The mountain by Keith Hamilton (bts books to read .TXT) 📕

Sarah nestled deeper into her sleeping bag. It was only 5am but the sun was already trying to wrestle its way into her tent as it had done the last three mornings. This was the most difficult time of day. At home, her work at the high school kept her busy, and she had learned to get through the evenings with a good deal of assistance from friends and lovers. Alcohol was usually involved. But in the mornings there was nothing. Nothing but the unshakeable memory of “him.”

She lay there, turning over for the thousandth time, the events that had brought her back to this location. This was the spot where exactly one year ago, at the start of the summer holidays, she had fallen in love with him. He was “the one.” He told her so when he made love to her for the first time, up here, in this same sleeping bag, in this same tent, in this same mountain. He had persued her for four months, smiling at her across the staff room, offering to help her prepare her lessons, popping around to her home unexpectedly, with wine and pizza. She insisted that she didn’t really fancy him, that they were just friends. But his eyes were full of confidence and hope and he was irrepressible; and that made him irresistable, and she let him into her heart. He was kind and understanding and funny, and for a time she thought she was the happiest woman in the country. Then, just as she had fallen in love with him in an instant, she lost him in an instant six months later in the cruellest way. He was stabbed to death by an unsocialised, uneducated young man, who thought he had a right to kill a person for getting on the bus ahead of him. Tears welled in Sarah’s eyes when she thought of the stupidity of it. She would never love a man like this again.

Sarah turned in her sleeping bag so that she was facing the front of the tent, and she opened the flap. Her tent was pitched on a broad saddle and the location gave magnificent views up the mountain and into the valley below. The sun had won its battle against the retreating night but it would be hours before the dew had dried away and it was comfortably warm. Sarah lay on her elbows and peered out, watching the mist slowly rising from the forrests below. It was a timeless sight, seen but not appreciated by countless creatures, unchanged over millions of years. She admired the strength and quietness of the surrounding mountains, how the turbulent green forrest gave way to a menacing blue above the tree line, yet as so often in the mountains, the area close to her was calm and peaceful. She wondered how many humans had been here- undoubtedly more people saw the last rugby test at Eden Park than had ever enjoyed this view.
None of this could ease the pain of losing him. She didn’t want it to. She had come to the mountain to remember, not to forget, and she couldn’t remember the pleasure of the past without enduring the pain of the present. There was no remorse, no need for revenge. Neither of them had done anything wrong. What she felt was pure grief at the loss of an intense love and the pain of dreams broken by his absence.

Publication Date: 02-18-2010

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