Mountain Runners
by Nick Emery
It was a fairly mundane beginning to the day. He trod out to the sodden earth and nonchalantly picked at some weeds growing here and there in the communal gardens. So natural to protect the flowering that the act of plucking was overtaken by the conversation of what the group would do in late morning when their labour was complete.
Several handsome and stern men convinced themselves to a foot race to the summit of the nearby mountain. No tremendous thing, just a few hundred metres tall, but with rugged terrain known for many a turned ankle.
A day of stunning beauty. Wispy cirrus clouds up above and no hint of wind on the earth. As they sped along they prodded jovial compliments bordering on the sarcastic between themselves, teasing each other about who was the most idle. But in truth every man knew that the next was in peak physical condition. Days spent between labour that tested the brow to sweat, between intervals of dancing, reading, learning, loving. Each man in their late youth already a master of many talents.
The first to make it to the top was joined mocked a celebration as he neared the end of a precipice and the view laid out in front of them that each had seen a hundred times before. A perfection of civilisation. A kaleidoscopic diversity of life, from its trees and crops through to its houses all individualised to the occupants’ peculiar interests.
It was customary, though not mandatory, upon reaching the top to shout out morsels onto the town below consisting of the strangest sensorial impressions one could muster at that particular moment. They were never particularly poetic, these shouts that ran down the decline and echoed around the place. Besides being too out of breath to conjure much, any profundity in their message would be lost as it travelled. Their exultations could be no more discerned than a cat’s mewl in a rainstorm. Therefore, the absurd and the comical ruled the day. Expressions of unpredictability and spontaneity.
On this occasion one could (not quite) hear someone yell “These rocks are soft as squid!” and “I am master of the snails!!“ and one shouting a devotion to “The thighs of my Fiorella!!” Nothing at all really.
At the top several huts were maintained by the villagers, all containing poetry written on the wall, some clumsy, some weighty, and others frivolous, but all an honest expression of humble achievement. “Climbed it but didn’t conquer it”, one read. Inside the huts people tended to then write on the cards provided there some sort of aspiration or desire. Or anything. Scanning the cards, one of the young men regarded one that read:
The most perfect agony — the pinch of death in the midst of life. A comfort that stings like the melancholy of a scent from childhood. The peace that hurts.
He thought that someone felt that upon reaching the summit of this humble hill on a particularly lovely day. It was true that in these times men were less consumed by a fear of death, given that they were so free to pursue whatever travels, education, pleasures or craft they so desired. But that freedom could sometimes be so sweet that the thought of relinquishing it induced pangs of revulsion.
Elsewhere another inscription demanded his attention. Written in sharp, angular letters was:
BEAUTY. HARMONY. SIMPLICITY. HONESTY. DIGNITY.
He nodded slowly, thinking that it very much captured the ethos of his age. He thought that perhaps ‘FREEDOM’ was missing from the list, but that otherwise it was comprehensive.
The group loitered for many more hours there, talking with friends, sharing ideas. One was telling the group about how he was starting on a project to compose music by randomising patterns based on the observed migratory habits of the teal. It seemed ridiculous but the man’s passion earned the group’s respect.
They started down, contemplating what they might do with the remainder of the afternoon. Late afternoon, twenty-two degrees celsius, the cirrus clouds and the aerofloat betraying the last glow of the sinking sun.
