The End of Heroism

This is the latest version of my short story, "The End of Heroism."
***

I sink into the murky waters of the bog. I can get out and be free but I need a reason. I grab hold of a cattail but I cannot pull myself out.

"What is my purpose?"

The mud seeps into my skin. I feel unclean for I fight only for myself.

"God, if you shine above the clouds of night like I once believed, give me a reason!"

I choke on black water. My throat burns and my eyes sting.

"Why did you create me if only to let me waste away?"

Fire envelops the lonely swamp and I am awakened and I am clean. I soar into the sunset with angel’s wings.

I am free.

The cold wind carries me around the pink clouds and under the rising moon but it does not chill me.

I have everything I want but not what I asked for. Where is that God who has still to give me a mission?

I fear the swamp which remains far below; if I return thereto I will not be able to fight it still. God gave me my arms to fight for others and for me they cannot act to their full potential. 

They cannot save me.

My fear alone, like the hunter’s arrow, sends me down. Down to the demons who would devour me.

I wake from my dream to a reality somewhere between the heavens and the hells: a place of decision. 

My choices have yet to take me either way.

I get out of bed and walk to the kitchen. It's 4 AM but I am no longer tired. I eat a bowl of cereal and cold milk. My throat aches like my dream was real. Maybe it's the milk and the cool night air. I open the front door and look at the moon, another onlooker who couldn't care less about my pain.

I play with the thought of suicide but it is neither in my nature to run from a fight nor is my pain so great that I would find relief in death.

Down the mountain road I walk and I feel a new wind stir the trees.

At the bottom of the mountain I stare into the lake which I played and swam in when I was a child. The reflected moon lights the memories of swans that used to glide over the water. They had died and never been replaced like my past heroism.

I had been needed and I had risen to the need. But now I am lost.

I walk through the willows, their leaves swaying in the wind, their bark witness to countless winter snows and spring thaws. The branch's burden lifts each year as the ice turns to water and rejoins the lake.

They live on. Year after year they witness birth and death, marriage and divorce, young people lost without a purpose that they later find.

I once had a purpose. I was a soldier and I fought for my people but they need me no more.
I was out of place among all but those departed swans. I had been happy when I was young and unaware that I had no reason to be happy. Maybe ignorance is bliss but once removed it seldom returns.

The moon shines on through the branches of the willows. I approach the lake and find my reflection beside the stars that were once glorified as constellations in bygone days. Now most people have forgotten the stars and the legends have become myths.

The world lives on before my eyes in black and white. The plants grow and the people learn to become more than what they are.

I cannot find a place for myself among them. I have no reason to change my ways if only I will benefit.

The ghostly swans swim away across the lake and my soul follows. I am no longer part of this world.

I had wanted to die a hero still but I lived in a utopia that had no use for me. I wanted to change but there was nothing in me that needed to be changed.

I walked through the willows once more and this time I knew was my last. I breathed the night air and it tickled my throat before I joined the shining stars.


~ fin ~

In Mono Basin

Ellery Lake, Tioga Road

 We drove out of the Sierras and in hours we descended four thousand feet. We passed Tenaya lake but it was cold so we did not stop and then we drove through Tioga Pass at ten thousand feet. I stood with Ellery Lake 20 feet below me and photographed the mountain and the water which glittered in the sunrise. 
Yosemite was a dream behind me and I touched the slimy, sodium filled water of Mono Lake at the outer foot of the Sierras. The landscape was sparse and barren and the strange Tufa Towers were like large drip-sand-castles and interested me far more than the giant trees of the Mariposa Grove. Blue water met monoliths and yellow rabbitbrush flowers at the base of the hostile mountains in a way that alienates this valley from Yosemite Valley. 
We left the lake and proceeded south and to our left loomed another wall of mountains and behind them lays Death Valley. The road veered west and the mountain before us and behind the desert valley, though not as high as the Sierra-Navada, stood dark and foreboding   unlike the face of El Capitan, which even from the sheer cliff of Taft Point is a kind and familiar face or Half Dome, which can be picked out at Sentinel Dome like a friend in a crowd.   

Mono Lake, Tufa Towers, and Rabbitbrush

We stopped at the southern end of the Sierras for fries and ice cream at a ranch house restaurant that sold nothing else but meat. Then we were moving fast through the 100 mile desert that must be hiked in five days when it is crossed by Pacific Crest Trail hikers because there are no cities to replenish food supply. I saw the occasional Joshua Tree and once when we stopped for gas a tumbleweed trapped by a fence and abandoned when the wind stopped. There was a moist breeze uncommon in the dry region and many clouds overhead when we left and continued on our desert road.