John spent the next couple of weeks exploring Kentucky, and felt he was coming slowly back to live exploring the hills, mountains, and hollers of this strange and mysterious state. He spent most of his days hiking and exploring the countryside, and most of his nights sampling the various bourbons from all around the state. He was feeling much better during the days, but at night the demons would come creeping back in and make sleep very difficult for him. As Mark Twain had once said, “In my age, as in my youth, night brings me many a deep remorse. I realize that from the cradle up I have been like the rest of the race- never quite sane in the night.”
At the end of his third week in Kentucky, John was beginning to feel that perhaps it was time to move along. He had grown quite comfortable with the people and places here, but instinctively felt that there was more he needed to do to complete this odd and deeply personal healing quest he was on.
He decided that he would hike back up to the top of his little mountain again and say goodbye to this little corner of the world that had been such a comfort to him. The temperature had dropped considerably in the time he had been in Kentucky, and he had added a few small additions to his wardrobe as he has progressed. He had left Chicago looking in a suit and a tie. Now he looked like something out of an LL Bean catalogue.
He walked slowly to the top of the mountain, thinking as he did about the idea of mindfulness, and how much he had preached about this idea to his clients over the years. Was it true that there was nothing except the present moment in this life? He certainly had voiced this opinion over the years, but now he thought again how the past and the present seemed to exist in in a kind of mystical dance where one kept informing and changing the other. If you had asked him 2 months ago, he would have said he had a glorious past, as it culminated in finding his wife and daughter. Now, in severe pain, h felt like his past was a kind of a curse he would have to spend a lifetime overcoming. Neither version was the truth, yet somehow, they were both completely true in their own way. Time was a very fluid concept.
As he reached the top of the peak, he looked around and heard the birds and the leaves and the wind, and felt that somehow everything must be connected in a way he just didn’t understand. He allowed for the possibility that this could change. His life had certainly changed before, and he knew it could again.
He opened up a bottle of Knob Creek whiskey he had purchased for the occasion and took a small swig, savoring the taste and enjoying the complexity of the flavor. He had learned quite a bit about Bourbon over the last few weeks, and was learning how to sip his drinks again after weeks and even years of gulping down whatever it was that was n front of him. He realized his relationship with alcohol was a dangerous one, but right now addressing that particular issue was not high on his list of priorities.
He thought about Katie and Brian as he sat at the little picnic area at the top of the small mountain. He had been both impressed and jealous of their lives together, and found himself thinking about all of the time he had wasted in his life before he had finally met Stephanie and found happiness. Why hadn’t he been willing to take a chance on love in his life? Was he too picky? Too damaged? Or was it that Stephanie was his soul mate and that it had taken a lifetime to find her?
As the sun started going down he found himself remembering the lyrics to an old Kentucky folk song he had learned about in a class he ha taken way back during his life as an undergraduate. It was called “High on the Mountain” and it had a haunting and wistful quality that John had always been drawn to. He sung the lyrics quietly to himself,
“High on the mountain, wind blowing free,
thinking about the days that used to be,
yes, high on the mountain standing all alone
wondering where the years of my life have flown.”
and slowly drank his Bourbon as the sun gave way to night.
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