In Snow on Mount Blanca

As much as he didn’t like to admit it, he missed his long days searching in the forest. At the time it had been a morose affair, undeniably lonesome and fruitless, but here, here at well past 11,000 feet altitude, the trees were gone. It was past their line of duty. This gave him deep consideration, and with it, appreciation, for the gentle windbreaks the forest had been, and as he trudged through the snow to what he prayed be the last clue, the blustery, unhindered breeze hit twice as hard as it seemed and four times as hard as it did in the trees.

It had been nearly thirteen months since he left home. It was a gambit he’d be a fool not to take, he had always told himself. Indeed, he told himself this over and over, and doubly over again when thoughts of Marianne surfaced.

She’d be fine.

As with many men born under a whimsical family tree, he had grown to this age of 30 with the classic heightened sense of adventure but also the intrinsically deep, albeit false, sense of uniqueness, a self idolizing subconscious that told him ever since he was a boy that he was destined for something great. Something others wouldn’t achieve, something of fable. And, like many men, in many ways, he was still just a boy in his head.

The arrival of the first notebook, delivered to his house bound in a thick brown wrapping paper and tied with a string still crossed his mind as well, sometimes forcibly as if to say “Keep your mind away from Marianne, it was the notebook’s arrival that was key.” Filled with clues, a mystery to be unraveled, and addressed to him by some unknown puppet-master, it held promise of a treasure to be found.

He just had to break the codes, follow the trails, and, in his eyes, pursue that ever-subversive male egocentrism known as destiny. What could this treasure bring? How much was it? These thoughts kept him going day by day, town by town, month by month and led him now, finally, towards the peak of Mt. Blanca in Southern Colorado, towering above the San Luis Valley in the dead of winter.

Marianne had begged him not to go. “Ignore it!” she said tearfully the night before he left. “Please, please Thomas, ignore it and stay with me, I will need you, I need you now, and I will need you more soon.” But ignoring it was impossible. Treasure has a way, in the mind of some, of becoming the only possible outcome once the outcome of treasure is noted as possible.

The wind hit him in cold splashes on his face, his tired back waning but little in his desperation to reach the end of this. Clue by clue he had figured it out. And always, every time, leading to another little black notebook, the same as before, moleskin and mute but for the enigmatic drawings, puzzles, and riddles coursing through its parchment veins.

Thomas began to mumble to himself, a habit he had picked up months ago and hadn’t thought twice about. “I swear, I swear to God, if this isn’t the last notebook to be found when I get there, I just swear to God I will-” Thomas cried out in pain as his boot, worn thin with the journey, struck a rock under the snow. He was on the ground, face even colder now as he lifted it from buried in the snow back into the bitter wind. He grimaced. There was no way it wasn’t a broken toe. He looked around. A broken toe, a hike down this 14,000 foot mountain in winter. It slowly dawned on him. This was dangerous. The fleeting nature of life flashed before his eyes, and he responded by sipping his flask and taking in his surroundings. He’d walked roughly far enough, it was going to be nearby that the treasure was buried. He began mumbling again, “Yeah, the treasure, or just another book of clues.”

He looked across the open-faced mountain side, eyes squinted at the bright reflection of the sun upon the snow, and noticed he wasn’t alone. Standing in silence, two deer looked at him. It was odd, there was no fear in their eyes, and instead, it seemed to him, pity. The buck stood a little further in front of the doe as they watched this predator stalk his prey. The pity that pierced him was one that stung like the very biting cold upon his cheeks and nose; his prey was mythological. His prey was the promise of something, of treasure, and, perhaps, of fulfilled destiny. Or, in other words, a finalized contentment of sorts, an admonishing and discarding of relentless feelings of worthlessness.

Yet these two deer walked these endless snowy crags and forests with only one purpose. They lived life as life was set before them. They needed no greatness, no fulfillment of a coming admiration, no hero’s journey. Thomas looked keenly at the doe, and his thoughts drifted to Marianne. The doe broke eye contact, and the deer slowly walked away, the buck leading his mate towards the trees.

It began to dawn upon him, those nights spent with Marianne. The nights dawned on him, and then the days, the days spent cooking, laughing, reading, walking, fighting, gardening, going to separate jobs and then every day back to the same home, the one they shared together.

Thomas felt weak, and his left arm buckled from propping himself upright and he fell back into the snow. And then he felt something, an object in the snow. Thoughts of Marianne vanished for a minute, as hope suddenly formed a knot in his throat and then was replaced by utter defeat. Pushing himself up again with his arms and into the sitting position, he reached into the snow, and pulled out of the snow another black book.

Tears of anger, frustration, rage, regret, and fear fell from his eyes, freezing in the wind upon his cheek, his unshaven mustache frosty with frozen foolishness. Another book. Another damn book. He opened it, feeling his broken toe throb in a pulsating rhythm. Scrawled on the first page were the words “You found it.” He turned the page. He’d been had. There was no treasure.

A photo fell from the book. Startled, Thomas was slow to pick it up. However, once he saw it, he was quick to break into heaving sobs. The photo was Marianne, standing in front of their house, a baby no more than four or five months old in her arms. Was this his child? It must be, it must be and he had left. Thomas felt daggers in his heart. His salty tears ran rapids down his face as he looked at it.

He had left his treasure. He had left his treasure to find treasure. He turned the page, and this time an envelope dropped from the book. He opened it. A small bundle of money with a note. “Twenty thousand to make up for the time you left work.”

Thomas looked up at the sky. Nothing made sense. Nothing, except that it was Marianne that was the treasure he was to find. And so, hobbling on a broken toe, he began his journey home, his mind’s eye wide open now with a realization that far too few men are privy to understanding.

“I’m coming, Marianne,” Thomas mumbled. “I’m coming home.”