19.07.XXXX
My Love
Today we went fishing.
What would have been a quiet, slightly dull day at home is an
adventure all on its own out here.
It took us nearly two
hours (as best we can tell) to reach the lake. We hiked down the
mountains, first on craggy plains strewn with gigantic, millennia-old
boulders, and then through the forest.
Small brooks and rivers
we had to cross, unaided by paths or bridges, for where we thread,
none had set foot before us. Marshes sucked in our feet as we tramped
through them. We were sweating profusely, the chill of the higher
altitudes all but forgotten, the cold and biting wind only a distant
memory. Mosquitos stung every part of our exposed skin, feasting on
our blood, prey so rarely seen in these parts.
Despite the never-ending
nights that engulf these lands in winter, everything was green now,
as if the whole of nature tried to pack a year of life into only a
few months.
The trees and stones
where thick with moss, the underbrush was lush and lively. From one
crag to the next, the vegetation would change drastically. We felt as
if in a fairy tail.
Trolls could be hiding
in that cave, leprechauns watching us form behind that rock. Fairies
flitting through the ferns and were-lights hiding in the damp
marches. For our tired minds, all these things, and many others,
would not have seemed out of place.
As we arrived on the
shore, the chilling wind took it's due again, but it kept the
stinging insects at bay. Using ant eggs we found as bait, we set out
to catch our lunch (or was it dinner ? it is hard to tell when the
light of day never changes and the sun hides behind the clouds). No
sooner did we sit down, our lines cast, to light a fire, did our
floaters start to bob. We caught one fish, then two, then three, and
as the fine smell of cooked meat reached our cold noses, neither the
wind nor the clouds nor the rain could tear the smiles from our
faces. Stuffed, we set out to reach the mountains once again, where
the chill would shelter us from our bloodsucking friends.
Now once more I sit in
our little shelter, writing to you before dinner.
I wonder, have you
already eaten ? Or are you still in front of the stove, a watchful
eye on the softly simmering lamb chops ? Will you read a book in that
cozy armchair that your father left you ? Or will you meet your
friends for an evening of girly chatter, perhaps discussing my fate,
in what I know them to believe is an ill-conceived venture ?
I think of all this, and
I miss you, my Love. But I also know that all this is not for naught.
And should I come home now, without having done what I set out to do
? I doubt that would be the kind of man worthy of you. Nor is it the
kind of man I want to be. I shall stay, my Love, For a while longer,
until I feel that I have done what was to be done. And when I come
home, after days and weeks have passed, we shall smile together
truthfully, knowing that whatever it was that drove me away is now
gone, and that we can stay together, in each others hearts and in
each others arms, for as long a time we have on this earth of ours.
W.
