In the night—save for torch lights—darkness cut only by an even darker dark of tall towering trunks, I’m doing what I couldn’t have done alone. In such a place under the mighty weight of angry skies there would have been noises, there would have been scary sounds, wind’s whispers and branches cracks, yet tonight I’m safe as everything else is muffled, drowned in the uplifting tone of a friendly chat. We walk through the tall towering woods no one else does: my friends and I. We stroll where neither of us could have gone alone.

With the suddenly clearing sky a thought crystallises in my jovial mind, one that must have been a hidden, subconscious guiding principle of my life: to forge friendships solely with those who recognise their own idiocy. People like these are a rare breed indeed, for wisdom—to which arrogance makes us cling so hard—comes more readily in the privacy of one’s own mind. There we guard it like a delicate bird in a cage, which is not at all alike.

I now understand that this keen awareness of our own foolishness is the fundamental trait that unites us, my friends. And, no I’m not being critical; I’m equally a fool. But today, under the rising moon my folly dons a different hue. 

And so, at the end of the trail, with friends, in our shared moments, we gaze into the pale swirls of smoke from a dying candle, dancing silver pirouettes in the full moonlight. Each of them sees a different dance, while I see only the candle and nothing beyond. Surrounded by friends, I have no urge to search for genial faces in the candle’s dim, silvery haze. That is, until a stark gust spurs my friends, along with the smoke, to dissipate into the night. Thus what must have been a mirage in the smoke, my absent friends, or perhaps their  souls, made up or not, spectres of people of the past spent one by one, lighter than breeze but weighing on me as a cruelly cold leaden block. 

Some of them left, some I spent for favours, others used me instead, for there was another trait we shared: despite our modesty our sins lay somewhere else. 

Hence, so close to the peak I stand lonely in a place where no lonely man should venture, a terrified fool with no options ahead, no support in place and no way back. My spirit, torn between terrors, clings to my shoulder while I’m waiting for my inevitable tumble.