Two Rivers Through Charlevoix QC.

Two Rivers Through Charlevoix QC. Slog. One foot. Slog. Next foot. Slog. First foot. Slog. Next foot. The rhythmic pattern that keeps you alive. The pain that begs you to let it die. The sun is your friend, but he is fickle. And equally ephemeral. And it dawned on you. He’s leaving you. The clarity of life. The obvious path. It all disappears colours turn to shades of grey. Signs point the wrong way. So, you turn back, But back isn’t the way. And the pain builds. But I won’t die here. I didn’t fight this hard to die so close to life. Day runs its course and night replaces it. The mind is lost. Night is so different then day. But the pattern doesn’t change. It’s one frozen foot in front of the other. And so you move forward. The dark hides everything the face wants to say. You can’t see your father’s-tired eyes. But you know. You both know so long as neither of you give in, you’ll make it. You both know how much you each want to give in. You both know You think about when you were a kid. When the love in your heart convinced you you could carry him 5 miles through the cold of winter. And now you call it realism. It would kill you both. But still, you feel guilty, As though somehow you love him less for the realism. You read in a book once, A mountain climber stuck in a crevasse, His partner having done all he could. Sleeps to the sound of his dying friend. Your dad gave you this book. “if you are serious about this, You need to know the costs”. Now you pray that it’s you that pays the cost. Though that wouldn’t change a thing. There’s beauty in the struggle of a day. There’s no beauty in the struggle of night. Night wipes the earth of its beauty, in comparison to the sky. You only think you are vast. You think you understand time. You think you live in the present. In the presence of stars and people. In the presence of other present things, but here you are bathing in the light of dead stars, playing back the memories of people you thought you knew. Slogging away at a trail that’s already been cleared a hundred times. Only this time, here I am. The importance of the universe, brushed aside with each snowflake. That was a life, not in our human conception, but a life all the same. That was a life. That was a life. They’re re still lives, but what right did you have to influence them? What right did you have to break the unity of snow to cut rivers that time has spent so long repairing? Filling in. Only to be cut again. With each step. And the next. Why can’t you resist the call? What is it about this beautiful country that calls you back again and again? The country of your father, And his father before him. And the ideas of toughness built in this environ That you’ve abandoned everywhere else but here. Here, you suffer in silence. Your country and your father, his love for this place, this place that looks like it might kill you. But you’ve no choice, That love is as much his as it is yours. His love, that you adopted. Your mother and the love she gave you. It’s different in every way.