Mountain Man 

There’d been a few attempts to ascend previously, but they’d been aborted due to weather and other less-than-desirable climbing conditions. 

He’d walked out on his girlfriend that morning, when she’d begged him not to leave. She’d told him not to come back, if he left, hoping he’d stay but knowing he wouldn’t.

He had only one thing on his mind and wouldn’t be turned back. He was going up the mountain solo. He decided this was good, the break up, his freeing of attachments. He needed it to be between just him and the mountain. No one else. No one to dissuade him if things got difficult. The mountain would be his only company, all he’d ever needed. 

***

He started up the mountain in no time. His body trembled and ached as he made each successive move along the rock face, scaling the side of the mountain with intention. He didn’t have time to be consciously proud of his determination, not as he climbed, all he could think of was his next move, finding something to fix his hands to and pull himself higher. There were some moments he nearly failed, that his body gave out, in one way or another. But each time he collected himself and put these minor obstacles out of mind. He kept climbing. 

He pushed himself, gripping whatever there was in the immediate area to grip, and pulling his legs up with purchase upon the outcrop he’d left behind. 

***

He climbed until he couldn’t climb any higher, because he’d done it. He’d made it to the top. 

He’d reached the summit. 

Despite his exhaustion, he howled with triumph, with effervescent delight. He was there, at last. 

This was his moment. 

Below him he heard a tremble, a rumbling sound, and in the corner of his field of vision he could discern that the mountain had a face, a literal face (eyes, mouth, the whole thing). It was living and breathing like he was. 

He could not have imagined the mountain grinning and joining in with his celebration, too, booming slowly but deliberately, “Aw, yeah, you did it! I knew you could do it! I was watching the whole time, and now you’ve done it. You climbed me! Yeah!” The mountain spoke with a deep reverberating voice whose rasp equaled the amount of gravel existing inside its caverns. 

The man let out a shocked cry and then, scrambling, wrapped his two legs together in some instinctive effort to flee, but tripped himself instead. It was then that he began falling down the side of the mountain, his attempts at grasping hold of anything to steady himself continuous failures, completely in defiance of the sureness with which he’d moved during his climb.

“Awww, no,” the mountain said, deeply alarmed but feeling impotent, having practically no ability to do anything to intervene and help the man. Not that the mountain didn’t try. The mountain attempted to blow air with its igneous bottom lip aimed in the direction of the falling man, to send him back upright on his own two feet, but this was evidently no match for the power of gravity. So the mountain was forced to watch helplessly as the horror unfurled. 

The man’s fall quickly became a grim and gory scene, as limbs broke and his body was cut and bruised. He left a bloody trail along his path to the mountain’s base, where he laid unmoving. 

***

Evening set in and flies swirled around the man’s remains. Eventually someone would come looking for him, but right now the mountain was all there was to keep vigil. It was like nothing the mountain had ever experienced before, and the weight of the situation was heavy, as though another even bigger mountain had collapsed upon it. 

The man’s death was doubly sad, as it came with a second loss. The whole ordeal had only fortified the mountain’s belief that it was best it keep its mouth shut henceforth. Leave them to wonder about the noise trees do or don’t make independent of human presence.

No one was around for the moment, though, so it felt there was little harm in speaking to itself, much as a tree falls in the forest, but all the mountain could think to say was, “Aw, mannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.” The mountain really meant it, too. 

The mountain let out a long sigh – a slow, strained whistle, devoid of any note of triumph, only sorrow and an abiding wish that the world, as it was, wasn’t so.