It's always further than it looks. It's always taller than it looks. And it's always harder than it looks. Reinhold Messner- The first man in History to climb all fourteen eight-thoudsanders without oxygen. My life at the Limit (Legends and Lore)
The Colorado ranch houses flashed past Tom’s eyes in a colored blur as he gazed out the window. The golden sun burned brightly and dipped into the white fields. Across the expanse of the snowbound wooden wind -breaks the evening sky was illuminated by a full silver grey moon, the darkness stealing, silently, stubbornly over the northwestern peaks. He closed his eyes, his head resting wearily against the window in an effort to sleep. It was no use, his mind was spinning and reeling in an endless succession of feelings. He seemed to be in the middle of everyone’s problems, and full of his own insecurities.
“Everyone wants a piece of something from me,” he lamented to himself. He tapped his boney fingers on the arm-rest. “I got nothing more to give.”
He stared through his reflection in the tinted glass. It was starring back through him. He was watching his own thoughts as they formed in his mind and boiled to the surface.
“If only I could see the whole picture, I might find the answer.”
With that thought, his Uncle’s words flooded to his thoughts. “Everyone has their own answers Tom, and you’ve got to search to find your own happiness.”
Tom knew that until he found his, he would always be a lonely drifter. A rolling tumbleweed, always bouncing, always shifting, never stable. He took off his hat and laid it on the seat next to him. Running his fingers through his matted hair, he thought of Sara. He found that he was continually thinking of Sara. Tom had been wrong to say those awful things to her, things, he could never take back, she was the warmest loving person he had ever known. It seemed as if his own insecurities had driven him to go out of his way to alienate her. He feared he had lost her for good, and was dying inside without her. She had given him more than he ever knew that he wanted, never feeling that close to a woman before. In the short time they were together, they had become intimate lovers, and close friends. How easy it would be to give his life to her, what little he had to give…. he had just lost everything without her.
The mountains were his life. How could he throw away the only true meaning he had ever found, the only serenity his heart had ever known? All his life he had risen above the everyday tedious routine. He had observed all the mediocrity all around him. Somewhere out beyond the, “work until you have enough to retire, world.” His grandparents had done that, and died before they had a chance to enjoy it. There was more than just jobs, more than just pensions, more than golf at the country club on the weekend. True freedom lies not in getting all you can, but in giving all you can away.
He drifted o . ff into that half conscious world, the world between sleep and waking. Images floated in and out of his mind. Sara, Toby, Davis, Joe, The Senator, rose up into his thoughts, they haunted him as his own past did. He felt like he had deserted his own family, the real family that had deserted him so long ago. He never knew the true story because he was afraid to ask, afraid that it had been his fault.
“Come on son, hey son, let’s go, it’s the end of the line,” the driver shook Tom. He took a breath and grabbed his hat and knapsack. He groggily made his way down the isle toward the front of the bus, thinking about his friends. Good friends, he never knew meant so much to him…… until now