesty, the mountain woods, the sand, the pebbles, the thorns, the land without a path. I melded into the night, a wanderer without a cause.