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A Long Way to Nowhere by Lelia Thomas
The boy stabbed his walking stick into the dry mountainside and pulled himself along another step. Beads of sweat gathered on his brow, reflecting the harsh white light of the sun above.
“How much farther?” he asked the old man in front of him.
“We’ve a long way yet.”
Having heard the same words many times, the boy set his jaw and leaned to the right, looking around the giant form of the old, hunchbacked man that was his grandfather. To his disappointment, there was a long distance left. It was so far, in fact, that he could hardly make out the hazy, blue-green peak of the mountain; which, he then knew, would only be the halfway mark of their trip, for they would travel to the bottom on the other side.
It occurred to him that they might never reach their destination. This area was not safe. Outside of the harsh sunlight and violent bouts of weather that tore at the mountain frequently, there were wild animals, and their forms were open to the naked eye, leaving them vulnerable to attack from enemy tribes.
“Have you gone this way before, Grandfather?” His voice was small and scared.
The old man nodded, his blue feather-laden earrings bobbing at the movement. “Once before, long, long ago. It is a long way. We don’t travel it often for that reason.”
“Why are we going, anyway?”
“It is your time to come this way, and my time to part.”
There was no discussing what ‘parting’ meant, for the boy knew. People parted; people died. And yet, no one ever seemed to leave; in death, there was still life and remembrance. It still saddened him that his grandfather should say this, though. There were so many things he still wanted to learn from him! It would not be spoken of, though. If it was his grandfather’s time, then that was the way of it.
“What’s on the other side?”
“Nothing.”
The boy nearly tripped. “Nothing? How can there be nothing? I thought we were going this way for a reason!”
“We are,” said Grandfather. “Just because there is nothing at the end of a journey doesn’t mean the journey was pointless.”
The boy thought on this for a moment, but it made no sense. “If there’s no destination, how is there a point?”
“Is death a destination?”
Questions like that always caught the boy off guard, and his grandfather was one for asking them. They always seemed random, but he knew by now that they had meaning. He answered slowly. “Not really.” It was a safe answer.
“That’s right. Death really isn’t a destination, but we’re all headed toward it, are we not?”
Grandfather stopped and turned toward him. He looked down with his kindly, deep brown eyes that sat deeply among the thick, dark brown wrinkles of his face. His face and body looked as craggy and weathered as the mountain they stood on, and yet, there was still something indestructible in him, a wisdom that would surely never die, even after his body passed. “Life is a journey to death, young one, but life is not pointless. No second is, not even those that are filled with nothingness. After all, those moments usually have more in them than we think.”
As the boy mulled over Grandfather’s words, he saw the old man point behind him. He turned and quickly lifted his hands to shield his eyes.
The sun was setting in the west in a vibrant burst of orange and red. Against the brightness of the light were the silhouettes of a pack of wolves who lounged on a cliff, waiting for the night. He had never seen something so simple, yet so beautiful.
Hills ran into rivers far below; trees ran into skies and horizons; sun and moon ran into a cloud and star-filled sky. Their human figures were just mere specks on the mountainside. They were no more important than a dust particle in the grand scheme of life, and it seemed painfully and beautifully obvious in that moment.
His grandfather’s words suddenly made sense to him. Life was, in essence, a fool’s journey, but it was completely worth traveling, even if the destination was merely dirt and ashes. Reasons, points in life simply didn’t matter; no matter the road taken, the destination would be the same. The journey was what mattered, if it was something he could die in peace with.
That there was nothing on the other side of the mountain no longer angered him. He had come here, for the first and last time, with a great man, and he had learned that a journey was just as important as a destination.
“Is this really the end of your journey, Grandfather?”
“It is, which means it is the beginning of yours. You’ve got a long road before you, but there’s no rush. No rush at all.”